The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth 01/08/2023

First Baptist Church Leominster

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Well, I think because of the time we'll bypass reading

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Hebrews 6 this morning, we'll let Jason do that next week, and so let us pray first and ask our

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God to help us. Our Father, we thank you that we have your written word before us, and yet we realize our

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God, although it certainly is your inerrant word that you've given to us, which has authority, our

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God, to instruct us in the way we should believe and live before you.

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We are in need of the witness of the Holy Spirit, the illumination of the Holy Spirit, our

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God, to take these words and to help us understand them, but also to help us apply them.

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And so we pray your blessing upon us now, our God, as we turn once again to the

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Gospel of Luke, we pray that your word, our God, would have a powerful influence upon our minds and our hearts, our

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God. Conform our wills to your will, glorify yourself now, bind the devil, our

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God, that he would not hinder our understanding or stir up our hearts in defiance or rebellion against you and what you have to say for us.

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But we pray, our God, that you'd help us to be responsive, teachable.

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We pray, we ask these things, Father in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's turn in our

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Bibles to Luke chapter 4. We arrive here at the first recorded event in Luke's Gospel of our

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Lord Jesus as the onset of his public ministry. And we find, of course, that he opens his ministry,

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Luke does, opens our Lord's ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth, his hometown. And so this initial episode in Luke, Luke chapter 4, provides us with our

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Lord's own words regarding the nature of his ministry. Jesus is

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God's prophet who announces and brings salvation to his enslaved, oppressed people.

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And so here in Luke 4, we read verses 14 through 30, and Jesus returned in the power of the

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Spirit to Galilee, and news of him went throughout all the surrounding region.

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And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the

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Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was handed the book of the prophet

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Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the

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Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

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He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the

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Lord. And then he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.

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And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.

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And he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceedeth out of his mouth.

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And they said, is this not Joseph's son? He said to them, you will surely say this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself.

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Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. And then he said, assuredly,

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I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land.

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But to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Zidon, to a woman who was a widow.

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And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the

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Syrian. So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city.

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And they led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down over the cliff.

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And then passing through the midst of them, he went his way. Well, this passage sets forth the general nature of our

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Lord's public ministry, and what would characterize the reactions of the people to whom he would minister.

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It's like a paradigm of his ministry. There would be those who would be quite amazed and enthralled at his teaching.

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His ministry would be directed to the many poor, needy, and marginalized of society whom he encountered.

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But the passage also intimates that Gentiles also would be recipients of his gracious dealings.

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He mentions the widow of Zidon, and Naaman the Syrian. And finally, it discloses that Jesus would also encounter much ignorance and opposition from his own people, who would not receive him or respond to his teaching.

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And so in this initial episode of Luke's rehearsal of our Lord's ministry, Luke provides us with a synopsis, a picture, a paradigm.

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That being an initial favorable response to Jesus, followed by a negative reaction characterized by efforts to destroy him.

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And then secondly, Luke gives really a picture of God's overall plan, and that after the rejection of Jesus by the

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Jewish nation, salvation is brought to the Gentiles. And so in a sense, this story is a picture of what unfolds in the two books of Luke and Acts.

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In Luke, we see the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish nation, and then in Acts, we see the turning of God to the

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Gentiles. And that's all suggested here in this episode in the synagogue of Nazareth.

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We want to work through the details of our passage, and then we'll consider a few implications.

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And by the way, don't let 17 pages intimidate you. There's no way in the world we're getting through that.

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But I included from page 11 through 17 a little article by Charles Spurgeon on the defense of Calvinism, and as we work through this passage, we're going to see how that would be helpful for us.

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And so here we have, in verses 14 and 15, first an introduction of Jesus' Galilean ministry.

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We considered last time, of course, how our Lord successfully withstood the devil, having endured all temptation to sin when he was 40 days in the wilderness.

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And afterward, Jesus traveled northward from Judea to Galilee, where the greatest measure of his earthly ministry took place.

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So verses 14 and 15 are an introductory summary of his Galilean ministry.

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Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of him went out through all the surrounding region, and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

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We know from Mark's gospel that Jesus had left Judea and went to Galilee after John the Baptist had been cast into prison.

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Luke did not include that in his gospel, but Mark 1 14 reads,

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Now, after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.

