Grace Produces Worship or Wrath
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
December 27, 2015
This morning we are going to be in the Gospel of Luke Chapter 4. If you’re using one of the Bibles on the end of the rows, it’s on page 976.Some authors and readers will tell you that because of over use it has become cliché to write a story about a person writing a story. In other words, don’t write a story about someone who is writing a story.Well this morning, I’m going to preach a sermon about someone preaching a sermon, and I’m hoping there are no rules against that. If there are, we’ll just have to break them because what Jesus says in his sermon is anything but cliché. What he says will force us to make a decision about him. Neutrality is not a legitimate option.
Luke 4:14-30
14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?”23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.”24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.
The context of Luke 4 is this: Jesus has begun his ministry, he is healing people, he is teaching, he is performing miracles, and he is becoming very, very popular. And he goes on a preaching tour of sorts, where he, among other things, preaches. And finally, after much expectation, he comes to his hometown. He comes to Nazareth.And a few hundred people pack into synagogue to hear him teach, and he does. He teaches and he preaches and he announces that the things that people of God have long been waiting for, and realities that they have hoped for, are now here. No more waiting, today is the day.Well this is all very exciting, indeed. Jesus and miracles and healings are trending on the internet. The people in Nazareth are saying, “Hey, this guy is number one on the New York Times Best Seller List and he’s here, home, to do a book signing.” And they are saying, “Hey, wasn’t his dad Joseph the carpenter, you know, the guy who built our dining room set?” And they are saying, “Do you think, could it be? Perhaps the saying ‘nothing good will come from Nazareth’ is gonna change.”That’s how it starts. But the story ends with these same people yelling, “I don’t give a rip if this is Joseph’s kid, I don’t care if this is the Sabbath, OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”Now, of course, that’s not what they actually say. I said it that way because it sounded more medieval and angry and I thought it might get your attention. What they actually say is not off with his head but “throw him off the cliff.”Regardless, what Jesus said, and why he said it, and what they heard and why they responded this way, are questions before us in this sermon. Why did Jesus say what he said? And why did they respond the way they did? That’s what I want to answer.Full disclosure: this won’t just be about their response. It will be about your response, as well. You cannot remain neutral about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A true encounter with Jesus and his gospel will produce in you either worship or wrath, just like in this passage.
1. Worship
Let’s talk about what Jesus said first. He takes the scroll and says,18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.Don’t get hung up on the “standing” and “sitting.” They stood to read scripture and sat to teach. When he sits, he’s not done preaching. He’s just starting.If we are to appreciate the significance of this moment, the significance of the words “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21), than we have to understand something of the duration of the waiting and the intensity of the waiting that the people of God had been engaged in. If we wait six minutes in the drive through line at Taco Bell, we say, “Come on people. Let’s go. Today already.” However, for the people God, you don’t use a stopwatch to measure their waiting; you use a history text book.And they weren’t waiting for something trivial. They weren’t waiting for paint to dry or fast-food burritos. Great things were at stake…But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Let me back up. This sermon of Jesus is interesting because Jesus’ sermon an echo from the Old Testament. The first echo in Luke 4 is obviously in Isaiah, that much is clear. It is the Isaiah scroll he is reading. If you have a Study Bible or a few footnotes in your Bible, it will tell you that Jesus is reading from Isaiah 61:1-2a. But this Isaiah passage is really an echo of Leviticus 25.So, let’s back up again. That is, let’s back up some 3,500 years from today and 1,500 years before Jesus’ and through the time of Isaiah to the time to Leviticus. In Leviticus, the people of God are wandering through the wilderness.And what do we find in Leviticus? Well, lot of things, but we find a whole chapter devoted to the release of the oppressed, the release of captives, the release of debts, the release of bondage. And God says, just like in a week there is one day in seven devoted to rest and worship, so there shall be one year in seven that is a Sabbath year. Pretty neat.And not just that, every fifty years, that is, after seven times seven you have 49 years, and in the 50th year you have a really, really, really big Sabbath year. In Leviticus they call says to call it “The Year of Jubilee.”Let me read you just a portion of what was to happen in this glorious year. Leviticus 25:9-10,Leviticus 25:9-10 9 [When the fiftieth year is here] you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty {sound familiar, proclaim liberty}throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.The rest of the chapter goes on to describe rules for the redemption of property, and rules for kindness to the poor.That sound a lot like Isaiah 61 to you? That sound like Luke 4? It should; they are echoes. The prophet Isaiah is saying, “You know that thing we’re supposed to be doing? Yeah, it’s going to get bigger and better.” And Jesus says, “You know that thing you were supposed to be doing, that thing that Isaiah said would get bigger and better? Well… Today. Today.”It depends a little on how one dates some of the events in the Old Testament, but from Leviticus to the time of Isaiah there should have been about 14 fifty-year cycles. That is, 14 years of Jubilee. And from the time of Isaiah to the time of Jesus—again, give or take—there should have been another 15 or 16 Jubilee Years.So from Leviticus, through Isaiah, to Jesus the trumpet should have been blown throughout all the land and liberty to captives should have been proclaimed 30 times. Each time signaling and each time reminding and each time preaching, that God is in the business of giving freedom to captives, riches for the poor, liberty to the oppressed. 30 times.But, you know how many times it happened? I do. None. Never.Never was the trumpet blown. Never were slaves set free. Never was liberty preached. It didn’t happen.It didn’t happen because it was inconvenient for the powerful. It’s like in the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where it’s always winter, never Christmas. That’s not right.The people needed a Messiah to come who was stronger than their oppressors were. They needed a Lion to come and push back the curse of the White Witch.Jesus taking the Isaiah scroll means winter is over. And the people love this. What do they say? “And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” They loved it.
