Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 12 - Responding to Jesus

Oh Lord, we thank you so much for this morning for us to gather together and to study your word, both in our Sunday school class, but also to look at your word and, The preaching service later, we pray, not just for ourselves but also for all of those that are teaching our children that you would fill them with your Spirit, fill us with your Spirit as we look at your word, there are things here that we need to hear. we need to be fed. We are sheep. We thank you that you are our shepherd, and we pray that you would guide us this morning.

In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. All right. so this morning, the lesson is titled Responding.

To Jesus. And what we're gonna see in Luke 4 is there's two very different kinds of human responses. we're gonna actually look at an angelic or demonic response on the front end to set up the rest of the chapter. But there's two different types of responses that we're gonna see.

One group tries to keep Jesus from leaving town. another group wants to throw him off a cliff. And so one of the questions I wanna ask this morning is what accounts for such extreme responses, especially since both of these groups were very religious people. this wasn't a bunch of, idol worshiping pagans.

The Nazarenes in the synagogue were very religious. The Capernaum folks in the synagogue were very religious, to very different responses. And so we're gonna investigate that this morning. And I think in doing so, we're gonna find that there's a connection between the Holy Spirit and humility and the devil and pride.

so, I'm letting the cat out of the bag, right out the gate is, I believe that there's some indicators in this chapter that draw our attention to the Holy Spirit, and that accounts for some of the response. And there's other indicators in this chapter that draw our attention towards the devil and the demonic powers, and that accounts for other responses. if you look at Acts chapter 10, we're fast forwarding into the ministry of the church. In fact, we'll be picking this up next week, we move into a new quarter about the beginning of the church.

But when, Peter is first confronted with the idea of Gentiles coming into the church, he begins to, to preach, and this is one of the things he says in verse 37 to chapter 10 in Acts. that word, meaning the word of Jesus, it began from Galilee, after the baptism, which John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing, all were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And in those two verses, we have a little micro summary of Luke chapter 4.

And that is Jesus' ministry begins in the Galilean area.

So this is the northern part of Israel, and he's anointed by the Holy Spirit. He is called Jesus of Nazareth because that's where he's from, and he begins to go out in power, and he's healing those who are oppressed by the devil because God is with him. So, let's go ahead and look at these responses to Jesus. We're looking at Luke 4, we're gonna actually try to cover 44 verses this morning.

And And what we're going to see here. Is that, is we're gonna see the devil attempts to coax Jesus, while the Nazarenes try to kill Jesus. And those in in Capernaum try to keep Jesus. That would be a micro outline of what we're looking at.

So, let's first of all, look at the devil, how the devil tempts Jesus or he attempts to coax Jesus in the wilderness. And, so we're gonna look at verses 1 to 13 together and And then draw some, some conclusions. Look at verse one with me, then Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit, there we go, the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan. This was after his baptism, was led by the Spirit where?

Into the wilderness, being tempted for 40 days by the devil, and in those days, he ate nothing and afterwards, when he had, when they had ended, he was hungry. So, the, our writer is Luke. Luke is a master of Greek. if you were to read this chapter in Greek, you would see that he uses a lot of Greek terms.

He very rarely repeats terms. He does what we tell our English students to do. I used to be an English teacher and a lot of times when I'd receive a paper, And they would keep using the same word over and over again, like, because, because, because, because. I would say, why don't you vary that?

Don't just say because, say since or as a result. And Luke does that. He just uses all kinds of Greek terms. You don't see a lot of, and what he does when he's, when he, he sets verse one and two up as a summary of this whole temptation.

He says, being tempted for 40 days by the devil and in those days, he ate nothing, so he ate nothing during the temptation. Afterward, after the 40 days when they had ended, he was hungry. And so, and then we're gonna get 3 different samples of the temptation. So notice right out the gate, That Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit, and he was led into this temptation by the Holy Spirit.

So this is something that was clearly the will of God, the will of the Trinity, and the three different types of temptation, you could be summarized this way, make yourself bread, make yourself some bread, throw yourself down before me. And throw yourself down from the pinnacle. We're not gonna spend a ton of time here, just because it's the latter half of the chapter that we want to get to, but let's look at each of these temptations. Make yourself some bread, verses 2 to 4, we'll start picking up in verse 3.