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So Jesus came to Galilee with spiritual power in order to accomplish his mission of teaching the people regarding the onset of the promised kingdom of God.

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As one wrote, the power of the Spirit is linked especially with the apostolic witness, and hence here the primary reference is presumably to the authority of Jesus' teaching.

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But the thought of power to do mighty works may be present as well. The popularity of Jesus soon became pronounced, for news of him went through all the surrounding region.

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The parallel passage in Matthew's gospel gives a little more detail. And Jesus went about all

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Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people, and then his fame went throughout all

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Syria, that whole northern region, Galilee included. And they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon -possessed, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them.

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And great multitudes followed him from Galilee and from Decapolis and Jerusalem, Judea and beyond the

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Jordan. Well in these two verses of introductory words,

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Luke gave no comment regarding the content of Jesus' teaching. The other gospels say he preached the gospel of the kingdom, but Luke doesn't mention that in verses 14 and 15, for of course the event in Nazareth will make known that his purpose and his preaching very shortly.

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But Matthew indicated the principal subject of his teaching in the Jewish synagogues was the kingdom of God. Jesus was proclaiming that he was bringing into realization the promised kingdom of God, which is, that is, the promised kingdom of David, of which all the people had been desiring and anticipating.

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The promised age of salvation had arrived, and Jesus was the promised king.

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Well now we look at verse 16 and following of Jesus coming to Nazareth, his hometown.

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We read after our Lord had traveled about Galilee that he had taught in many synagogues and had gained much favor and notoriety among the people.

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He came to his own town of Nazareth, and there among those who had known him or known of him from his youth,

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Nazareth wasn't a large town, Jesus attended the Jewish synagogue to worship with the people on the

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Sabbath day, as his custom was throughout his life. Verse 16, so he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the

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Sabbath day and stood up to read. Technically it's not saying that he read as his custom was, but he went to the synagogue as his custom was.

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Jesus had probably been a popular boy about town, everybody must have liked him and thought highly of him, he'd been well -respected, a well -respected young citizen in his community,

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Luke had already indicated that. We read of when Jesus was 12 years of age, he went down with his parents, came to Nazareth, was subject to them, but his mother kept all these things in her heart, and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature in favor with God, but not just with God, but with men too.

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The community of Nazareth thought highly of this young man. We read that our

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Lord participated in a regular weekly meeting of the people of God in the Jewish synagogue on the

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Sabbath day. It was his custom to do so. Our Lord was always with God's people whenever they met, as should be our practice of course.

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And here we find him in his hometown congregation, and on this occasion he was granted the privilege of reading from the scriptures and preaching on the text that he had read.

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His fame had preceded him, and so the synagogue, you can fully understand, must have been filled with expectant neighbors and acquaintances and probably family members wanting to hear from this fine local young man.

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Jesus, who made a name for himself, is now home with us. But here in his hometown,

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Jesus suffered rejection, although the people had given him an initial glowing response.

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There was much excitement and enthusiasm with his arrival. They had heard of what God had been doing through him in other cities of Galilee, and now he had returned to his hometown.

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But things had changed for him. Though much was familiar to him, much had changed since he had left there.

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Here is a description of Alfred Edersheim, of Jesus coming to Nazareth for this

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Sabbath visit to the synagogue, only a few months since he had left Nazareth, but how much that was all decisive to him, to Israel and to the world, had passed.

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As the lengthening shadows of Friday's sun closed around the quiet valley, he would hear the well -remembered double blast of the trumpet from the roof of the synagogue minister's house, proclaiming the advent of the holy day,

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Sabbath day. And once more it sounded through the still summer air, to tell all that work must be laid aside.

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And yet a third time it was heard, before the minister put it aside close by where he stood not to profane the

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Sabbath by carrying it, for now the Sabbath had really commenced and the festive

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Sabbath lamp was lit. Sabbath morned dawn and early he repaired to the synagogue, where as a child, a youth, a man, he had so often worshipped in the humble retirement of his rank, sitting not up there among the elders in the honored but far back.

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The old well -known faces were around him, the old well -remembered words and services fell on his ear.

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How different they had always been to him than to them with whom he had thus mingled in common worship.