2. Wrath
But that’s not now the passage ends? It ends with these same people yelling, “I don’t give a rip if this is Joseph’s kid, I don’t care if this is the Sabbath, ASSEMBLE THE FIRING SQUAD!”You see, Jesus wasn’t done preaching. After quoting Isaiah 61, Jesus said to them,
23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.”24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.’
And then he goes on to reference two Old Testament stories. And it makes them furious. The passage says, “When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath” (v. 28).Why? What was Jesus saying to them that made them so upset? To answer this question, we need to look closer these two OT stories so we know the point Jesus is making.The first story that Jesus refers to comes from 1 Kings 17 and takes place during a famine while King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel were rulers over Israel. There not many famous Queens in the Old Testament—there are a few—but Jezebel is certainly a notable queen, although, she’s famous for all the wrong reasons.The setting of the first story is the land of Sidon, Sidon is just north of the borders of Israel. It’s another country and with other gods. And not that the land of Israel was all that holy and pure during the reign of Ahab—that’s partly why there was a famine—but Sidon, Sidon was like New Orleans during Mardi Gra.This first story is about three people: a man named Elijah, and a woman and her son. We are never told what happened to the woman’s husband, except from the title ‘widow’ we know he died; nor are we told her name; nor her son’s name, but this is what we are told. 1 Kings 17:8-12,
8 Then the word of the Lord came to [Elijah], 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there {i.e., God sent a preacher to live in an apartment off Bourbon Street}. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.[Then Elijah asks for a meal from her, to which she says] “As the Lord your God lives {note, here it is your God, later it in the story, which we won’t read, his God becomes hers; continuing, listen to how sad this is; she says}, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
In other words, God sends a preacher from the Bible Belt to the French Quarter to meet a women, to meet a widow, who’s working third shift cleaning dishes just so she can have enough food for her and her son to survive, but she is not even subsisting; she is going to die. Soon. And with her, will go her son. “I just got one meal left to make,” she says.To which Elijah says, “Do it; make your meal—EXCEPT, except that when you make the meal, your flour will not run out and neither will your oil until the famine is over.” And it does. It lasts according to the word of the Lord.We’ll that’s the first story Jesus alludes to. Have you figured out the answer to our question yet: what fills them with wrath? Let’s keep thinking.The second story is like the first in that it involves someone who is utterly helpless to solve the problem they are in, but it is unlike the first story in that it involves a person of means. The man in this story is not poor. At least from a monetary standpoint, he is rich.But rather than reading you the story out of my Bible, like I just read the one before, I want to read you the second story from my children’s Bible. It’s called the The Jesus Storybook Bible: (Every Story Whispers His Name, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones & illustrated by Jago).So here we go, A Little Servant Girl and the Proud General, from 2 Kings 5.
“Namaan was a very important man in a very important army of a very important country. So you see, he was very, very, very important… But God can mend broken hearts.” (excerpt)
There it is, A Little Servant Girl and the Proud General, from 2 Kings 5.Now that we are familiar with both stories, let me read Jesus’ words again:
25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah…. 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
Why? Why wrath?A story about God helping out a poor women who lost her husband, a women who’s working the night shift, just trying to keep her and her son alive—why did that fill them with wrath?A story about God cleansings a man who had leprous skin, a man who has “bits of [himself] fall[ing] off without [him] noticing”; a story about God healing a heart that didn’t work properly and didn’t feel anything; and God made it to feel warmth and love and the grace of God—why did that fill them with wrath?Yet their response did not take Jesus by surprise. Knowing their hearts, knowing this was within them, he intentionally drew it out. He could have left when they were happy.The reason that ‘no prophet of God is favored in his hometown’ is not simply because people in the town grew up with Jesus—some people babysat Jesus and some people saw Jesus in high school. I did an internship once where I had to preach to people that knew me growing up. There is a difficulty there, but that is not the reason they are upset.The issue is entitlement. If you have a prophet from your hometown, well then, you expect him to show you favoritism. If you have a buddy that is at the top of the food chain with the Philadelphia Eagles, well then, “Come on, hook me up with some tickets! I want to sit 10 row up on the 50-yard line! We grew up together. I mean, I deserve it. We deserve it.”Let me put their questions in modern language. They ask, “Hey, God, why’d ya tell Elijah to leave the Bible Belt and go Afghanistan? Why’d you send Elisha to cleanse a leper in the Syrian army? Couldn’t ya find any widow’s in Tennessee? Doesn’t Pennsylvania deserve to have you come cleanse their lepers?”The issues is entitlement. We think deserve help from God, but we don’t. America doesn’t deserve God’s grace.
