The power of the Word: Luke 4:31-44

As we continue in our ongoing study of the book of Luke, I would remind you that Luke has been presenting a series of credentials as to authenticity of the claim that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised One, the Son of God.  This passage that we have come to today should not be examined irrespective of it’s context.  We can learn much from it, but to be certain that what we learn is accurate, it is important to keep scripture in context.

Therefore, what we see Christ doing in this passage - healing the sick and casting out demons - should be understood in the greater context that Luke is presenting the credentials of Jesus Christ as the Messiah.  In the first three chapters, he has given us expert testimony from credible eyewitnesses who testify to the divinity of Jesus Christ in accordance with prophecy, with scripture and with angelic pronouncement. 

Finally, in chapter four, Luke begins to record the ministry of Jesus Christ, and he starts with the temptation of Christ. In the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Jesus was being tempted by the devil.  And we have shown in previous studies that  Jesus answered every temptation with the Word of God.  The Bible says in Ephesians 6 that the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit.  So we see Jesus doing spiritual battle with the prince of darkness, not with weapons of this world, but with a spiritual sword;  specifically the Word of God.  The fact that Jesus was able to withstand the temptations of Satan himself again attests to the credentials that Jesus is the Messiah.  He demonstrates that He has power over sin and therefore power over Satan.

Then, as we looked at last week, Luke fast forwards a year in Jesus’ life and records as the first example of Christ’s ministry Jesus returning to his home town to preach a message in the local  synagogue.  And again, Jesus preaches the Word of God to establish the fact that He is the Messiah.  The passage Jesus picks is from the book of Isaiah, particularly chapter 61 which says, “"THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD."

Now, the passage tells us that His hometown neighbors rejected the idea that Jesus was the Messiah and when He told them that because of their rejection of Him that the gospel would be preached to the Gentiles, they became so enraged that they tried to throw Him off a cliff to stone Him to death.  But He miraculously passed through their midst undetected and unharmed.

So Jesus leaves Nazareth and goes about 20 miles down to Capernaum, a town on the edge of the Sea of Galilee.  And again, the next Sabbath, He goes to the synagogue and preaches the gospel.  This will be the practice of Christ, to teach and preach in the synagogues of Israel.  This is where the Jews congregate on the Sabbath to hear the Word of God read and taught.  And their tradition makes it possible for Him to not only find an audience, but an opportunity to preach. 

And the Bible tells us repeatedly that when Jesus preached, the people were amazed, because He preached with authority.  He preached the Word of God.  As He did in Nazareth, and as at the temptation, He either opened the scriptures  or recited the Word.  Though the Apostle John says that Jesus was the Word, yet for Jesus there was always a dependence upon the written Word of God.  The Word of God is authoritative.  And as a preacher of the Word, I stand on the authority of the Word of God.  I’m not teaching my opinions, or what I think sounds good, but I can say with authority that this is what the Word of God says.  And therein is the power of preaching the Word; it’s not my words, it’s God’s Word.

I think it is remarkable that God appears on earth in the flesh, to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, and yet He limits himself to simply the preaching of the Word of God.  He could have called down fire from heaven, He could have called 10,000 angels to bow before Him, He could have brought to bear all His creative power as the Creator of the Universe to prove to everyone that He was the Messiah.  And yet Jesus simply preaches and teaches the Word of God as His primary means of presenting  the kingdom of heaven. 

To be sure there are miracles that Jesus does, and yet they are without fanfare, they are without the usual drama that we see on television today when these so called miracle workers put on these elaborate, staged performances.  Jesus did not come to town and rent out the Convention Center and advertise on tv and radio that there was going to be a great healing service on such and such a day, and build up all this drama and publicity to make sure that everyone knows how gifted He was. 

But rather, when we see Jesus doing these miracles in Capernaum, their purpose is in fulfillment of the scripture in Isaiah 61.  He is preaching the gospel to the poor, that is the spiritually needy.  He is releasing prisoners in captivity to an evil spirit, He is healing the blind, He is setting free those who are oppressed.  All of that is in direct fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah that He was preaching in these towns.  And in the process of preaching the gospel, He demonstrates that He has the power to accomplish deliverance. 

By the way, I can’t help but notice that when Jesus began His ministry and went about Israel preaching and teaching the Word of God, that there is no mention of music in all the gospels except on the night before He was crucified in the upper room, at the end of the Passover Meal, they sang a hymn and went out on the Mount of Olives.  There is no mention of a worship leader in all of Jesus ministry.  It’s amazing that just the Word of God being preached with authority was enough to hold a crowd. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case today.

We just finished going through 1 Timothy in our Wednesday night Bible study, and 1 Timothy is the manual if you will for church operations.  It lays down God’s requirements for worship in the church, for leadership in the church and so forth.  And again, there is no mention of worship leaders or even music in 1^st or 2nd Timothy.  And I say that to say this;  I don’t believe that the Bible has anything against song leaders or worship leaders per se. But they need to be held to the same Biblical standards of leadership as prescribed for elders and deacons.  Both in Ephesians and Colossians we are told to sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs.  But I am afraid that the church today has gotten our priorities turned upside down.  There is scarce teaching of the Word of God, and the assembly of the church is given over to a concert style performance that is light on doctrine and often glorify the worship band more than the One that we are supposed to be worshipping.  The average church service today features 30 to 45 minutes of music, and if you’re lucky a 15 minute homily that may throw in a verse or two of scripture for good measure that serves as a framework for three jokes, two illustrations and a poem.

We need to get back to the preaching of the Word of God folks.  Hebrews 4:12 says “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  That’s what is needed in the church today.   Rather than trying to make the church relevant to the world, the gospel has the power to  make sinners relate to God.  Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” 

The Word of God is powerful.  It has the power to change lives.  So many of these contemporary worship songs today are like eating a bowl of whipped cream.  It tastes good, and it gives you a sugar-like rush that may make you buzz around for a while, but it doesn’t take long for the buzz to wear off and leave you feeling like you’re in a spiritual slump, because there is no substance there.  But Hebrews 5 tells us that the oracles and principles of the Word is solid food and that eating it leads to maturity, that is it is able to teach us discernment in spiritual things.

Now Jesus was preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, and it more than likely may have been the same message that He preached in Nazareth, the prophecy of Isaiah 61 that the Messiah would release the captives, heal the blind and free the oppressed.  And verse 33 tells us that “In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, "Let us alone! What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!"

First of all, I want you to notice that in this group of worshippers, in this religious gathering in the house of God, there is a man there who was possessed by a spirit of an unclean demon.  Now that may be surprising to some of you.  That the devil would be in the house of God.  A man masquerading as someone who was worshipping God was actually possessed with the spirit of a demon. 

It should not be surprising.  In fact, I think it is rather common. 2 Cor. 11:14 tells us that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.”  Jude tells us that they have crept in to our churches unnoticed, that “these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.”  Notice they reject the authority that God has set up in the church.  They take pride in their flesh.  He goes on to say that they are “hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.”  Clouds without water;  that means they seem like they are clouds that bring rain, but they don’t bring rain.  They don’t have any real fruit, in other words.  They are tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine.  They are compared to a dangerous reef hidden under the surface of the water.  And so we need to understand that there are people in the church who look and maybe talk like Christians, but are under the power and influence of the devil. 

