#27 Lu.
4:22-30 JESUS REJECTED AT
Introduction:
When the ministry of Jesus began He traveled from village to village and
from city to city in
city. This is the city where most of His miracles
were done and where the
greatest
of His miracles were done. He did not
return to His hometown of
were well established.
When He did finally return to
to read and to speak in their
synagogue. He did. He read from the Book of
Isaiah about the promised Messiah or
promised Christ.
The passage that He
read portrayed the Messiah as a
prophet of God and as a Physician sent from
God. As a prophet of God, it was said that the
Spirit of God was upon Him,
that He would preach the gospel
to the poor, that He preach deliverance to
the captives, and preach the
acceptable year (or time) of the Lord.
As a
Physician, it was said that He would heal
the broken hearted, restore sight
to the blind, and set at
liberty them that are bruised.
After reading the passage Jesus then announced to the people that He is
the One that the prophecy was
talking about. He said that He is the
Messiah, the Christ, that God had
promised.
I.
The witness the people bore of Jesus
V. 22, "And all bare him witness..." The first reaction of the people
was that they all acknowledged
that the words of the prophecy fit with the
life of Jesus. What the prophecy said that the Messiah would
be doing was
just what Jesus was doing. They could not deny that the Spirit of God
was
upon Him. Like Nicodemus, they recognized that except
God be with Him, He
could
not have done the great miracles that He had done. They acknowledged
that it most certainly looked as
if He were the Messiah of God. If He
were
not the Messiah of God, then
they were at a loss to explain how He could
have done those miracles. So they all bare Him witness that the words
of
the Scripture and the facts
about His ministry supported His claim that He
is the Messiah of God.
Furthermore they marveled at His speech.
(V. 22), "...and wondered at
the gracious words which
proceeded out of his mouth..." This
was not at all
what they were accustomed to
hearing from the Pharisees. The speeches
of
the Pharisees were harsh and
accusing and demanding. In contrast, the
words
of Jesus were promising and
reassuring.
Neither were His words what they had come to expect from the promised
Messiah. They were expecting the Messiah to come
speaking words that would
arouse
them to make war against the Romans.
They thought that He would
demand
their money to support His forthcoming new government and to support
His war efforts against the Romans. They thought He would be demanding
their
men and their sons and that He would speak words of bitterness and
hatred
against the Romans. They thought that
His promises of liberty could
be bought only with their
time, their money, and their blood.
Instead of speaking words of harsh demands which would require their
fortunes
and their blood, He was words of warmth and love. He was promising
liberty
without warfare. He was promising
healing without price. He was
promising
them everything and demanding of them nothing.
At least He
demanded
nothing like they had expected. His
words were gracious words,
kind words, soothing words,
loving words.
II. The real attitude of the people toward
Jesus
(V. 22), "...And they said, Is not this
Joseph's son?" In these words,
we get at least a hint of the
real attitude of the people toward Jesus and
toward
His claim that He is the Messiah, the Christ.
They very readily
admitted
that the Scripture fit His life and His ministry. They
acknowledged
that He was doing the very things that the Scripture said that
the Messiah would be
doing. But that does not mean that they
were ready to
admit
that He is the Christ.
They said, "Is He not Joseph's son?" Now at this point they were not
trying
to deny that He is the Son of God. At
this point He had not revealed
to them that He was conceived
by the Holy Spirit and not by Joseph. It
was
just that they had expected
something better of the Messiah. They
had
expected
that He would be born in the home of some rich and powerful man.
They thought He would be born in the home
of some notable princely man with
a great reputation. They just could not fathom the idea that the
Christ
would
come from the home of a lowly carpenter.
The idea that they were
expressing
was: "How in the world can He be
the Christ and be born in the
home of carpenter?"
It did not matter to them that the Scripture clearly identified Him
as the Christ. They ignored the word of God and refused to
accept Him as
the Christ. Since He did not measure up to what they had
expected of the
Christ, they rejected Him as the
Christ. They were ready to accept Him as
a
healer,
but they were not ready to accept Him as the Christ. They were not
ready
to accept Him as Savior.
Now before you become overly critical of those Jews I want you to see
that a lot of people do the same
thing today. They can easily ignore the
plain
teachings of the Scripture and they use the own human reasoning and
they say, "We just do not
believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We
just do
not believe that He arose from
the dead. We just do not believe that
you
can be saved and go to heaven
just because you have trusted in Jesus.
There
must be more to it than that.
III. Jesus's
awareness of their thinking
Jesus, of course, knew what they said and He knew their thinking. V.
23, "And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb,
Physician, heal thyself..." As a healer He as looked upon as a physician.
But they did not have the right attitude
toward Him as a physician. Their
attitude
was, "Physician, heal thyself."
That expression, "Physician, heal thyself" is a saying that
dates way
back. It was very familiar to all even in that
day. The idea expressed in
the saying is that one would
not want to go to a physician to be treated for
an illness if the physician,
himself, had the same disease and could not
cure himself. The twist that the Jews were putting to the
saying involved
the physicians friends and
neighbors. If the physician could not or
would
not heal the friends and
neighbors who live immediately around him, then
other
people would not trust him to heal themselves.
It may not be clear at first what Jesus meant by saying, what He did in
the latter part of the
verse. He quoted the people as saying:
(V. 23),
"...whatsoever we have heard done in
country." Jesus said that they took the attitude toward
Him that if He were
really
the Christ, as He said He is, that He would have done the same kind
of miracles right there in
had been doing over in
if you want us to believe that
you are the Christ, you will have to perform
the same kind of great miracles
right here in
performing
over in
here then we will not believe
that you are the Christ.