Illustration
Several years ago, I was in a class at another church that was led by the pastors of that church—not me; I was just a member of the church. And I remember during a class, which was on God’s grace and the nature of salvation, and how God keeps Christians believing the gospel, some lady from the back of the room shot her hand up.And she tells this story about guy—as I remember it, it was her brother. And she tells us that this guy followed Christ as a young man, and then later he bailed on his family, turned away from God, and lived however he wanted to live for a good length of time. And then, near the end of his life, he turned back to God. “However, the family and I,” she says, “never really knew whether his turning back to God was sincere or not.” So her story went.Then she asks: “Does this guy deserve to have God welcome him into his kingdom?”In silence and great anticipation, every head turned from facing this women in the back row, to Keith, the pastor in the front of the room.He paused, and responded: “Deserve? What do you mean deserve? Of course he does not deserve it,” he said. “But the way you ask the question makes me think that you think that you deserve grace?”I don’t know whether or not that comment filled her with wrath, or with worship. I know she didn’t incite a mob to tie Keith to the railroad tracks.What I think happened, is that it wasn’t until she vocalized her story and her question did she understand how deep in her heart she really misunderstood how salvation works. In her case, she probably was a Christian. I’m not saying she wasn’t. But deep, deep down, under layers of soil, under layers of bedrock, there were thoughts, there were ideas, there were false understands of grace. There were portions of her heart where the Gospel of free, undeserved grace had not yet penetrated… at least until that moment.How about you? Are there still places deep within your heart, places that the gospel of free grace needs to penetrate? I bet you have them. I bet we all do.You see, the grace that made them marvel, was the grace that made them angry. Jesus does not do miracles on demand, and that’s what they want. “Hey Jesus, that there stuff you did up in Capernaum, DO HERE FOR US.” There are no rights in grace. Grace means God does what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants to do it. Grace means God has free will. And that, that will either fill you with wrath, or worship. It lead them to wrath. But where will it lead you?
Conclusion
I’ll close with a story I heard once; the story is about a man. It’s a true story. A friend of mine told it to me about someone he knew. It’s about a man who was very sick; he had been for some time. And he was in the hospital, again.One night he got up to use the restroom, and in the process, he fell. He was very weak and fragile, you see. And there he laid on the floor for some time, unable to right himself. In that moment, he was utterly dependent on others.And in that moment, his mind drifted to the things of God. And it dawned on him that in that moment he was not praying for people in China. He was not visiting villages in Africa. He was not necessarily serving the Lord. What he was doing? He wasn’t doing anything. He was lying on the floor unable to make to the restroom.And in that moment, he says he learned something about the grace of God. He learned that in Christ Jesus, he was deeply loved not because he deserved it. And he fell in love with God in that moment. He learned about the grace of Jesus Christ. He was changed.Good story. That warms our heart, yes it does, especially if I told you this man was a pastor. A man who had spent his life striving for God and the good of people, but only in that moment really did he understand the gospel. O, we don’t wish him his stay in the hospital, but given that he met Jesus there, it’s a good story.What if I told you this man wasn’t a pastor, but a soldier who served in the military and was in the hospital because of injuries of war? It’s a great story. We love this guy and are thankful for him.But what if I tell you that this person was a soldier, but he was in a different army of a different country, say, the Taliban? Still a good story? Does it change things for you?And what if I tell you that this person was an abortion doctor with a long, and prosperous career. That still a good story? Or does it make you say, “That’s not fair! He didn’t deserve God’s love!”I don’t know remember who the person actually was, but here’s the real question. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Does it amaze you that you are in Christ? Does it astound you that God could love someone like you, with all your faults and blemishes and halfhearted obedience? Does it cause you to worship—to worship not the person in the mirror, but the God who could love the person in the mirror?Or when you look in the mirror, does it pretty much make perfect sense to you that God would choose someone like you? If God is going to give grace to someone, he might as well give it to me.They didn’t kill Jesus, because it wasn’t his time. His hour had not come. I don’t know exactly how he escaped the crowd, but I do know evading death wasn’t going to be something he did every time. “No one takes my life from me,” Jesus said, “but I lay it down of my own accord.” And he did for you, and for me, and for the worship that he would receive for redeeming a people that do not deserve it. And I hope that leads you to worship.
1This sermon has been adapted and revised from two sermons I preached at New Life Bible Fellowship (Tucson, AZ) on April 21 & 28, 2013.