I’m amazed that so many times when something bizarre happens in the church, there are people that automatically assume that it has to be of God, because it happens in worship. 1John 4:1 warns us, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  And the test is the Word of God.

This guy might have been seen by some people to be affirming who Jesus was.  He might have been someone who seemed to be spiritual.  And yet Jesus recognizes that he was possessed by an evil spirit.  Sometimes it can be difficult for us to recognize a person that is possessed by an evil spirit.  We have these zombie images in our imaginations that have been fostered perhaps by movies and television horror films.  But I would suggest to you that the 7 to 10 actual examples of demon possession we see in the Bible does not always give us a picture that looks like that.  They do usually exhibit bizarre behavior to some degree or another.  Some seem more bizarre than others. But there are psychological problems that some people have that can cause extreme behavior as well, however that in and of itself is not indicative of demon possession.   But one common characteristic common to demon possession seems to be shown consistently in scripture.  And that is the supernatural recognition that Jesus was the Son of God. 

Notice verse 34, “"Let us alone! What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!"  This was knowledge that even the disciples at this point did not fully understand.  It was a supernatural recognition of God in the flesh. 

You see the same thing further down in verse 41, “Demons also were coming out of many, shouting, "You are the Son of God!" But rebuking them, He would not allow them to speak, because they knew Him to be the Christ.”  In Mark 5:7 we see another example in the man possessed by a legion of demons when he said, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God, do not torment me!"  We see a similar statement by the girl that had the spirit of divination that Paul cast out in Acts.

So it seems there is a direct correlation between supernatural knowledge and demon possession.  Notice another characteristic about this man.  He interrupts the teaching of Jesus with this loud outburst.  The Greek doesn’t translate very well into English this verse.  The first phrase is actually an outburst of indignation and fear, much like “ah ha!”  But it is really a loud cry, almost a scream of fear.  And the second phrase is a Hebrew idiom, or saying, that literally says, “What to us and to you.”  While we may not understand the exact meaning of the idiom, we can know for certain that this man was disruptive and drawing attention to himself.  That is the same thing that the servant girl was doing that Paul delivered.  The work of Satan is always to draw us away from the Word of God and put the attention on a person, or on ourselves.  God is not the author of confusion.

Luke 4:35 “But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet and come out of him!" And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst of the people, he came out of him without doing him any harm.”  Notice how simply Jesus delivers him from the evil spirit.  There are no drawn out incantations.  Jesus didn’t have to bind him, or bind Satan, or have long drawn out prayers.  He simply speaks a word and the demon comes out.  He comes out because Jesus has authority over the unclean spirits.  And Jesus is demonstrating that authority in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61, that He will release the captives and free the oppressed. 

Luke 4:36  “And amazement came upon them all, and they began talking with one another saying, "What is this message? For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out."  They are asking, “what is this Word that with authority and power casts out even demons?”  The message of the Word of God is powerful, living, active and sharper than a two edged sword.  And this sword of the Lord is the same sword we have today as our weapon against the works of the devil.  The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.  Salvation means deliverance.  It is the power of deliverance from the captivity of sin and the enslavement of the devil.

Listen, some Christians are always excited by the possibility that they might obtain the supernatural power of Jesus Christ to cast out demons and heal the sick.  These folks love to quote the verse from John 14:12, “I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”  And such power is very enticing.  So we get really excited by this prospect that we are going to be able to go around smacking people on the forehead and binding Satan and doing all kinds of great miracles.  But while I believe a desire for such power is not a godly characteristic but rather a carnal one, there is a power that is available to all of us through the Word of God that is greater than just physical deliverance.  And it is the spiritual deliverance of salvation that comes through the Word of God. 

Please understand this.  The deliverance of this man from demon possession is a prime example of the greatest deliverance of all, our salvation.  While we were unsaved we may not have exhibited the degree of bizarre behavior of a demon possessed person, yet the Bible tells us that all mankind is under the power of the evil one. 1 John 5:19 says “that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.”  Jesus said in John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 1 John 3:8 says, that “the one who practices sin is of the devil.” 

So folks, in our natural state, our carnal, unconverted state, we are sons of our father the devil.  We are children of darkness. We are unable to discern the truth of God because the 2 Cor. 4 says the god of this world has blinded our eyes.  We are unable to come to God because John 6:44 says that “no man comes to the Me unless the Father draws him.”  In our natural condition, we are hopelessly lost, blinded, children of darkness, condemned to eternal death, to be thrown into the Lake of Fire along with the devil and his angels. 

But that’s why Jesus message is good news.  That’s what the gospel means, good news.  Jesus said, “"THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL (the good news) TO THE spiritually bankrupt. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES of sin, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE spiritually BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED under the dominion of Satan,TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." 

The good news is Jesus has power over sin.  Jesus has triumphed over death.  Jesus has triumphed over Hell.  Jesus has defeated Satan and his demons. 1 John 3:8 says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” Colossians  1:13 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Listen, this is the message of the good news;  That Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners.  To save the spiritually bankrupt, who recognize that they are blind and destitute, that they are lost, that they are dead in their sins, that they are held captive by the devil.  For those that recognize their condition, and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness, Christ says He will not turn them away.  He says that those who confess Him as Lord before men, He will confess before the Father in heaven.  The good news is there is forgiveness of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.  Jesus paid for my sins in full.  And God is willing to transfer the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us, in exchange for our sins upon Jesus Christ, that we might be made righteous through Him.

This righteousness is not something that we have to earn.  It’s not something we can earn.  This is a supernatural deliverance that we are not capable of.  You know, the man possessed by the evil spirit was powerless to change himself.  But Jesus delivered him by an act of grace.  That is, it was a gift of God.  And that same gift is available for all who come to Jesus.  Come to Jesus just the way you are, dead in your sins, held captive by the devil, oppressed by sin, blind to the truth of God, and Jesus will deliver you.  Jesus will set you free.  Jesus will heal your spiritual blindness.  Jesus said in John 6:37            "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”

No honor in hometown; Luke 4: 14-30

This morning we have come in our ongoing study of the Gospel of Luke, to the first sermon that Luke records of the preaching of Jesus Christ.  And yet we should understand that this wasn’t the first message Christ had preached, but simply the first that Luke records.  Actually, Jesus had been preaching the gospel of repentance, the same message that John the Baptist had preached, for about a year already.  So the question arises why did Luke pluck this particular event out of the timeline of Christ’s life to begin his record of Christ’s ministry?  And the answer is that Luke suspends His chronology for the sake of theology.

Luke has been establishing in the preceding passages the credentials of Christ as the Messiah, the Holy One of God that had been prophesied in the Law and the Prophets.  He has given testimony from John the Baptist, from Zacharias, from Simeon, from Anna, from Elizabeth, from Mary and the angel Gabriel that Jesus was the promised Messiah.  Luke also included the baptism of Christ where the voice of God confirmed that Jesus was His Beloved Son, and the confirmation of the Holy Spirit had descended upon Christ in bodily form.  Now, Luke presents this one particular event in the ministry of Christ to give yet another testimony to being the Messiah, and that is of Christ Himself.  Jesus Himself will plainly state that He is the Messiah, sent from God in fulfillment of scriptural prophecy.

