Allen Jackson - Leading a Dimensional Life - Part 2
Before Jesus goes the first time into a synagogue to stand and speak, Satan has already challenged him. Satan has begun a series of temptations in an attempt to disrupt God's purposes. I would submit to you, I believe God provides every generation with choices and kingdom opportunities. And I believe just as we can follow Jesus through the Gospel of Luke, I believe Satan attempts to disrupt God's intent for people in every generation, to entice them into choices that will result in the forfeiture of their kingdom opportunities. We're not reading this as some distracted, disinterested party going, "Oh, how interesting".
We're trying to understand what's happening in our hearts, in our family systems, in our communities. We don't wanna stand outside of this and go, "How intriguing". We're trying to figure out why it hurts when we do this because we wanna find a resolution and Luke is gonna help us. Nazareth, chapter 4, verse 14, "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit". It's a theme for Luke. The Holy Spirit and the power of God, Luke presents them to us multiple times as being almost synonymous. They certainly accompany one another. The presence of the Spirit of God and the power of God.
So if we recognize the need for the power of God in our generation, then we need to understand a need to be more familiar with the Spirit of God. "Jesus returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread throughout the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him". Circle those last three words, "everyone praised him". "He went to Nazareth, where he'd been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read". They gave him the scroll of Isaiah. The scripture portion for that day was from Isaiah. And Jesus read: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He's sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor".
He finished the portion. He rolled up the scroll and he gave it back to the attendant. He sat down. Synagogues were small places. Nazareth in Jesus's time was maybe 1500 people. It's not a big community. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began by saying to them, "Today, the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing". Now, Luke told us at the beginning of this little segment that everyone praised him throughout the whole countryside. But now we've narrowed this down to Nazareth. And in verse 22 it says: "All spoke well of him". They're happy with him. "They're amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips". And they looked at one another and said, "Isn't that Joe's boy? Didn't he play soccer with our kids? He wasn't too fast. We know him".
And then Jesus said to them, "Surely you'll quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we've heard that you did in Capernaum.'" And he continued, "I tell you the truth". And you know by now, when you see that phrase, buckle up. "I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years, there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in the region of Sidon," to a widow in another country. "And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian".
"And all the people in the synagogue," turned the page. "And all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this". Well, wait a minute in verse 22 they're speaking well of him. "That's Joe's boy," and by verse 28 they're furious. "So they got up, and they drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill, in order to throw him off the cliff". They wanna kill him. "And he walked right through the crowd". Jesus's ministry, Luke tells us, begins in the power of the Spirit, not in a carnal moment, not in a self-indulgent way. Luke goes out of his way to say, "Look, this happened in a Spirit-led, Spirit-directed, Spirit-filled manner".
And then he goes out of his way to tell us Jesus is simply fulfilling Isaiah's vision of Messiah. He's not coloring outside the lines. He's fulfilling what the prophets have said about him. So while the message may feel new and fresh to his generation and the outcomes of his ministry are something different than what they're familiar with, it's very much in keeping with the integrity of the Word of God. Very important points as you and I try to sort out, we live in a time where deception is rampant and truth is hard to know and churches are collapsing and orthodoxy is just evaporating and apostasy's flourishing and people stands in pulpits and worship services and buildings that have ecclesiastical architecture and they talk about all sorts of things that are ungodly and unscriptural. It's not an easy time. And that's not even talking about the media.
And so Luke says, "Listen, what Jesus was doing was fulfilling what Isaiah talked about". As I've said, for Luke, the Spirit and God's power go together. Jesus's initial reception in Nazareth, very positive: verse 22, as I said. But then Jesus, after he reads from Isaiah, makes this very personal. He begins to look at the people in the synagogue and he challenges their attitude. Prophets, he said, aren't accepted at home. That's very true because so many of the Hebrew prophets were killed by the Hebrews. The great prophetic voices to the people of God were not killed by foreigners. They weren't murdered by foreign leaders or foreign armies.
Most of the suffering and the murder of the prophets came at the hands of the people to whom they had been called to deliver a message. So Jesus isn't suggesting there's something new to him. He's simply saying the pattern that that has been a part of our history is carrying forth in this little community too. But then he doubles down. He says to them, Elijah was sent to a foreigner. That Elijah, oh, that gets really personal. The people in the synagogue felt it. You remember Elijah, the prophet that stood against Ahab and Jezebel. You remember Elijah, the prophet that called the people to a confrontation on Mount Carmel and said, "It's time to decide in whom you believe," and the people stayed silent. There was no response. Elijah runs for his life.