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And now he was again among them, truly a stranger among his own countrymen, this time to be looked at, listened to, tested, tried, used or cast aside as the case may be.

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You can imagine, you know, the whole atmosphere, the sense, the expectation of the people.

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And then Jesus himself and his human nature, you can imagine the weight of the moment.

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We read that Jesus had been given prominent role in the corporate worship on this occasion in the synagogue.

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And so verses 17 and following relate to us what occurred. He was handed the book of the prophet

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Isaiah and when he opened the book he found the place where it was written, the spirit of the

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Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the

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Lord. And then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them, today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

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So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth and they said, is this not

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Joseph's son? He began his sermon with the words, today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

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Well let's consider the content and the initial reaction of Jesus' message.

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First, let's consider the historic context of Isaiah 61 from which Jesus quoted,

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Isaiah is a book of judgment and salvation. It records God's anger and wrath upon Israel, a sinful people who had repeatedly rebelled against God through the centuries.

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And Isaiah declared to his generation that God's patience had been exhausted because they had broken the everlasting covenant.

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He would lay waste the land and remove its inhabitants in exile. And so God's judgment upon their sin would result in their defeat by other nations, first Assyria in the 8th century

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BC and then by Babylon in the 6th century BC. God had declared through Isaiah that these two nations, these two empires would conquer the land and afflict the people terribly.

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The people would be enslaved and deported to far off lands becoming exiles when they would encounter grievous hardships and there be imprisoned.

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The curse of God was upon them because of their sin they had become enslaved and imprisoned having failed to escape the consequences of their sin.

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But God in his great mercy and grace purposed to do a great work of salvation for a remnant of this people.

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God promised to raise up his servant, a son of David, a savior who had come to these needy sinful people and announced their deliverance, their salvation from sin's penalty and power from which

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God had delivered them in his judgment. And Isaiah 61 records the words of the rejoicing servant, the servant of Jehovah whom

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God commissioned to save his people. The year of release, the true year of jubilee had arrived.

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For Jesus to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord is a reference to the onset of the jubilee year in the

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Old Testament which was to be observed every 50th year. Matthew Henry wrote of this, it alludes to the year of release or that of jubilee which was an acceptable year to servants who were then set at liberty, they were set free.

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To debtors against whom all actions then dropped, all your debts are canceled.

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And to those who had mortgaged their lands for then they returned to them again, brought back into possession the land that God had promised and given them in the past.

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Christ came to sound the jubilee trumpet and blessed were they that heard the joyful sound.

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It was an acceptable time for it was a day of salvation. And so Jesus makes an emancipation proclamation in which prisoners are set free and able to return to their former land where they would enjoy the blessings of the

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Messiah's kingdom, the kingdom in which freedom and its accompanied joy, peace and righteousness before God would be experienced.

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And so our Lord chose this passage and he read it publicly and then rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant.

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He sat down to give his sermon, they would stand up to read the scriptures and then the preacher would sit down to give his sermon and all were in expectation.

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And then he began his sermon by saying, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

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This is a marvelous thing. To this people, Jesus declared that he was the servant of the

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Lord, the prophet who had been commissioned, anointed, not only to proclaim salvation, but he was the deliverer, the savior who would bring salvation to his people.

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Today these words are fulfilled in your hearing. He was sent to set free needy, enslaved, depressed, heart sick, sinful people who had no means to deliver themselves.

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The time had arrived, the era of salvation had arrived, the messianic age had dawned.

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Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. For this is what Jesus was called to do.

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This is what he did do. He went about forgiving people of their sins, setting people free of the consequences of sin, breaking sin's dominion and Satan's control of them, bringing salvation to all that came to him in faith and repentance.

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Of course our Lord's words recorded here were not just God's message for that day, but for our world today also.

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Is that not right? Jesus comes to sin bound, sinful people who are bowed under their load, who have fallen due to the consequences of their sin, unable to relieve themselves of their guilt and the alienation from God that resulted from their sin.

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And Jesus says to them today, partake of my salvation, come to me in faith, acknowledging your guilt and sin, confessing your helplessness and hopelessness to remedy yourself.

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Look to me as God's savior to save you from your sin. To needy, sinful people, he speaks gracious words of peace and hope.