So now we understand the purpose of this break in chronology, and if you want to fill in the blanks as to what happened in that year since Satan’s temptation of Christ as Jesus began his ministry to Judea and Galilee, you can find that record in the book of John, chapters 1-4.  For our purposes, Luke has condensed it down to just two verses, that of 14 and 15.

But what I want to focus on today is this event that happened when Jesus had returned to His hometown, and for the first time begins to preach to the very people that He had grown up with.  We see Him returning to Galilee first, and then making His way through all the small villages in Galilee to eventually coming to his hometown, which was Nazareth.  We sang a song today about Jesus the Nazarene.  He spent the first 30 years of his life there, and though He would make his home later in Capernaum, He would forever be associated with Nazareth. In John 1:46 Nathanael said to Philip, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" It was almost a derogatory association that Christ carried for the rest of His life.

Let’s start with verse 16 which sets the stage for this important message that Christ gives in his hometown.  “And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.”  Nazareth was a relatively large town, not just a village.  Some historians believe that it contained as many as 20,000 residents at this time.  And this synagogue would probably not be the only one in the area.

Let me say a word about synagogues.  They are not to be confused with the temple.  The law allowed only one temple and that had to be in Jerusalem.  The temple was the only place that the regular sacrifices could be performed.  It was where the priests served and the priestly rituals and festivals were performed according to the law.  But especially during the time of the Jewish exile, and during the time when the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians, there arose a need for there to be a local gathering place where Jews could come together to learn the scriptures and be taught the law of God.  So there became a tradition in Israel that stated that if you had a minimum of 10 men, you could start a synagogue.  They often were associated with certain rabbis.  It was a place to come to be taught the scriptures.

The scriptures were contained in hand written scrolls, and they would have been very valuable and were stored in the synagogues.  The average person did not have the scriptures available to them.  So they came on the Sabbath usually, but also throughout the week at various appointed times, to hear the scriptures read aloud so that they might learn them, and also to hear a sermon taught by one of the rabbis there.  They sometimes had an elementary school associated with it.  In a large city such as Jerusalem, there could be as many as a couple of hundred synagogues.  There was virtually one on every corner, much like our churches today.  They would be located within a Sabbath Day’s journey in every neighborhood.  So in many ways, the synagogue was a place which was very similar to our modern day churches.

And notice that the verse says that Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath as was His custom.  In other words, it was habitual, He was accustomed to go to the synagogue every Sabbath.   I mean, if anyone had a good reason not to go to church, Jesus had a reason.  He was the Word, He was the head of the church.  He didn’t need to be taught anything.  But He went there faithfully.  And notice that when He went there in faithfulness, God opened up an opportunity for Him to present His gospel.

So many times we miss out on divine opportunities because we are not faithful in the little things.  We miss out on spiritual growth because we are not faithful in the custom of coming together with other believers in the church to be taught the Word.  Christ is our example that being found faithful, God gives greater opportunity.  More and more I am convinced of the need for progressive discipleship; that is, a steady progress in our faith, of being faithful to hear, then faithful to obey and apply, then faithful to hear again, then faithful to obey and apply which continues in an ongoing  pattern of perseverance which results in being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  Though postionally our salvation was accomplished at our new birth, practically our salvation must be worked out day after day.  Phil. 2:12:  “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

Now there was a custom in the synagogue that when a visiting rabbi was present, he would be given an opportunity to read scripture and speak it’s exegesis.  And word had obviously gotten back home that Jesus had become a preacher and a teacher, and so when the appropriate time in the service came He was handed a scroll to read and explain for the people in attendance.  And I’m sure that the place was packed to overflowing.  Jesus had already become quite famous, so more than likely there were many more visitors than usual who overflowed the building.

Jesus took the scroll of the book of Isaiah and found the passage which was in chapter 61.  Traditionally, the rabbi would stand up to read the scripture and sit down to teach.  So Jesus stands up and reads this scripture which was well known to be a prophecy concerning the Messiah, and then when He finished He rolled up the scroll and sat down to teach.

And I’m sure that what Luke gives us here is a synopsis of Christ’s message and the scripture, there was undoubtedly much more said.  But this is what he records Christ reading.  "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.  And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Now before we can understand fully the significance of this event, we must first understand the significance of this particular passage.  First of all, Christ says the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him.  Luke repeatedly emphasizes the Holy Spirit in his gospel, more so than any of the other gospels.  In Luke’s account of Christ’s birth we see Jesus conceived of the Holy Spirit, in His baptism we see the Holy Spirit descending, in His temptation we see Him filled with the Holy Spirit, then led by the Holy Spirit, then return to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit, and now He says the Holy Spirit is upon Him.

I am reminded that Jesus said in John 4:24 that "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth."  The truth is God’s word, but there is an added dimension which is enabled through the power of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction in men’s hearts.  Paul said in 1Thess. 1:5  “for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.”

It’s important in this day and age when so many strange things are attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit, to see that the Word which was Christ was working conjointly with the power of the Holy Spirit in all that He did.  Neither Christ, nor the Holy Spirit are out there acting on their own, independently.  But they are One, One with one another, and One with the Father.  So today, when we evaluate whether a work is of the Holy Spirit, then all we need to do is ask ourselves if Christ did it.  And if not, then we need to be skeptical of that spirit, because as it says in 1John 4:1, we should  “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

The Spirit bears witness to Jesus, and John says that Jesus is the Word. 1John 5:7 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

The point being, we need to preach the word of God, and we need the Holy Spirit working through the word of God to convict men’s hearts and bring them to salvation.  Ephesians 6 tells us that we are to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  They go together, and they work together, not independently of one another.  This is also the reason that if you haven’t been born of the Spirit, then you cannot really understand the Word of God.  You may read the Bible, but it’s true meaning is veiled to the unsaved person.

So Christ is anointed by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel.  I’m amazed at the simplicity of that, especially in light of the modern church entertainment based format today.  Here is the Creator of the Universe, able to bring 10,000 angels to bear at His command, able to cause the sun to stand still, or cause fire to fall from the sky, or do any thing He wants, and yet does something so simplistic as preach the gospel.  To just read from the Bible.  Talk about Power Point displays! Jesus could have done a Power Point display in the sky that would have convinced everyone of His divinity.  Yet He preaches the gospel from the word of God.

I happened upon a video the other day of a mega church in Texas.  And it was filmed from a live Sunday morning service.  They had like 5 satellite churches that were also watching the live feed on big screens.  And the lights come up on stage and this instrumental heavy metal type of music comes on and lights are flashing and there is this big megatron screen shot of a RPM dial like you have in a hot rod revving up center stage in time with the music, and then on the corner of the stage here comes this Rolls Royce being driven on stage by the pastor.  And he’s got another video cam inside the car showing him driving it.  The fans, I mean the congregation is clapping and going crazy, and he finally gets out of the car and introduces his message.  It’s a series on relationships like dating.  I guess relationships are like cars.  I never quite figured out what the association with cars was, but I don’t think it really mattered.  It was an event.  It would keep the people talking for a week and keep them coming back next week to see what would happen next.  The next week the pastor drove out in a Ferrari.  I guess he knows something that Jesus didn’t.