And the devil said to him, if, if you are the Son of God, command the stone to become bread, and Jesus answered him and was saying, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word. Of God And I don't know if you guys remember several months ago, we actually covered the temptation of Christ in the book of Matthew. And part of what we said is kinda like this temptation, I don't know about you, but these temptations, they've always struck me as a little bit hard to understand or hard to really grasp because after all, Jesus is the Son of God.

So how tempting could this really be?

if, if you laid before me, if I hadn't eaten for 40 days and you laid before me some carne asada tacos, that'd be very tempting, right? and we can easily be tempted, but Jesus, he's the Son of God, like he has access to his powers of deity, right? He's God. But what we need to remember is when Jesus became a man, he didn't stop being God, but he laid aside the full prerogatives of deity.

In other words, he didn't access his full prerogatives, as, as deity while on the earth. He was filled with the Spirit, and he walked around as a man. So if you guys fast forward, remember, when he was standing before Pilate, he says to Pilate, I could ask my father, and we could bring 10,000 legions of angels. I could clean this up right now, right?

When Jesus was being nailed to the cross, could he have just thought a thought or spoken a word and gotten rid of all of them immediately? Totally. When they came to arrest him, yes, ma'am. Oh, I'm sorry.

So we're in Luke 4. Yeah, no problem. Luke chapter 4, and we're in verse. 4, yeah, so Luke 4 versus 4.

No problem. so, so Jesus definitely has the power to do all kinds of things, and we see aspects of that power while he's on the earth, but he tends to always give the Holy Spirit and the Father credit for his teaching and his power. And so part of the temptation here is Jesus is being tempted rather than just go through the temptation as a man on our behalf. Part of what's happening here.

Yes he's being tempted to access his prerogatives of deity or to call upon his father to escape the full weight of the temptation. Does that make sense? So when he's being tempted to eat bread, he really did feel hunger just like you and I feel hunger. And to not eat for 40 days and to, and to, and to, for the devil to say, hey, you can go ahead and turn those stones into bread anytime you want.

Well, Jesus could have done that. And he could have bypassed feeling the full sense of his humanity and that human hunger by just Appealing to his prerogatives of deity. But that's part of his job in the incarnation was to come down and experience everything as a man. So, basically, the devil's tempting him, basically saying, obey your thirst or obey your hunger, turn this bread from stones, that wouldn't tempt me, but tacos would.

Do a miracle for yourself. That's part of what that is involved in this temptation. Jesus did a lot of miracles, but they were always for other people and to glorify His Father. The devil saying, hey, do a miracle for yourself.

You've got the power. Use your deity to aid your humanity. I think that's ultimately what's being done here. And so this makes the temptation of Christ very, very unique, because of the incarnation.

And in Jesus' response, it is written. the next, temptation that we see. I'm sorry, maybe I'm, there we go. I, throw yourself down before me.

So we see that in verses 5 to 8, look at verse 5. Then the devil taking him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. So it's almost like he went to a high mountain, but then he's able to show him everything. And the devil said to him, all this authority I will give you and, and their glory, for this has been delivered to me and I give it to whomever I wish.

and therefore, if you will worship me, all will be yours. Jesus answered and said to him, get behind me, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only. You shall serve. And so, what's the nature of this temptation?

It's like, why wait? Why wait for the kingdom? Why have to go through the cross to get to the kingdom? You can have the kingdom right now without a cross, without suffering as a man.

I'll go ahead and grant you the kingdom. The devil is called the God of this world, right? So, you always have to be careful when there's statements that are coming out of the mouth of Satan or demons on the pages of Scripture. Scripture records the words accurately, but it doesn't mean they're truthful words, right?

So, just because the devil's saying it doesn't mean that he has all this power that he claims, he can just grant it to anybody he wants. We know that that's ultily underneath God's sovereignty. But he is the God of this world, and he's saying to Jesus, hey, bow to me and I'll go ahead and give you all these things. Avoid the cross, kingdom now.