You remember that story? It's a time of tremendous apostasy in Israel, the overwhelming majority of the people are worshiping fertility gods. Oh, they still have a temple. There's a whole cacophony of prophetic voices. Most of them false. There's lots of messaging. They still have scripture, but they have drifted way into the weeds. And Jesus is looking at these people and he's drawing parallels with them in that generation and they are not happy about it. In Elijah's day, public expressions of faith were small and unusual.
Jesus is making a very clear comparison between Elijah's audience and his audience. Then he drags Naaman into it. So they want to see a miracle. And he said, "Well, there have been times and places where the people in this nation didn't get the miracles because it was only people outside the covenant that were seeking God". Again, he has not only been caustic, he's pushed it right up into their face. The people in the synagogue are furious. I mean, to the point of irrationality. They tried to kill him. You could have walked out. You could have said, "Thank God he moved to Capernaum". They want to kill him and he went to school with their kids.
Now, what I want us to... I don't want you to miss as you're reading Luke, and it's not the only time. We're gonna look at it again. Jesus is not contrite. He's not inclusive, he's not conciliatory. He very purposely pushed his audience. He could have read from Isaiah, smiled, and said, "It's really good to be home". He could have given hugs around the room. "You brought the best cupcakes to birthday parties. You were the best soccer coach we had the whole time. Thank you. Knuckles". There was so much he could have done, but Luke is helping us understand. You see, he's telling us a narrative. This is the beginning of the ministry. We're gonna get to the conclusion. But at the very beginning, in his hometown, Jesus said, "We're in real trouble here".
The folks in the synagogue could have chosen differently. They could have responded in repentance. They could have listened to Jesus and said, "You know, you are so right. We've been reading those portions. We've heard the teachers of the law talk about those so many times. We've had some real historical problems because of the hardness of our hearts". But that's not what happened in Nazareth. Are you with me so far? This isn't complicated. It's very plain language. The emotions are very available to us. Jesus is not being easy and the people are not being co-operative. Same chapter, Luke takes us to another town. It's about, well, you could walk from Nazareth to Capernaum in a couple of hours. He's gonna move from the hills of Galilee down to the shores of Sea of Galilee to Capernaum.
Now, Capernaum is a bit more secular. It's still a Jewish fishing community, but it's on a major Roman road, so they're gonna have access to a whole lot of nonsensical ideas. Nazareth is tucked away in the hills. It's a bit more isolated. It be easier to maintain their uniqueness. But in Capernaum, they're gonna be subjected to some other stuff. Verse 31: "Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he began to teach the people". We're back in the Sabbath in a synagogue. "They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority". Well, they were amazed at his teaching in Nazareth initially. "In the synagogue, there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit, and he cried out at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?'"
Remember the chapter before when Satan said to him, "If you're the Son of God"? Well, now the demon says, "I know who you are". Luke is telling us something, folks. We don't often read it. "'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God!' And Jesus said, 'Be quiet! And come out of him!' And the demon threw the man down before all of them and came out. And all the people were amazed and they said to each other, 'What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!' And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area".
Now in Capernaum, Jesus is going to be received, rather broadly. We'll look at it together. In Nazareth, he was rejected. An unexpected audience in Capernaum. I mean, their synagogue service is interrupted by demonized people screaming at the top of their lungs and Jesus intervenes and rather than being seen as the point of the problem, they're amazed at what happened. In Nazareth, he simply read from the scripture and offered a bit of commentary and they wanted to kill him. God is presenting opportunities to cities, not just individuals. I don't believe it's an accidental part of what Luke is telling us.
See, we've spent our lives being introduced to a personal gospel, a personal salvation, and personal conversion. And I believe in all of those things. But we've imagined that that is the presentation of the gospel. It's the ultimate objective. We certainly don't want anybody to miss the kingdom of God. But Luke, at least in this portion that we're reading, says that God gave presentations to cities. Were there people in Nazareth that believed in Jesus? I promise you there were. Mary lived there. He has siblings there. But Luke's presentation is the majority of the city wanted nothing to do with that. "Let's kill him".
I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that Mary and some of his brothers and sisters were in the synagogue that day while they're dragging him to the brow of the hill. But Luke goes out of his way, saying when he gets to Capernaum, they're happy with him. May I ask you a question? Do you believe that God deals with communities of people, cities? Well, that's not much of our discussion. I've spent my life around church. We don't talk about that a lot. It's a really biblical idea. I mean, I can take you through multiple places. Sodom and Gomorrah, cities spared if there were a handful of righteous people. Absent that, whole cities are going to suffer, even the righteous amongst them, Ephesus. There are riots in the city, there are believers there, but there are riots.