So I guess Jesus is really out of touch.  Not only is He preaching the gospel, but He preaches a message about sin.  You can’t get any more seeker unfriendly than to preach about sin.  Jesus presents through this passage four characteristics of sin.  Number one, Jesus says I am anointed (set apart, consecrated) to preach the gospel to the poor.  Sin makes us spiritually bankrupt.  As the Messiah, He was sent to bring salvation  to the poor. And the Greek word for poor is really speaking of being a beggar.  It’s not talking about the homeless.  Jesus isn’t presenting a social gospel, the passage is talking about spiritual bankruptcy.  Being so spiritually bankrupt and destitute that the only option is to beg for mercy.  That’s the idea.  Jesus would repeat this theme in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew, when He would say, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”  The gospel means good news, and so it’s saying that for those that recognize their spiritual poverty, there is the good news that salvation has come.  God in His mercy has provided salvation by grace, that is, you cannot earn it.

Secondly, Jesus is saying through the scripture that the Messiah has come to proclaim liberty to the captives.  Sin makes people captive and enslaves them, and the Messiah has come to set them free. These are captives, or literally prisoners. It can mean prisoners of war, those who have been taken captive by some powerful force, brought into prison for crimes that they have committed and are waiting their own execution. Paul writes about this condition in 2Tim. 2:25 “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”  Make no mistake folks, sin enslaves.  You can’t play around with sin.  You can’t keep it at arm’s length.  Sooner or later, sin enslaves you.

Thirdly,  the passage says Christ has come to preach recovery of sight to the blind: Sin blinds us, and the Messiah has come to heal our spiritual and moral blindness. The sinner is not only made bankrupt, he is not only made a slave of sin, but he is also blinded to the truth. 2Corinthians 4:3 " And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  And as I said earlier, because they are spiritually dead, without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, their blindness is even increased, because they don’t have the Spirit helping them understand the Word.

Then fourthly, the Messiah has come to set at liberty those who are oppressed: Sin oppresses its victims, and the Messiah comes to bring liberty to the oppressed. The oppression here is the idea of someone overwhelmed by the pain of life, overwhelmed by relationships that are abusive, overwhelmed by illness, overwhelmed by whatever kind of troubles life can bring to bear, overwhelmed in their souls. This is the person who is so overwhelmed by life that they have lost all joy. This is a person to whom Jesus spoke when He said, " Matt. 11:28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

This is the gospel, the good news, that Christ came to save sinners.  The sinner that trusts in Him for mercy will find rest for his soul.  And when Christ finished reading this passage, He sat down and said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” : In this statement, Jesus answers two questions. "Who did Isaiah write of?" Jesus answered that question, "Isaiah wrote of Me." "When will this come to pass?" And Jesus answered that question, "Isaiah was writing of right now."

Well, this statement was shocking, to say the least.  These were His own townspeople.  Many of them grew up with Jesus or watched Him grow up from a child.  Jesus, this guy from the neighborhood, if you will, was declaring himself to be the Savior of the world, the promised Messiah, the Chosen One of God.  And right about now they were scratching their heads, or laughing behind their hands, but totally unbelieving.

Jesus knows their hearts, He knows their thoughts.  And so He rightly declares, “"No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, 'Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.'"  See, they thought that He had done well reading the scripture and perhaps explaining the scripture, but this was going to far.  I see that so often in ministry.  They admire the fact that you preach the gospel and that you know the scripture.  They even commend you for being a great Bible teacher, but to follow you?  To become a disciple of your teaching and get in rank and get under the authority of the church?  No, that’s taking it a bit too far.  So many professing Christians know just enough of the gospel to be condemned, but not enough to be converted.  They don’t want this man or any man to rule over them.  They don’t want any authority in their life.  They want to stay in charge of their destiny.  They want to be a free agent, if you will.  But such independence is in contradiction to the gospel.

And so it was in Nazareth.  They were willing to give Jesus his due as a good teacher, but not his due as Messiah, as Lord of Lords, King of Kings.  They weren’t about to bow their will to this carpenter’s son.

So Jesus response is this: "Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land;  and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."  The message is very simple.  If you’re not willing to confess that you are a sinner, poor, destitute, enslaved to sin, blind to the truth, and oppressed in your souls in need of deliverance, then just like in the days of Elijah and Elisha when your forefathers were unbelieving and rebellious, so it will be in these days.  The gospel will be taken to those who are ready to receive it, who are aware of their need for a Savior, and the good news will be preached to them.

And at that point, the anger that had started to flare up when they were told they were sinners, now came to the boiling point when they were told that the kingdom would be given to another people, and the townspeople of Nazareth “were filled with rage as they heard these things;  and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.  But passing through their midst, He went His way.”

There is one last point in Jesus message which I skipped over.  At the end of the scripture Jesus read in Isaiah is the statement; “To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD.”  This is a reference to the year of Jubilee found in Leviticus 25.  It was a time set apart by God to bring rest to the land, the land would return to it’s original owners, and all the prisoners would be set free.  It happened at the end of 7 periods of 7 years, after 49 years, the next year would be the year of Jubilee.  It was a time of rest, a time of redemption, and a time of reconciliation.  It was symbolic of the rest that Jesus brings, the rest that He offered to all that are weary, all that are poor, all that are blind, all that are oppressed. This eternal rest is made possible because Christ has paid the price for our sin.  And because God counted our sins against Christ, and put Christ’s righteousness upon those who trusted in Him, we can be made righteous forever.  And because we are made righteous, God sends us His Spirit to live in us.  So that we become the temple of God, the Holy of holies as God’s Spirit dwells in us.

This coming of Christ was the institution of the favorable year of the Lord.  It still is the favorable year of the Lord. Hebrews 4:9  “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”  Today that rest is still available, the favorable year of the Lord, to whoever calls upon the Lord for mercy and forgiveness. 2Cor. 6:2  “for He says, "AT THE ACCEPTABLE TIME I LISTENED TO YOU, AND ON THE DAY OF SALVATION I HELPED YOU." Behold, now is "THE ACCEPTABLE TIME," behold, now is "THE DAY OF SALVATION."

Listen, those hometown folks in the synagogue rejected Jesus as their Savior.  That was a tragedy for them, but it’s an opportunity for you.  Please don’t reject his offer today.  “"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

This is our seventh year of ministry here at the Beach Fellowship as a church on the beach.  And we’ve been praying every night this week as we walked around town in the Jericho March praying in the spirit that this would be the favorable year of the Lord.  We believe it is.  Today is the acceptable day, the day of salvation.  Come to Jesus today and find rest for your souls.