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He promises you and me immediate and complete release from sin if and when we see ourselves in this needy condition and we come to him in faith as the only one who can deliver us.

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Charles Spurgeon preached from this passage and I thought I would relate his words to us. So, the proclamation which

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I have to make tonight concerns immediate liberation. You've been the slave of sin long enough.

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You need not be sin's slave any longer. Christ has not come to work out a deliverance which will take hours, days, weeks, or months to complete.

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He has come to knock your fetters off with a single stroke and to set you free at once.

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If his gracious power is manifested in this assembly, the former slave of sin will go out of the tabernacle door free, not half free, with one or two of his fetters broken, but there shall be for him immediate liberty.

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It does not take any time to work in the human heart the great change which is called regeneration.

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There may be a great many things going before it and coming after it which take up much time, but to pass from death to life is the work of an instant.

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It must be so. If a man is dead and he's made alive, there can be no interval between the state of death and the state of life.

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There must be a second in which the transition takes place when a blind man's eyes are opened.

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It may be that he does not see for some time very clearly, but there is an instant in which the first beam of light enters the eye and falls upon the retina, and in which the eye becomes conscious of the power of light.

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And so in a moment while I'm speaking, the Lord can save you. In an instant, ye slaves of sin and Satan, he can make you free.

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It is the immediate abolition of slavery that I have to proclaim to you.

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Well we read of the initial reaction of the people to our Lord's words, verse 22.

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So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.

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And they said, is this not Joseph's son? It would seem that these words betrayed two responses of the people.

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An initial response of favor, but then quickly following were words of skepticism and dismissal.

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Yes, his words were profound and wondrous, yet is he not only

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Joseph's son? J .C. Ryle sought to draw forth a lesson.

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We learn one thing, how apt men are to despise the highest principles when they are familiar with them.

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Isn't he Joseph's son? We see it in the conduct of the men of Nazareth when they heard the

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Lord Jesus preach. They could find no fault in the sermon. They could point to no inconsistency in his past life and conversation, but because the preacher had dwelt among them 30 years and his face and voice and appearance were familiar to them, they would not receive his doctrine, his teaching.

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They said to one another, is not this Joseph's son? Is it possible that one so well known as this man can be the

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Christ? And they drew from our Lord's lips the solemn saying, no prophet is accepted in his own country.

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And so the response of these people to the word of God was initially favorable. All were speaking well of him, wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips, but then they revealed their unbelief.

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Is this not Joseph's son? Or in other words, I hear him, but is this not

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Joseph's son? How can what he say be true? For is he not merely Joseph's son? They seemed to reveal to Jesus their disinterest and unresponsiveness to him.

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They did not embrace his gracious invitation nor rejoice in his offer, but they did reveal something about themselves.

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They did not see themselves as poor people who needed the gospel preached to them. They did not see themselves as captives in sin which needed deliverance.

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They did not regard themselves as spiritually blind people who needed to have their sensible sight restored.

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They did not see themselves as needy downtrodden people who needed to be relieved.

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They did not see themselves as ones who are under the wrath of God, who have no claims, no rights to God's mercy, who needed

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God's forgiveness of their sins and deliverance from sinning. Something that could only be performed by a

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God sent savior. They did not see themselves as characterized in Isaiah 61 .1.

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These were religious people, but self -righteous also. They wanted to see a miracle or two.

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Do what you've been doing all over Galilee here. Do it here in your hometown. We want to see these things.

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J .C. Ryle wrote an application for churches of his day. This was in the 19th century England.

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It is vain to conceal from ourselves that there are thousands of persons in Christian churches in little better state of mind than our

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Lord's hearers in Nazareth. There are thousands who listen regularly to the preaching of the gospel and admire it while they listen.

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They do not dispute the truth of what they hear. They even feel a kind of intellectual pleasure in hearing a good and powerful sermon, but their religion never goes beyond this point.

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Their sermon hearing does not prevent them living a life of thoughtlessness, worldliness, and sin.

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Let us often examine ourselves on this important point. Let us see what practical effect is produced in our hearts and lives by the preaching which we profess to like.

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Does it lead us to true repentance towards God and lively faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ?