How many times in the book of Acts are there cities where there's tremendous turmoil? We have come so far away from the biblical presentation. We read it but we just turn our brain. It's like, "Oh, you know, I'm saved. So none of the..." And then we wonder why we flounder, why our muscles are atrophied and we're not prepared to say, "Do not put obscenity in elementary libraries". It's not a political issue. It's a cultural issue. Marriage between a man and a woman. It's a biblical idea, it's not a political idea. Jesus is challenged even in Capernaum by Satan. His first message that we're given access to in the synagogue there is interrupted by a demon. That feels challenging to me as someone who makes presentations. Jesus's ministry is centered in a dimensional life. It isn't just informational. He's giving them a presentation of the power of God.
So, may I ask you some questions, just for thought? What are the dimensional forces that are at work in our community? Let me ask you another question. Which side of the discussion are you most comfortable on? Let's keep reading. Chapter 4, verse 40: "When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each, he healed them. Demons came out of many people, shouting, 'You're the Son of God!' But he rebuked them and he wouldn't allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ".
The people in Capernaum are so hungry, so receptive, they're bringing friends and neighbors. They're scattering to the little communities around and saying, "There's somebody here who will help us". It's a dramatically different presentation than Nazareth, and they're presented to us, side by side. What are we gonna be? Everybody's not gonna cheer. We've been waiting for this massive wave of universal acceptance to the message.
Where do you find that in your Bible? We have some scenes of heaven in the book of Revelation like that. But our scenes of what's happening down here are intertwined with the opposition, with the resistance, with satanic forces, spiritual forces of wickedness. The people are receptive and hungry in Capernaum. In Nazareth, they wanted to kill him. Verse 42, very next verse: "At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place, and the people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them".
Again, it's a dramatically different reception. They're given to us, side by side. Please don't miss that. It's about personal choices and it's about communities. In Capernaum, "Please don't leave". In Nazareth, "We'll kill you". "Let us bring people to you that need transformation. We need transformation, we have friends that need transformation". In Nazareth, "You're Joe's kid and I don't know who you think you are, but how dare you tell us we need to be different". And this is Jesus. I haven't done very much beyond read the text to you, but it seems very relevant to the world I'm living in. In Capernaum, there's a very positive reception. It's a very stark contrast to Nazareth.
Folks, God is moving in the Earth. I don't know what the outcomes will be. I don't think we should imagine just because we see evidence of God moving that it means the outcome will be wonderful. God sent his Son in that first century. He gathered around him a group of people who were very adamant followers. He confirmed what they did with the most remarkable of supernatural signs and judgment came upon the people. Before Jesus is done with his ministry in Luke's Gospel, we will see him weeping over the city of Jerusalem, saying, "If you had only cooperated, but now they're gonna dash the heads of your babies against the rocks".
People say to me, "Jesus wasn't involved in current events". I'm like, "Are you reading the book"? That's a pronouncement about a foreign army devastating Jerusalem and the temple. See, I think we're... I don't know why God called us to this season. I feel very inadequate. I think most of us do. What I do know is God placed us here and if he placed us here and we will choose obedience and we will choose to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, I believe he will lead us to outcomes that makes a difference in untold number of lives through time and eternity. And we have access to the Word of God. We can open our Bibles and read through Luke. It's just 24 chapters, come on. I don't have a lot more weeks to do this. We've got other things we've got to do and people coming, and come on. Well, we do.
I wanna close with a proclamation. It's really a declaration of intent. It's not new to you. We've been saying this together for a decade or more. I didn't bring you the whole thing. I knew I'd be late. We don't have to do the entire thing. Let's stand together. A proclamation is using your words which have a spiritual authority to them to bring alignment with what the Word of God says about us. Sometimes we'll just read scriptures as a proclamation, a declaration over our lives. These statements are taken from scripture. I'll do a series along that, not this week. Let's read this together.
God has uniquely blessed us, the best is yet to come. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. He is the sovereign creator of all things. Nothing is too difficult for Him, His love sustains us. Jesus, His only son, is our savior, Lord and King. We live in a season of shaking. God is shaking the earth. He is restoring the Jewish people and purifying His Church. If we look at the things which can be shaken we'll be filled with terror. If we look at the eternal Kingdom of our Lord, we'll be filled with anticipation. Our determination as we gather today is to declare before one another and Almighty God. WE WILL NOT STOP. We are not satisfied. We are not distracted. We are not weary in doing good. We are not discouraged. We have our eyes on the cross and our hearts set on the prize. We believe the One who has promised is Faithful. We believe the Holy Spirit is our Helper. We believe that what we ask in Jesus' name our Father provides. We believe that the King of Kings is returning to the earth in all of His glory, and we intend to be about His business until that moment in time. WE WILL NOT STOP. Amen, hallelujah.