#25 Lu.
4:14-15 THE EARLY SUCCESS OF JESUS IN
Introduction:
In one of our recent texts Jesus left
baptized. At His baptism the Holy Spirit came upon
Him. The purpose of the
Holy Spirit coming upon Him was to lead
Him and to empower Him in His
ministry. Following His baptism, Jesus was without food
for forty days and
in that weakened
condition. He was tempted by the
Devil. In the temptation
He was victorious over the Devil. In His very weakest condition He did not
yield
to the very strongest temptations which the Devil threw at Him. This
was a good setting in which to
begin His ministry. Having received the
Holy
Spirit upon Him to lead Him and empower
Him and having been victorious over
Satan in the time of temptation, Jesus now
returns to
in the work that God had sent
Him into the world to do.
I.
The return of Jesus into
No one Gospel writer gives us all of the information about His ministry
and the best that we can do is
to take what little bit each one has to say
and put the pieces together
like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.
Even then,
we will not have all of the
details of what Jesus did and said.
Neither
do we have all of the details
of where He went nor in just what time order
He went to those places.
In all likelihood the first place that Jesus went in
return
was back to
teaching
ministry there. Instead He stayed there
only a brief time and then
accompanied
His mother, Mary to a wedding which was held at
a little village near
It was at
the wedding feast the host ran
short of wine and Jesus performed a miracle
by turning water into
wine. This was the event that first
attracted
attention
to Him and launched His ministry of teaching and preaching. It
was also the first of a long
succession of miracles.
After that, He did not return to His native city of
long while. Some writers think that it was probably as
long as a year
before
He went back to
verse
16. In the meantime He went from village
to village teaching,
preaching
and performing miracles.
Luke puts it this way
in V. 14, "And Jesus returned in the power of the
Spirit into
into any detail. He just says that Jesus came back to
baptism
and temptation, and he says that His coming was in the power of the
Spirit.
II. The power of the Spirit upon Him
That expression "in the power of the Spirit" means that the
Holy Spirit
was empowering Him to do
miraculous things. The first miracle
that He did,
as we have already seen, was
turning water into wine. Many other
miracles
followed
in rather rapid succession. They were
not, of course, all
performed
in the little
villages
and cities of
We will see evidence down in verse 23 that the greatest number of His
miracles
were performed in the city of
number
of miracles were performed there, but the greatest and most
impressive
miracles were performed there. In this
verse Jesus calls
attention
to the fact that the people of
performing
the same kind of miracles in His own home town that He had been
performing
in
Matthew's account also gives evidence that Jesus had already performed
great
miracles before He returned to
there. In Matthew
within
themselves where He got the power and wisdom to do the "mighty works"
that He had been doing. In Matthew
were not done in
(V. 14), "...and
there went out a fame of him through all the region
round
about." The miracles of Jesus
became the subject of conversation
throughout
the whole region. Wherever you would
find a group of people
gathered
together it would not be long before Jesus would be the topic of
conversation. "Did you hear...? Were you there....?" and similar
questions
which
were heard quite frequently. Everybody,
of course, had heard. Not
everybody
had seen, but many had seen. They were
all anxious to talk about
it. The fame of Jesus spread like wild fire.
III. His teaching in the synagogues
Then when His fame spread concerning the miracles, the people began to
listen
to what Jesus had to say. V. 15,
"And he taught in their
synagogues..." It had been the practice of the Jews in the
synagogues that
when a distinguished person
would come into their midst that they would ask
Him to read the Scripture and to offer
whatever comment He might have to
make regarding the Scripture
that He had read.
It had also been the practice of Jesus from His earliest youth that on
every
Sabbath day He would go into the synagogue to worship God. There He
would
sit and listen to a rabbi teach from the Old Testament Scriptures.
Don't you know there must have been times
when He had to bite His tongue in
order
to keep from speaking up and correcting the rabbi on what he had said.
.