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Does it excite us to weekly efforts to cease from sin and to resist the devil? These are the fruits which sermons ought to produce.

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Without such fruit, a mere bear and admiration is utterly worthless, is no proof of grace, it will save no soul.

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Amen. J .C. Ryle. Well, then we read of the response of Jesus to the

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Jewish gathering in the synagogue. So after our Lord's gracious pronouncement that the time of fulfillment had arrived, he intimated a hesitancy.

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If not a resistance, to receive it and embrace it.

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We read in verses 23 and 24, he said to them, you'll surely say to this proverb to me, physician heal yourself, whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country.

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And then he said, assuredly I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. It may be our

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Lord perceived the thoughts of these hometown people that they were not embracing his calling and message, since they had only known him as the local boy, the son of Joseph, one they knew quite well.

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There is nothing of his family or upbringing that caused him to stand out above what they had always knew of him.

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Their attitude and response was revealed openly by Jesus. So prove yourself,

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Jesus. Physician, heal yourself, practice what you preach. If you're really somebody, demonstrate it before us, or else we'll continue to consider you and regard you as the one we've always known, the son of Joseph.

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But the Lord would not seek to prove himself to anybody. On behalf of the needy, he shows himself powerful, but as for sign seekers, they reveal themselves to be unbelieving.

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Jesus always left people in their unbelief. And after Jesus had rehearsed the commonly known proverb, assuredly

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I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country, he then gave forth a lesson to them in the manner of God's dealings with people.

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Essentially, he was telling this people that God would deal with them just as he had dealt with many Jews in the

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Old Testament. He would pass by them and go to others. Just as God refused to show favor to many

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Jews in Israel, chose rather to be merciful to Gentiles, so God would bypass these people in his hometown who would refuse to respond in faith, who would dismiss his words as untrue and irrelevant.

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And so we read verses 25 to 27. But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land, but to none of them, none of those

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Jewish women was Elijah sent, except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon, outside of Israel, to a woman who was a widow.

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And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elijah the prophet, none of them was cleansed except Naaman the

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Syrian. And so our Lord cited two episodes from the Old Testament scriptures in which

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God revealed himself in bringing deliverance and blessing upon two different individuals.

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Each of them was a Gentile, not Jewish, and each of them lived outside of Israel in Gentile lands.

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To each of them, God purposed to bestow great grace, and he did so. But while having passed over Jewish people in Israel who had the same maladies and difficulties,

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Jesus was declaring by these two scriptural individuals that God is sovereign in the dispensing of his grace, and that he was under no obligation to show his favor because they were

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Jewish people. God was free to give forth graciously his saving power to whomever he purposed to favor.

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God was, and as he had disclosed himself to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

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I will have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. And so Jesus revealed

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God to be wholly sovereign in the bestowing, dispensing of grace to deliver people of his choosing.

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The first person that Jesus identified as the object and recipient of God's sovereign grace was a

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Gentile woman in the days of Elijah. The account is in 1 Kings 17.

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I suspect most of us are familiar with it, but let's consider it. Then the word of the

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Lord came to him, that would be Elijah, saying, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there.

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And see, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you, a Gentile woman. So he arose, went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, indeed, a widow was there gathering sticks.

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And he called to her and said, Please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said,

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Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. So she said, As the Lord your God lives,

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I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar. And see,

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I'm gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in, prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.

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And Elijah said to her, Do not fear, go, do as you've said, but make me a small cake from it first and bring it to me, and afterward make some for yourself and your son.

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For thus says the Lord God of Israel, The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the day the

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Lord sends rain on the earth. And so she went away and did according to the word of Elijah.

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And she and he and her household ate for many days, and the bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry according to the word of the

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Lord, which he spoke to Elijah. There were many

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Jewish widows in a similar condition, but the Lord sent Elijah outside of Israel to a

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Gentile woman, a Gentile widow, and blessed her. She was a widow, was needy, alone, helpless.

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She was a Gentile living outside Israel, but God purposed to send his prophet

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Elijah to have mercy on her rather than on Jewish widows who were also in need.

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God chose to show favor to a Gentile woman rather than to a Jewish woman, and this is what

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Jesus told his Jewish crowd, ones who knew him and he knew them, in that synagogue.