Overcoming temptation: Luke 4:1-13

The other day I came across an old VCR tape in a thrift store of the movie called Highlander, which spawned a popular TV series by the same name back in the mid eighties.  I remember watching the TV show a few times.  And I was thinking that this particular movie might have given birth to a whole genre of good versus evil movies, where the hero is seeking some sort of immortality by doing battle with these evil forces.  For some reason they love to use swords.  I guess it’s more dramatic to see these titans in some epic sword play that goes on and on, whereas in a more modern context, they would just pull out a gun and shoot one another.  But there seems to be some fascination with sword fights in these epic films.

Today, in our study of Luke, we come upon the greatest, most epic battle between good and evil in the history of the universe.  It’s presented here in chapter four without any undue fanfare or drama, but believe me, it was a battle with  universal consequences, more so than any conflict that the human mind can imagine.  But this battle wasn’t fought with swords, at least not the kind you can see.  This battle was fought with words.  The Word of God doing battle with the word of Satan.

In a spiritual battle, spiritual weapons must be used.  In Isaiah 46 the prophecy concerning the Messiah states: “He has made My mouth like a sharp sword.”  And in Revelation 2:16 Jesus says, “I will make war with them with the sword of my mouth.”  So there is a sword being used here, but it is a spiritual sword for a spiritual battle.  In Ephesians 6, the Christian is told to equip himself in spiritual armor for a spiritual battle, “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

We are told then to put on the helmet of salvation and take up the shield of faith, having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel, but what I want to draw your attention to is the weapon we are given;  “the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.”

So what I want us to see as we look at this epic conflict between Christ and Satan, is that not only was it important for Jesus to be victorious in this battle so that He might be able to be the spotless Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the earth, but that he also might be our example, so that when we are tempted, we might know how we are to respond.  As Peter said in 1Pet. 2:21 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH.”

And so I call this message today, “Overcoming temptation,” because not only did Christ overcome temptation by the devil, but He also presented an example of how we too can overcome temptation.

First of all though, I think it’s important that we understand why this happened.  What was the purpose of Christ being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, the Judean desert, to be tempted by Satan.  Because that is what the text tells us, isn’t it?  It wasn’t an accident that Jesus found himself there in the desert, famished and weak after 40 days of fasting, to be attacked by the forces of evil.  But the text tells us in verse 1 that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Now for starters, that goes against a whole bunch of people’s theology right there.  They have been taught by snake oil salesmen masquerading as religious figures on television and in many pulpits that if you are really of the faith, and you have enough faith, then nothing but good things are going to be in store for you.  God wants you to have the best of everything, and will withhold nothing pleasurable from you, because He just wants you to have all the desires of your heart.  So it’s incongruous to a lot of people in churches today to think that God would allow hardship and suffering to enter into our lives.

But Luke tells us specifically that when Jesus came up out of the Jordan River having been baptized by John, having had the witness of the Holy Spirit come upon Him in the bodily form of a dove, and having had the voice of the Father speak audibly from heaven saying “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” right after this mountaintop experience, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the middle of nowhere, in the midst of no man’s land, a craggy, rocky, desolate place in the middle of the desert, and He fasts for 40 days being tempted by the devil the whole time.

I can assure you that this passage is a good example of a common theme in scripture; that often our highest moments are followed by our deepest trials.  The mountaintop experience is quickly forgotten in the lowest valleys.  And I’ll tell you why.  Because God is able to teach us more in suffering than He can through  blessings  like abundance and prosperity and good health and happy marriages and so forth.  Once again, Jesus is our example.  As it says in Hebrews 5:8 “Although He was a Son, [Jesus] learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”  But God never tempts us to sin, rather God tests us so that our faith might be proven, that we might be refined like gold. Proof tested.

Now there was another reason that the Holy Spirit led Jesus out to the wilderness to be tempted.  And that is because just as Luke is presenting the credentials of Christ in the first 3 chapters, this too is another credential of Christ.  The Messiah had to be able to overcome sin and temptation, to defeat the devil, if He was really deity.  God is demonstrating the deity of Jesus by overcoming temptation and sin and defeating every trick of the devil.

If Jesus would triumph in the wilderness, then He would triumph at Calvary and He would triumph in the garden. He would triumph at the cross and triumph at the tomb. And if Jesus could conquer Satan, then we can be assured of that triumph and that He is able to redeem His people from their sins. And we know that He did triumph in the wilderness and later He triumphed at the cross where He bruised Satan's head with a fatal wound, where He destroyed sin, where He provided escape from hell for all who believe. And then we know He conquered death, rising the third day, now ascended to heaven He continues to conquer all sin and all accusation laid against His people because He ever lives to make intercession for us. So that in His securing love, in His conquering grace we are more than conquerors for whom nothing can ever separate us from the love of God.

It’s interesting that in the last chapter we see the human lineage of Christ go back all the way to Adam.  And we know that Adam is the father of the sin nature, which was passed on to all men, and all men have sinned as a result of this inherent sin nature.  But we know that Jesus was not born with that inherited sin nature, because He was born of a virgin, and the sin nature is passed from the males to the next generation.  But even so, Christ could still be tempted.  Hebrews 4 says that Christ was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”

But lest we think that Jesus temptation is less severe than ours because He was deity in man, let’s contrast the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Adam was in the best of circumstances; he lived in Paradise which was perfect, he was full, fed, everything made for him perfectly.  Jesus had nothing, poor, hungry, alone, in the desert, physically beyond weak.  Yet Adam fell, and Jesus did not.  You may blame your circumstances on your sin, if I only had this or that I wouldn’t sin.  But Adam had everything in abundance, and yet he sinned. Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded. In the first Adam we all died, in the second Adam we all live.

So Christ demonstrates his power over sin and over temptation.  He demonstrates to the devil and his demons that He is the Messiah, God in the flesh.  And we will see that in coming studies, the demons recognize Him, they shudder, they call Him the Son of God and they are under His authority.  But at this moment, in this desolate place in the wilderness, far away from everyone, Christ stands alone at His weakest moment, to contend against Satan himself.

And I don’t think that Satan comes to Christ in this moment slinking around like a little red horned toad with a spiked tail. He doesn’t come looking like a zombie wearing a black hoodie.  I believe Satan comes in all his glory and power, in all his brilliance and all his splendor in sharp contrast to the humility and weakness of God in this emaciated human flesh.

Who is this devil?  I don’t have time to go into too much detail about him today, but I can tell you that Satan is not the way he has been presented in our popular media.  In Ezekiel 28:11 to 15, Isaiah 14:12 to 14, you read about him. Before the fall he was the anointed cherub which many commentators think means he was the praise and worship leader of heaven. He was heaven's chief musician. He was the one who led all the angelic praise.  He was the most beautiful of all the angels, and perhaps the most powerful.  He was the covering cherub, above the throne of God Himself. And because of his surpassing beauty, he rebelled in pride against God saying “I will be like the Most High.”  When He was cast down from heaven, the Bible says he took 1/3 of the stars of heaven, (speaking of the angels of heaven) with him.  He has millions of fallen angels, demons as they are now known, under his authority.