By His regular attendance in the synagogue, He set a good example for us
to follow in the
churches. We should come every Sunday
into the church to
worship
God and to hear the word of God explained.
There should be no
exception
if we are at all able to go.
But at any rate, at whatever city of village Jesus was in, when the
Sabbath day came around, Jesus went to the
services. It was not possible,
of course, for Him now to just
go in and have a seat and join in the worship
services
unnoticed as He had done in years past.
Now whenever Jesus would
walk in all eyes would turn on
Him. All attention went to Him because
of
the miracles that He had
performed.
Since Jesus was now such a noted and famous person, the rabbi in charge
of the services at the
synagogue would call on Him to read the Scriptures
and to offer whatever comments
He might have on the Scriptures.
I feel sure that at first, the rabbi asked Him to read simply out of
courtesy
to such a noted person. But who could
you get to read and explain
the Scriptures who would know
more about them than the One who had inspired
the writing of the
Scriptures. It soon became apparent that
this man,
Jesus,
was the best teacher of the Scriptures of any man available.
Therefore, it was not long until it was automatic. Whenever Jesus would
walk into a synagogue service
they would automatically call on Him to read
the Scriptures and to explain
them to the people. I strongly suspect
that
even in those cases when the
ruler of the synagogue had already asked
somebody
else to read, that when Jesus walked in, he would tell the other
fellow,
"Listen, I know I have already asked you to read, but Jesus is here
and I think we had better use
Him while He is here. So all around the
area
in
Scriptures somewhere. He did not have to have an appointment. Whenever He
came in He was invited to teach
or, in effect, to preach.
IV. The astonishment of the people
(V. 15), "...being glorified of all." The people were just as
astonished
at the teaching and of Jesus as they had been at His miracles.
They liked His preaching. They marveled that the simple and yet powerful
way that He taught the
Scriptures. They actually began to
understand the
Scriptures that they had never understood
before.
They were fascinated by
it all and His fame grew all
the more. He was now famous not just
because
of the miracles, but because
of His marvelous teaching of the Holy
Scriptures. You understand, of course, that the
Scriptures which He taught
were Old Testament
Scriptures. The New Testament had not
been written at
that time.
You may have noticed that Luke, up to this point, has not told us what
kind of miracles Jesus was
performing nor what He was saying to the people
in His teaching. Yet we are not totally in the dark on this
matter. From
other
passages of Scripture we know pretty well what kind of miracles He was
performing. It would be impossible for us to name and
describe each one
individually
and to list them in order. But we do
know that He healed the
sick. He restored sight to the blind. He cause the lame to walk, He
caused
the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.
He cured men of even the
most dreaded disease of all,
leprosy. On some occasions, He even
brought
the dead back to life again.
These miracles were not only mighty miracles, but some of them were the
special
kind of miracles that the prophets of old had said would be
performed
by the Christ. So what I am saying is
that these miracles should
have proven to the people of
that day that Jesus is the Christ. There
was
no excuse what-so-ever for
anybody to fail to believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God.
As to the things that Jesus taught from the Scriptures we are likewise
not totally in the dark. We do not know the details of what He taught,
but
we know that He taught men are
sinners. He taught that God is loving
and
tender
and that God wants to save men from their sins.
We know that He
invited
men to come to Him that their sins might be forgiven and that they
might
be cleansed from all sin. He taught that
men who were burdened of
heart
because of their sin could come to Him and find relief from that
burden
of sin. He said on at least one occasion
and perhaps many times,
"Come unto me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I
am lowly in heart and ye
shall
find rest unto your souls."
V.