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And then, of course, the second illustration that Jesus gave was the account of Elisha and a

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Gentile soldier, Naaman. The story is found in 2 Kings 5. Now, Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master, because by him the

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Lord had given victory to Syria. Notice the Lord giving victory to a Gentile nation,

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Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor, but a leper, and the

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Syrians had gone out on raids, had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel.

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That was in God's purpose. She waited on Naaman's wife, and then she said to her mistress, if only my master were with the prophet who's in Samaria, for he would heal him of his leprosy.

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And Naaman went in and told his master, say thus, and thus said the girl who is from the land of Israel. And so the king of Syria said, go now and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.

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So he departed and took with him 10 talents of silver, 6 ,000 shekels of gold, 10 changes of clothing.

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And then he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, now be advised when this letter comes to you,

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I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy. And it happened when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am

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I God to kill and make alive that this man sends a man to me to heal him of leprosy?

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And therefore, please consider, see how he seeks a quarrel with me. He's setting me up.

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And so it was when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes and he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes?

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Please let him come to me and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. And then

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Naaman went with his horses and chariot. He stood at the door of Elisha's house and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the

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Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored to you and you shall be clean.

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But Naaman became furious and went away and said, indeed, I said to myself, he'll surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the

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Lord as God, wave his hand over the place and heal the leprosy. Are not the

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Abana and the Farpar rivers, the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?

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Could I not wash in them and be clean? And so he turned and went away in rage and his servants came near and spoke to him and said, my father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it?

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How much more then when he says to you, wash and be clean? And so he went down and dipped seven times in the

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Jordan according to the saying of the man of God and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.

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And he returned to the man of God, he and all his aides and came and stood before him and he said, indeed, now

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I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel and now therefore, please take a gift from your servant.

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But Elisha said, as the Lord lives before whom I stand, I'll receive nothing. And he urged him to take it, but he refused.

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So again, here's Naaman, a Gentile, a soldier, an enemy of Israel.

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And although there were many lepers in Israel, God had mercy on Naaman, having passed over Jewish lepers in the land.

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Both this widow and this soldier saw their need and to each of them God gave a deliverer and Jesus cited these two individuals before the synagogue in Nazareth to show that God was about to pass them by.

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Just as he had passed all those Jewish lepers and Jewish widows in Israel and show himself gracious and merciful to others.

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And Luke, by the way, does give emphasis to Jesus showing mercy to Gentiles, even in his

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Galilean ministry. And we'll see that as the gospel of Luke unfolds.

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And so Jesus was declaring to this synagogue, God was going to pass by them and direct his saving activity toward people who truly saw their need.

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Well, this, of course, stirred up anger. The reaction of the

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Jewish crowd to Jesus for what he had taught them. We see the reaction of these self -righteous religious people to Jesus, of whom moments before they expressed wonder and praise.

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So all those in the synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the city and they led him to the brow of the hill in which their city was built that they might throw him down over the cliff.

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You can go to Nazareth today and walk up to the brow of that hill, apparently, where they wanted to kill

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Jesus. But apparently by the power of God, he went past them and no harm was brought to him.

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Jesus had come to them as an anointed prophet with the most glorious news the

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Jews could ever hear. And yet a prophet does not receive honor among his own countrymen.

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And even worse, here in Nazareth, they treated Jesus as a false prophet rather than the true prophet of God.

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And so it was his response to these self -righteous religious people and passing through the midst of them, he went his way.

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Jesus made it clear he had nothing for them. He went his way. A few lessons for us and then we'll close.

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It's fascinating the way our Lord dealt with his crowd and it would do us well to learn this principle.

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He identified the central attitude and outlook of this people and he drew their attention to it.

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He brought it home to them in a way they understood exactly where they stood before God and it didn't bode well for them.

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And we will see throughout Luke's gospel that this was characteristic of his dealing with people. He did not focus on what was popular thinking among the people.

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He did not speak of things that promoted peace to the ones who were unbelieving and resistant to him, but rather he identified areas of thought and behavior which were counter to God's will and he drew attention of the people to those matters telling them of their need for repentance.

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In other words, the Lord went to the chief point of rejection and rebellion and he zeroed in on that.

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He didn't go to the lowest common denominator to which everybody agreed to get to persuade them to follow him.