We should learn from this the way Satan works.  As he comes to Christ full in his glory, full of his power and in his pride, so Satan comes to us not looking like some caricature of a comic book demon, but like a friend, a companion, a trusted ally.  Someone who has it all together.  Someone that we can admire, someone powerful, having or seemingly able to provide all the things that we desire.

And so Satan comes to Christ in his extreme physical weakness.  After 40 days, it says he was hungry.  I think Luke is prone to understatement.  I read recently of someone who attempted to fast for 40 days and it killed him.  At 40 days, Jesus was probably physically so gaunt, that His clothes were falling off of him.  He was practically unable to move, to take care of himself.  He was weak to the point of being unable to stand.  And here comes Satan, full of beauty, clothed in splendor, reeking of majesty and power, usurping all that rightfully belonged to Jesus as he laid there on the hot, dusty desert floor, his body so weak He could hardly move.

Now the scripture says that Satan had tempted him for 40 days.  So in addition to the physical limitations of his body, he had been under spiritual attack for 40 days.  But now Satan culminates his temptation with three distinct temptations.  And though there are three temptations, there are really just two major areas in which he was tempting Jesus, and you can reduce that even further to just one common theme, attacking the word of God.

So the first temptation of Christ was an attack against His identity.  Look at verse 3, “"If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”  His attack is on who Jesus was.  Remember, that this event directly follows the baptism of Christ in which the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove and lights on Him, and the voice of the Father speaks from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  And so Satan is sneering at Jesus lying there 40 days later, seemingly abandoned by God, starving to death, as weak as He could be.

In the third temptation, the same sneering insinuation is made; “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.”  The devil is challenging the voice of God with the voice of hell.  God said Jesus was the Son of God.  Satan insinuates that if He were really the Son of God then He wouldn’t have allowed Him to suffer in this way.

And doesn’t Satan come to us in this same way in our temptation?  Doesn’t he tempt us to doubt the love of God when bad things happen in the world?  Don’t we oftentimes find ourselves doubting the goodness of God, the love of God, the providence of God when the wheels start coming off and things start going bad?  The devil, Diablos, comes to insinuate, to question, to accuse, as he has from the beginning when he came to Eve in the garden to question, “did God really say?” Did God really mean that?  Isn’t God just withholding something good from you for no good reason?  He comes challenging our identity found in the Word of God.

And that is what is so beautiful about Christ’s response.  Christ responds with the written Word of God, quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.”  Not only is Jesus attesting to the goodness and provision of God, that real life is not found in food but in God who gives life, but He is also attesting to His own deity.  As John would write in chapter one of his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  He is saying that He has life in himself.  That’s how Jesus could say in John 14:6 "I am the way, and the truth, AND THE LIFE; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  Jesus is not only the Word of God made flesh, but He is the life, the source of all life, by Him all things were made that were made.

So when Satan comes attacking our human identity, our identity in Christ Jesus, our identity as children of God, attacking the love of God for us his children, then our response is to be like Jesus, and rely upon the Word of God.  We need to hide the word of God in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him.  We need to make every effort to study and store the word of God so that in the moment of temptation we have a ready resource, a ready answer from the promises of God to counter every attack of Satan.

And the second thing Satan attacks is an assault on Christ’s ministry.  When God spoke audibly at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” what He said was a direct echo of two scriptures.  The first one is found in Psalm 2:7; “'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”  And the second one is found in
Isaiah 42:1 "Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights.”

Satan knew those scriptures as well.  Satan was well acquainted with the prophecy of Isaiah that talked of God being pleased to crush His Servant, putting Him to death.  He was well aware that the plan of God called for suffering as the road to glory for the Messiah.  He understood the symbolism of the sacrificial lamb that was slain on the day of Atonement.  Satan knows the scriptures much better than most theologians.

This is proven in his temptations.  Satan quotes scripture back to Jesus, to try to use the Word of God to tempt the Word of God.  I’ve said it before, you can prove almost anything you want to prove by taking one verse of scripture out of context.  But remember this, scripture will never contradict scripture.  The full counsel of God’s word must be considered to know how to rightly divide the Word of truth.  Satan is a master of half truths.  But a half truth is just a whole lie.

Jesus also knew that the plan of God that He had submitted to before the world began would be a path of suffering and death.  But Satan offered Christ an alternative, a shortcut.  Oh, he claimed to be after the same goal, that of Christ’s glory, but it was only a deception.  Remember when Satan tempted Eve?  He tempted her by saying that if she ate of the tree, then she would be like God.  Isn’t that a good thing?  Aren’t we supposed to want to be like God, to be godly?  And yet his shortcut required that she disobey the word of God.  And so his promise was really a lie that resulted in her being disavowed by God.  She obeyed the voice of the creature rather than the Creator.

Satan is trying the same old trick on Christ.  Offering Him a shortcut to glory.  “If you throw yourself off this temple, then the Bible says that the angels of God will catch you so you don’t kill yourself, and then all the people will know you are the Son of God, and worship You.  Isn’t that the goal?  To have the people worship Jesus?

I fear our modern day “worship” of God has fallen for this trick of Satan.  The end justifies the means.  People think they are worshipping God, but they do so devoid of truth, because they don’t know the truth.  The Word of God has been eliminated from our worship, and the substitution of music and skits and drama and videos and good works have taken center stage.  Doesn’t it get a lot of people to come to the services?  Aren’t things a lot more exciting?  Isn’t the entertainment getting them introduced to the church?  Isn’t that the goal, to get more people in the door?

The devil loves to make a confusion of means and ends.  His message is that the end justifies the means.  He offers shortcuts and compromises while telling us that the goal is good.  He does the same in other areas of our life, for example, in business, or in sexual purity before marriage.  He offers shortcuts to what may be a good goal but a wrong means.  

The last temptation of Christ is the same thing.  Offering Christ the kingdoms of the world if He would just worship Satan.  Sell himself to the devil so that He might win the nations.  But again Jesus answers him not with arguments or clever dialogue, but with the written word of God. “Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'" Every issue was settled in Christ’s mind by the Word of God.  There was no negotiation.  There was no compromise on the truth of the Word.  Christ was saturated in the Word of God.  That’s what it means by the way to be filled with the Holy Spirit and then to be led by the Holy Spirit.  It doesn’t mean you want to do something and then you see an opportunity to take a shortcut to glory and then you feel some exhilarating sensation that you attribute to a confirmation of the  Holy Spirit and so go off to the races, fulfilling your carnal desires.  No, being filled with the Holy Spirit and being led by the Holy Spirit means being filled with the Word of God and then being led by the Word of God.  The Holy Spirit will never contradict the Word of God.  God cannot deny Himself.  2Tim. 2:13

We live in a world today filled with many voices trying to drown out the Word of God.  We live in the information age, the age of Ipods, and I pads, TV’s and car stereos and computers and we’re being fed voices and messages from the world all day long, 7 days a week.  We have to deliberately counteract the destructive attack of these voices that are raised in opposition to what God has said in His Word.  And the only way to do that is to study the Word of God.  To get under the teaching of sound doctrine.  To be faithful to every opportunity to learn the Word of God.  And then to study privately the Bible as the Bereans did, to see if those things are so.  To have a private time with God every day.  Tally up your time spent with God this week.  And then tally up the rest of the time that you spent listening to the voice of the world.  It’s no wonder that we fall so easily when temptation comes.