How ridiculous can you get! That
is like an unsaved man today saying to
Jesus, "Save my soul and take me to
heaven and then I will believe in you as
my Savior. But if you do not save me and take me to
heaven then I will not
believe
in you that you are the Savior." It
just does not work that way.
IV. Jesus's
explanation of their unacceptance of Him
V. 24, "And he said, Verily, I say unto you, No prophet is accepted
in
his own country." Jesus here sets out to explain to them why He
had not
done as many miracles and as
great miracles in
accepted
in his own country as he is in some other country." If the people
of
miracles
in
believed
in Him, He had not performed miracles in
perform
His miracles because of their unbelief.
Jesus then cited two examples from the Old Testament. The first of
these
examples was about Elijah. V. 25-26, "But I
tell you of a truth,
many widows were in
three
years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;
But unto none of them was Elias sent, save
unto Sarepta, a city of
unto a woman that was a
widow."
The word, Elias, here is the New Testament spelling of the Old Testament
word, Elijah. Elijah was of the nation of
drought
in
furnish
him his meals during that time of drought.
But, instead, God had to
send Elijah plum out of the
nation of
over around
The fact that none of the people of
not proof that was not a
prophet of God.
The second illustration was about Elisha. V. 27, "And many lepers were
in
saving
Naaman the Syrian." The word, Eliseus, is the New Testament spelling
of the Old Testament word,
Elisha. Elisha was a prophet of Israel,
and
there
were an abundance of lepers in
the lepers of
that there was a shortage of
lepers in
because
this Syrian was the very first leper who had come to him asking him
Elisha to heal him.
Now why was it that Jesus had not performed any great miracles in
was not that He lacked the
power to heal them? It certainly was not
an
indication
that He is not really the Christ. The
fact of the matter is that
the people of
heal them.
V.
The wrath of the people
V. 28, "And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these
things,
were filled with
wrath." All that Jesus had said to
them was the truth.
That was what hurt. The truth hurt. He told them the truth about
themselves
and they got mad at Him.
We see a similar thing today. All
men are sinners. All lost sinners
are on the road to hell. But when God's preacher tells them that they
are
sinners
some people get mad at God's preacher.
So these people got mad a Jesus for telling them that the reason He had
not performed any great
miracles in
at Him. They got fighting mad. They got murderously mad.
V. 29, "And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him
unto
the brow of the hill whereon
their city was built, that they might cast him
down headlong." I understand that
about
four or five hundred feet above the surrounding territory. So the
people
of the synagogue, the people who had known Jesus as a little boy, the
people
who had once been counted as friends and neighbors to Joseph and Mary
and to all the children, got so
mad at Jesus that they tried to kill Him.
They carried Him out of the synagogue and
out of the city and out to a high
cliff
and they intended to throw Him down that cliff head first.
VI. The escape of Jesus
But as they drew near to the cliff to throw Jesus down the cliff they
ran into a problem. All of a sudden they were asking, "Where
is He? Who
has got Him? Where did He go? What happened?" And nobody knew what
happened. All they knew was that He was gone. Jesus was gone.
Luke does not tell even us just exactly what happened. All Luke tells
us is that Jesus passed right
through their midst and left. He did not
just
vanish
into thin air. He just calmly walked
away and was gone and there was
nothing
they could do to stop it and they did not even know what happened.
V. 30, "But he passing through the
midst of them went his way..."
But there is something that I want you to see right here. Jesus did not
escape
from them just in order to spare His life.
Who could have blamed Him
if that had been the
reason? But it wasn't. The reason that Jesus walked
away from that mob was not to
keep from dying. The reason that He left
them
unharmed
was in order that He might die a more horrible death. If Jesus had
allowed
them to kill Him by throwing Him down that cliff, we would be
without
hope of salvation. All mankind would be
without a Savior. We would
all be lost and on the road to
hell. Jesus did not walk away unharmed
for
His sake. He walked away for our sake. He walked away in order that every
man woman, boy and girl could
have an opportunity to be saved.
VII. The danger today
The great danger is that a lot of people are doing the same thing today
that the people of
Christ and as the Savior. Even a lot of people who hear the gospel and
who
will acknowledge that the
Scriptures teach that Jesus is the Christ.
Some
even acknowledge that Jesus is
the Savior and still they reject Him and do
not trust Him to save their
souls.
The point that I am making is that it is too late now for the people of
them to ever be saved. They could have been saved. They had Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, right in their
worship service. They saw Him with their
own
eyes and they heard Him with
their own ears, but they rejected Him as the
Savior with their own hearts.
But is not too late for you.
At least it is not too late yet.
You have
the opportunity to repent of
your sins and to call on Jesus and trust Him to
save your soul. If you will repent and if you will trust in
Him as your
Savior, Jesus will save you and keep you
out of hell. He will reach down
from heaven through the power of
the Holy Spirit and you will be born again.
Your soul will be born again. It will be changed within. You will never
enter
into the fires of hell. Instead you will
go to heaven some day.
You can be saved today. You can
be saved right here in this service
today. But if you do not get saved today, you may
never be saved. You may
never
be born again unless you call on Jesus today.
At the very least we
can say that if you keep
putting off the salvation of your soul until some
other
time, then one of these days it will be too late. You will wind up in
the fires of hell and you will
never be saved.
Conclusion:
What I am asking you to do is to call Jesus right now and trust Him
right
now to save your soul. I have been
preaching to you about the
rejection
of Jesus at
is for the acceptance of Jesus
here at