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He went to the juggler and he did in every case. To the rich young man he dealt with his riches and every person he came to this was his method of dealing with souls.

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And this is what the word of God does to us when taught and proclaimed rightly. The word of God confronts us.

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It exposes us. It lays bare our actions and attitudes and innermost motivations.

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It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart and it lays it open. This is how

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God brings us to conversion. Sin is made known to us and God's just condemnation is upon us because of our sin.

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And there as a result and response we turn in faith to the only one who can deliver us,

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Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. The word of God points to the condition of man as one of dire need.

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Man apart from Christ is in spiritual poverty, held captive by sin, blind as to the nature of God and his ways.

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Sin makes him inwardly poor and helpless, sowing destruction and misery, leaving him helpless and unable to remedy his condition.

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And so if you squirm under this description and see it better applied to someone else then be assured that to someone else

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Christ will bring his salvation. He's got nothing for you. Well how do we respond to this message?

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For a time when we hear this message we perhaps make resolutions and efforts to reform but the word continues to lay open the heart.

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We see ourselves as being deeply corrupted with sin. When we read the word, hear the word, the worse it gets.

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We see a need for a Savior who himself must come and bring us deliverance or we will forever suffer his wrath.

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But then the word of God shows us Jesus, the all -sufficient Savior who due to the merits of his life and the value of his sacrificial death can and will cleanse of all sin, my sin, break its dominion in my life if he but speak the word.

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Like on another occasion the leper, if you're willing Lord you can make me clean and we ought to have that kind of faith in our

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Savior. And so we come humbly believing and then he sets us free.

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We sense full pardon, full release, full forgiveness and we go forth rejoicing following him.

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But we'll close with one more lesson from our passage. Before us we not only see narrow -minded bigoted people who look down on others while wrongly thinking they were the objects of God's favor but we also see the common and the natural hatred and rejection of the teaching of God's sovereignty in the bestowal of his mercy and grace upon people.

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God chooses on whom he will have mercy. Salvation is of the

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Lord and when unsanctified people hear that they rise up in anger and defiance.

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The Bible everywhere sets forth God as absolutely sovereign in his choice to whom he's going to show mercy and bestow his grace in bringing them to saving faith in Christ.

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God is sovereign. Fallen people since Adam and Eve have insisted they will be the determiners of their own destiny but God makes it clear that he alone is the cause of bringing new life in Christ to sinners and it can be shown throughout the scriptures.

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John 1, Jesus was in the world, the world was made through him, the world did not know him.

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However, those that did know him, those who received him, to them gave he the right, the authority to become children of God, those who believe on his name.

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And then John describes them. They were born. Who were born? They weren't born of their own because they're

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Jewish, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh. They were not saved by their free will, they weren't born again by their free will, nor the will of man, it's not because somebody else.

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Wanted them saved, but they were born of God. That, that is always the way of salvation.

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God opens souls and hearts. But the doctrine of God's grace is hated by people until God opens their understanding to perceive it and embrace it.

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The Lord Jesus himself rejoiced in his father's sovereignty in dispensing salvation. In that same hour he rejoiced in the

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Holy Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you've hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

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Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. God is sovereign and sinners don't like to hear that.

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They want to be sovereign. They want to be the ones who determine whether or not they have salvation.

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Charles Spurgeon wrote about the hatred that people, particularly religious people, have for the biblical teaching of God's sovereignty in salvation of sinners.

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Here are his words. If anything is hated bitterly, it is the out and out gospel of the grace of God, especially if that hateful word is sovereignty mentioned with it.

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Dare to say he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. He'll have compassion on whom he will have compassion.

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And furious critics will revile you without stint. The modern religious not only hates the doctrine of sovereign grace, but he raves and rages at the mention of it.

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He would sooner hear you blaspheme than preach election by the Father, atonement by the Son, or regeneration by the

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Spirit. If you want to see a man worked up till the satanic is clearly uppermost, let some of the new divines or ministers hear you preach a free grace sermon.

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A gospel which is after men will be welcomed by men, but it needs a divine operation upon the heart and mind to make a man willing to receive into his outermost soul this distasteful gospel of the grace of God.