The devil tells us to make our own laws, our own decisions, our own judgments on what is right and appropriate.  And so we become our own little gods, our own idols.  Satan will tempt you to doubt God’s word, then to take matters into your own hands to do what you think is right, what you think is appropriate.  We need to saturate our lives with the Word of God, that we might do what is right and live holy and righteous lives in the midst of an evil world.

God has sent Jesus to be tempted and suffer and die for us, that having been found righteous He might purchase with his blood our righteousness. Christ defeated every temptation of Satan that He might defeat death and hell, and having been raised from the dead, He sits at the Father’s right hand to be an intercessor for us, that we might have life in Him.  He died so that we might also be set free from the power of sin and death.

 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, and having shod YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.”  (Eph. 6)  Amen.

Born of a woman, Luke 3: 23-38

Those of you that are regular attendees of the Beach Fellowship know that I preach in a style known as expositional, which means that we study the Word verse by verse, chapter by chapter.  And while I believe that the merits of this style of preaching usually far outweigh any negatives, today we come upon a passage which I would be tempted to skip over.  It’s been said that smart preachers should always avoid teaching on genealogies. 

So I guess I’m not very smart.  I wanted to skip over this passage, but it seemed that the Lord impressed on me that there are things here that are of great importance, and it would be to our benefit to study this section of scripture. 

Another thing that those of you who are regulars here will know, is that I do not normally use our time in the scriptures to pander to secular holidays.  So I had no intention of trying to preach a Mother’s Day message today.  Ironically, however, as I resolved to be faithful in preaching the next passage of scripture on the genealogy of Jesus  Christ, I found that there is a Mother’s Day message of sorts hidden in this text. 

Now you may find that hard to accept, looking at this long list of names.  There are 77 names in this list, and all of them are names of men.  So the logical question I’m sure you are asking is how can this be relevant to mothers if all the names are of men and no women are mentioned?

But before we answer that question, let’s answer another question.  Why does Luke include the genealogy of Jesus Christ here anyway?  Of what significance is this record?  And the answer is that Luke is presenting the credentials of the Messiah.  He has already given us the testimony of witnesses, like Mary, the shepherds, the angels, Simeon, Anna, and the prophecy of Zacharias and Elizabeth.  He gave us the witness of John the Baptist, and last week we looked at the testimony of the Holy Spirit and of God the Father at the baptism of Christ.  So Luke is presenting the credentials of the Messiah.  And the genealogy of the Messiah is yet another absolutely necessary credential. 

It was necessary because it was well known that the scriptures explicitly prophesied that the Messiah would come from the lineage of David. In 2 Samuel 7:16 the prophet Nathan speaks God’s words about David saying, "Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever."'"  And this promise was reiterated over and over again throughout the OT. 

For example, in Isaiah 9:6 there is the familiar passage:            “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of [his] government and peace [there shall be] no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.”  So it is necessary then to present the lineage of Jesus in order to establish that He was from the line of David, the royal line which gave Him the right to the throne of David, in fulfillment of prophecy. 

Now there are two genealogies given for Jesus, one here in Luke and another in Matthew chapter 1.  Matthew, if you will remember, was written primarily to the Jews, and comes at it from a Jewish perspective, starting from Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish race, and then on to David, and from David to Solomon on down to Joseph, who was the legal father of Jesus, by adoption. 

Luke was a Gentile, and writes for a primarily Gentile audience, who starts at the other end, starting with Jesus and working backwards.  Luke wants to show how the Messiah links with all of humanity. He goes back through David, back through Abraham all the way to Adam and finally to God taking that universal approach connecting the Messiah to all humanity. But interestingly, Luke’s genealogy is different from Matthew’s in some names as well.  Luke’s genealogy from David to Joseph is completely different than that of Matthew’s.   And the reason comes from verse 23, “being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph…”  Literally, the original says, “as it was being thought.” 

So here is the nod to the mother’s today in Luke’s account See, in Luke, the genealogy is maternal, it follows his mother’s line.  Matthew’s genealogy is paternal, it follows his legal father’s line, even though Joseph was not his actual father, but his adoptive father.  And that is why Luke says, it was thought that Joseph was His father.  Jesus actual father was the Holy Spirit.  Mary was a virgin who conceived a child through the Holy Spirit.  So even though genealogical records of that day were traced through the males, Luke starts from Joseph, saying he was commonly thought to be the father of Jesus, and then skips over to Mary’s father, Eli, and then traces his line back to David.  When you read Matthew’s account, the line goes back to David through Solomon, David’s firstborn son.  But in Luke, the line goes back to David through Nathan, Solomon’s brother.  So we see that in both his mother and his legal father’s lineage, the line goes back to the throne of David, which is the main point that Luke is trying to make. 

However, I think it’s particularly interesting that Mary’s line doesn’t stop with David, or even Abraham as Matthew’s did, but goes all the way back to Adam, who it says was the son of God, literally of God.  Because Luke is not only interested in presenting Jesus as the rightful heir of David, but also as the Son of Man. That was our Lord's favorite title for himself, one he used more frequently than any other name. As you read the Gospel of Luke, the one you meet here is, of course, the same person you read about in Matthew and Mark. However, in Matthew the emphasis is upon his kingliness. Matthew presents Jesus as the King, and in Mark Jesus is presented as the suffering Servant. But in Luke, the emphasis is quite different. Here Jesus is presented as the Son of man---Jesus, the man. The perfect man.  His essential manhood is constantly being set forth throughout this Gospel.

It’s an important dynamic that needs to be understood, that Jesus had a heavenly Father, but He had an earthly mother.  And this is what Luke is pointing out.  To better understand this turn to Galatians 4:4 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,  so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Now this is the mystery of godliness that Paul speaks of in 1Tim. 3:16            “By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.”  God becoming man is a great mystery, but a key to understanding it can be found by going back to the Garden of Eden when Eve, the mother of the human race was deceived by Satan and sinned against God. 

But though Eve sinned, and then tempted Adam to sin with her, the Bible doesn’t speak of sin being passed down from Eve, but it speaks of sin being passed down through Adam. Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

The sin nature is passed from man to the next generation.  We have inherited it from our forefathers.  Adam’s sin was in a way even greater than Eve’s sin in that he chose to obey man, rather than God.  Eve at least was deceived.  Adam sinned with both eyes wide open. 

But even so, the end result was a catastrophe for the human race.  God had created man in his own image, male and female.  And I believe that as it says in Genesis 1:26, “our image” and then it says “our likeness” did not mean that man physically looked just like God, but that man was made like God as a triune being; spirit, soul and body.  When God warned that man would die if he ate of the tree, he was not only speaking of eventual physical death, but immediate spiritual death.  When man sinned, the spirit of man died. 