If we could have Jesus teach or preach in our services
I cannot help but think how great it would be if we could telephone
Jesus and invite Him to come to our church
and to make a tour throughout our
area and have Him to perform
some of those same kind of miracles. Oh,
I do
not mean to say that it would
be great for Jesus to come and entertain us by
the performance of His
miracles. But when I see people in our
congregation
and people in the hospitals
around who have such grave illnesses, I think
that it would surely be nice if
we could have Jesus for a few weeks or maybe
for a year right here in our
area like they did in
I would like to publish a full page add in the papers and announce on
all of the radio stations that
Jesus is going to speak at
hour. I think we would have to set up loud speakers
and television sets all
on the outside of the building
for people to hear and see. We would
have to
string
up speakers and sets all down the highway and stop the traffic
because
the highway would be full people for quite a distance in either
direction
down the road.
But it is just not possible to do that.
Jesus has already lived out His
time here on earth and He is not
going to make any special appearances until
it is time for Him to return
to this earth and fight with the Anti-Christ
when He does come back I have no
idea that He will ever come in person to
to
soon, some of us are going to
see Him in Heaven before He ever comes back to
this world. Then when He does come back we will come back
with Him. Our
bodies
will be raised from the grave to go up
to meet Him in the air and we
come back to the earth in our
new bodies.
I said, it would be great to have Jesus to pay us a call right here in
our area so that we could see
Him in person and hear Him in person, but that
is not going to be.
VI. What is possible here today
Let me tell you, however, what is possible. It is possible for somebody
who is right here in our services
today who is headed down the road into the
horrible
pit of hell-fire to turn to Jesus Christ
and be saved. It is
possible
for someone who is right here in our services who is sick with the
worst
sickness in the whole world to be cleansed from that sickness. I am
not talking about some disease
that just affects the body. I am talking
about
a disease that wrecks and ruins the very soul.
I am talking about the
disease
of sin. It is possible for someone who
is right here in our
services
who has committed thousands and thousands of sins to be cleansed
from every sin.
It is possible for someone right here in this service whose heart is
burdened
down with all manner of guilt and all manner of trouble to find
sweet
relief from every burden, no matter what the cause of that burden.
It is possible for someone to sit right here in these pews and to hear
the very same Scriptures and to
hear the same precious truths that Jesus
taught
to the people in the synagogues of
anybody
from this pulpit who will preach or teach as well as Jesus, but you
can hear the same precious
truths. Listen, I do not feel that I
need to
apologize
that I cannot preach as good as Jesus.
Nobody is ever going to do
that. But I know that I have the same truths that
He preached in Galilee
and I know that with His help I
can give you something that will bless your
heart
if you will just let it.
I believe that the same Holy Spirit of God, who empowered Jesus Christ
in such a way, can take me and
use me to teach and preach the word of God to
bless
the hearts of those who will hear it. It
is my task to try first of
all to understand what the word
of God is saying and what it means. It
is
then my task to try to tell you
what the word of God says and what it means.
It is then your task to hear God's word
and heed God's word. Nobody in the
world
is going to bless your heart with God's word unless you are willing to
heed it. Even if Jesus Christ were here in person and
Jesus were doing the
preaching,
Jesus Christ could not bless your heart with the word of God
unless
you are willing to believe it and heed it.
Conclusion:
I am going to ask you to believe what God has to say in this Book. I am
going
to ask you to believe what I have read to you and preached to you from
this Book in this service this
morning. I am going to ask you to let
God
speak
to you through this message from this Book and tell you what you need
to do to get your heart right
and your soul right and your life right with
God. I am going to ask you to respond to that word
and to surrender your
heart
to God. I am going to ask you to let the
Lord have His way with your
life. I am going to ask you to start right now.
We are going to have an invitation hymn in just a moment and I am going
to ask you to get your heart
ready right now even before we sing to step out
and come down this isle and let
God have His way in our life. Some of
you
need to come and trust Jesus
Christ and be saved. Some of you who are
saved
need to come and present
yourself to this church as a candidate for
membership. Some of you who are members here need to come
and dedicate your
life to the Lord.
While we reverently and prayerfully sing, will you come? Who will come
and lead the way? Who will be the first to step out and
come? Who then
will follow?