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My dear brethren, do not try to make it tasteful to carnal minds. Hide not the offense of the cross.

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Let you make it of none effect. The angles and corners of the gospel are its strength, and to pare them off is to deprive it of power.

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Toning down is not the increase of strength, but the death of it. Why, even among the sects or the cults, you must have noticed that their distinguishing points are the horns of their power.

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And when these are practically omitted, the sect is defeated. Learn then that if you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead.

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If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it.

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Whenever its enemies rail at a certain kind of gun, a wise military power will provide more of such artillery.

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A great general going in before his king stumbled over his own sword. I see, said the king, your sword is in the way.

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And the warrior said, your majesty's enemies have often felt the same. That our gospel offends the king's enemies is no regret to us.

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I preach the doctrines of grace because I believe them to be true, because I see them in the scriptures, because my experience endears them to me, and because I see the holy result of them in believers.

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I confess they are nonetheless dear to me because the advanced school, the sophisticated ones, despises them.

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I should never think at a recommendation of a doctrine that was new. Those truths which have enlightened to many ages appear to me to be ordained to remain throughout the eternity.

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The doctrine which I preach to you is that of the Puritans. It is the doctrine of Calvin, the doctrine of Augustine, the doctrine of Paul, the doctrine of the

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Holy Ghost. The author and finisher of our faith himself taught us this most blessed truth, which well agrees with our text.

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The doctrine of grace is the substance of the testimony of Jesus. There's a book entitled

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The Forgotten Spurgeon, and it's about Spurgeon's Calvinism and how everybody loves

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Spurgeon, but they don't like his Calvinism. And so a lot of the stories and biographies of him delete that.

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And The Forgotten Spurgeon is the major teaching, you know, doctrinal teaching of his life.

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This hatred for God's sovereignty in his election and predestination of some sinners unto salvation is reacted against and rejected today.

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And it was in God's providence that he gave me an illustration of this for this morning. First of all,

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I would acknowledge I'm hated by many radio listeners, and I hear it when we come across this subject in the scriptures.

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We proclaim it. And I received a call on Friday. I got it from already actually email.

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Some guy called the church wanted to talk to me. And so I called him and he asked a few questions regarding the biblical teaching about election.

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He knew the Bible taught the doctrine, but he didn't have a very full understanding of the subject because his church doesn't teach it.

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He told me that this week, I think it was Wednesday night, one of the men of the church was teaching the

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Bible study when another man got up and angrily accused him of teaching election. You're teaching

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Calvinism. And there was such a fight at this Bible study that the pastor canceled prayer meeting

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Bible study. And one of the men of the church told this guy, election is only for Jewish people.

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And another said, election is only true after people come to salvation in Christ, then they are elect.

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I mean, nonsense. And this guy knew that that can't be right. He listened to MacArthur all the time.

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And apparently he listened to us on WVNE and he wanted some clarification. And there was a big battle waging in the last few days.

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And apparently it was coming to a head today in their church. They're going to have a big fight over it. Sinners hate sovereign grace.

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They want to be the determiners of their own destiny, the deciders of their own salvation.

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If I were to stand before that church this morning, I think I would have chosen this passage from Luke chapter four.

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This is how the Lord Jesus dealt with the hometown crowd, wasn't it? God's going to pass by you too and go to those who need me.

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Basically what he was saying, may the Lord enable us to be humble before him and teachable. May he enable us to put aside pride and acknowledge our ignorance.

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He could have left us in our sin and justly damned us forever. That's what each of us deserves.

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And yet graciously and lovingly, he offers us full salvation, eternal life freely.

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If we come to Christ, he's my Lord, he's my savior. And not one of us need to go out that door this morning, an unbeliever.

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If you confess, yeah, I'm a sinner. Yes, Jesus Christ is the only savior.

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And yes, Lord, I'm believing on you as my Lord and savior. Amen.

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Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your kindness and mercy to us. Thank you, Father, for the clarity of your word.

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And we thank you, our God, that we're able to read it, hear it, apply it. Help us, our

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God, to be true to you and help us to bring full glory to you alone for our salvation and take no credit whatsoever for ourselves, our

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God. Thank you, Father, for sending Jesus, our savior, our Lord, our king, and having made us citizens of the kingdom of God.