Man was created to have spiritual communion with God.  We were created to have an intimate knowledge of God, but when sin entered into man, that capacity was shattered.  So then ever since, man has been aware of some great spiritual need, but unable to fill it.  Unable to achieve peace with God, because he cannot know God in his sinful condition. 

But God gave a wonderful promise back in the Garden, after Eve had sinned.  God said to Satan  in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."  It was a promise of the Messiah, that one would come through the woman who would one day bruise Satan on the head.  Satan would bruise Jesus on the heel, so to speak, when he crucified Him, but Christ would bruise Satan on the head, a mortal wound, when He rose victorious from death and hell.

So then Luke presents his genealogy from Mary’s father all the way back to Adam, the son of God, because he wants to show that Jesus is the promised offspring of woman’s womb that would bring about defeat of death.

There is another passage of scripture that I think is tied to this, and it’s 1 Timothy 2:15, “But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.”  In some versions, it may read saved through the bearing of children.  The Greek word is sozo, the common New Testament word for salvation. The word can also mean “to rescue,” “to preserve safe and unharmed,” “to heal,” “to set free,” or “to deliver from.”

This is not saying that a woman can go to heaven by virtue of the fact that she has given birth, but it means that the human race will be saved by the birth of the Messiah, coming through a woman. So a better way to approach this passage is based on the grammar in the original Greek language. In the original, it says she will be saved in the childbirth.  And it means that through a woman will come salvation for man.

Going back then to Galatians 4:4, Christ was born of a woman, born under the law. The law of God condemned man to eternal death.  We were powerless to do anything about it.  We could not reach up to heaven.  We could not bring God down to earth.  We could not attain to the righteous standard of God’s holiness.  Man was lost, condemned under the law.  The law wasn’t made to provide a stepladder to heaven, as if we could only climb up each rung and never make a mistake then reach heaven.  It is impossible, because of our sin nature inherited from Adam.  

Job realized this and said in Job 25:4, “"How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman?”   And his cry was answered in the angel  Gabriel’s prophecy to Mary in Luke 1:37            "For nothing will be impossible with God."  Gabriel announced, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”

Man could not come up to God, but God could come down to man. And while history is filled with men who would be God, only one God would be man.  And He did so by becoming born of a virgin, conceived by the heavenly Father. Luke who was a doctor, confirms this great mystery of godliness, God becoming man, and tells us that One entered the human race who was born of a virgin; because Mary had never known a man. Yet she had a son, and his name was called Jesus. The wonder of that mystery is given in this simply told genealogy that Luke presents to us.  He presents the grandeur of God’s great plan from the beginning to redeem man from sin through Mary’s lineage, by going from Eve all the way to Mary, to show God’s fulfillment of His promise that from one born of a woman would come One to bruise Satan’s head and save the human race from death.

Jesus himself attests to that purpose in what is the key verse of the whole book of Luke, chapter 19 verse 10 when He calls himself by that special name, which we now know has special significance, the Son of Man, saying, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost."  He is not only talking about coming to save lost people; he has come to save that which is lost. Not only is it men who are lost, but also it is man’s purpose of his humanity. We no longer know how to be what we were intended to be. The whole dilemma of life is that we still have, deep within us, a kind of subconscious memory of what we ought to be and what we want to be, but we do not know how to accomplish it.

Our soul is searching for that other place, the lost Holy of Holies, which is behind the veil, impenetrable. We cannot enter there. We know there is something more, something deeper, just beyond the edge of our soul.  This is the place where God intended to dwell, and which is the intended center of human life. It is the spirit of man. But because the spirit is dead in fallen man, men rise only to the level of intelligent animals, beholden to their baser instincts. Yet there is something mysterious, reserved, lying deep in an area which they cannot enter, pricking their subconscious.

But in Luke’s genealogy, he traces the coming of One who at last penetrates into the secret place, who enters the spirit of man, the place of mystery, and rends the veil, opening it up so that man might be reborn in his spirit, knowing the mystery of the purpose of his being, and thus find fulfillment through Christ Jesus.

Consider for a moment what it meant for Christ Jesus to come to earth as a man to secure our salvation. The King of heaven left His throne and took a stable for a nursery. The very Son of God was hunted by a tyrant king and became an infant exiled in Egypt. The source of all wisdom and knowledge was born into poverty and lived without earthly wealth and luxury. Holy and without sin, the Messiah was assaulted by every temptation Satan could thrust on Him, yet He resisted each one. The King of creation willingly subjected Himself to all that it means to be human--pain, hunger, thirst, sorrow, physical exhaustion, the full range of human emotions--yet did so without sin.

In an unfathomable act of selfless, sacrificial love, He left heaven's glory to die on our behalf. He offered mercy to a people who deserved only His wrath. He stooped to accomplish that which we not only could not do, but also would not do. In love, the God of the universe stepped from eternity to do what was impossible with man, to come to the world and save those wholly unable to save themselves.

Look in closing at verse 38. Christ’s lineage comes full circle, it is traced all the way back to God. He is the Son of God. He goes all the way back to God with whom He existed before the world began. Adam also was a son of God by creation. And when Adam was created he fully bore the image of God. He was a son of God, a real child of God like God designed men to be, able to know God. He bore the image of God body, soul and spirit uncorrupted until he fell into sin.  But when Adam sinned, the original image of God was shattered, it was broken and no one has ever entered into the world a true son of God like Adam was, except Jesus. Man’s spirit died, his nature became sinful, and everyone of Adam's descendants has been stained with the sin of Adam ever since. But Jesus came into the world without that sin nature which was passed on by Adam by the fact that He was born of a virgin.  And not only was any sin nature found in Him, but He lived fully pleasing God, as God said in verse 22, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He was man the way Adam was designed to be, sinless, perfect man bearing absolutely perfectly the image of God. He was the true Son of God, the only true Son of God that had ever come into the world since Adam.

But He's not only Son of God, He is Son of Man. He is like us, tempted, troubled, suffering, persecuted, hated, reviled and killed. He is a Son of Man suffering the penalty of death completely for man all the way down to the pit of Hades, yet rising triumphant over death. He is fully man in every sense, yet fully  Son of God. God in His deity, Man in His humanity. He is Son of God, Son of Man, deity and humanity.

Then He is Son of Abraham as to His nationality. That is He is the promised seed. When God made a promise to Abraham it was to a seed, Galatians 3:16 says, and He is the promised seed who will bring all the blessings promised to Abraham. And He is also Son of David, royalty, the promised King who will usher in the glory of all the Kingdom of Heaven of which there will be no end, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. 

So that is my Mother’s Day message, a message buried in the genealogy of the most favored mother of all mankind, who brought forth a Savior as was promised even as judgment was being cast upon the sin of the mother of all mankind.  God is a God of justice and mercy.  And in the end, “mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13)

I trust that you know the mercy of God, by accepting the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on your behalf, confessing your sins, repenting and calling upon God for mercy.  David said that a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.  For those that humble themselves and confess Jesus as Lord of their life, He promises to save them.  That’s what Jesus suffered and died for, to redeem us from the penalty of sin.  But for those that reject Him as Savior, there remains for them nothing but the judgment.  The choice is yours.