Rule in your humanity without the Father would probably be part of this temptation. You can rule right now. You don't need your Father. Jesus's response, it is written, it goes back to the word of God again.

let's look at the 3rd temptation. Throw yourself down from the pinnacle verses 9 to 13. Let's go ahead and read that. Then he brought him to Jerusalem, set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if, if you are the Son of God, Throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over you to keep you, and in their hands, they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Jesus answered and said to him, it has been said, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Now, let me just say something a little bit about the order here. Luke is one of the things that's, known about Luke's Gospel is he will transpose scenes for narrative and theological reasons.

You, you guys ever go to the movie, go to the movies and you might know the historical situation, but the movie will actually start. With something that happens at the end of the story. You guys know that concept? You kinda start, you're kinda building interest, and then you're not really sure how everything's gonna wrap up, but it starts that way and then it says 10 years later or 4 days ago, and then you move into the narrative.

Luke does that in different places. In fact, he does it here. he's gonna do it again here in a moment. we know from the other gospels that this 3rd temptation actually happened 2nd, according to the other gospels.

So, why does Luke want to put this one last of the 3? Now, most people would admit that these are 3 sample temptations, but these are the ones that all the gospels mention, but Luke puts it last. and I believe there is a reason, there is some emphasis here. On the concept of throwing yourself down.

We're gonna see this idea of throwing down several times in this chapter, throwing off, throwing down. Luke uses a bunch of different synonyms. He doesn't use the exact same word every time, but this idea of throwing and thrusting happens throughout the chapter. So, here, the devil takes him up to this pinnacle and says, throw yourself down.

Throw yourself off of this pinnacle and basically do a tempt or do a miracle for yourself, you're worth it. Jesus, you're worth it. Go ahead and throw yourself down and, and then make your father come rescue you, cast your humanity upon your father's deity. Jesus' response, it has been said.

And so we have these three different temptations. that occur, that set up the rest of the narrative. Basically, Jesus escapes these temptations through the word. We're gonna see that he, he needs to escape a second issue as we look at Jesus' hometown.

So, the devil tries to coax Jesus, he attempts to coax him into these temptations. Now, Jesus, we're gonna see he goes to his hometown. Who tries to kill him. And this is somewhat befuddling, as we look at 14 and following.

it's befuddling as to why his hometown would attempt. To kill him, his hometown is, as we're, as we're gonna see here, it's, it's up in Galilee. he's, from Nazareth in Galilee. And.

And so, let's go ahead and read the narrative starting in verse 14. Verse 14 and 15, then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit. So we see the Holy Spirit again is, is guiding this whole process to Galilee. And news of him went out through all the surrounding region, and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

So, this is like a, a statement that basically gives us the full swath. This is an overview statement. Jesus was going around all of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues. Look at verse 44 real quick, and he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Most of your translations say, other translations say Galilee. And so this narrative is bookended by Jesus. He's teaching in all the synagogues in different places. Now, Luke is gonna give us a, for instance, starting in verse 16.

For instance, he preached in synagogue, in the, in the synagogue in Nazarene or Nazareth, where he's from. and this is another instance, this is the 2nd instance where Luke has chosen to put things out of order for us. He's gonna tell us about the ministry in Nazareth before Capernaum, even though we know Capernaum came before Nazareth. How do we know that?

Well, we know that from the other gospels, but also, if you look down at verse 23, look at verse 23 with me. When Jesus is in the middle of his preaching, he says, you will surely say this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we have done in Capernaum, do also here. Whatever we've heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country.

That tells us that he's already been down to Capernaum and has done his teaching and ministry miracles by the time he's taught in Nazareth. So it begs the question, why is Luke taking material and front loading it? Why did he move the, the pinnacle scene back and move the Nazareth scene up? I'm not gonna answer that question yet, but I just want you guys to have that in your mind.

Is this, is this making sense so far? We're not saying that Luke is not doing anything uncouth here. He's just, this is part of the, the nature of gospel as a genre is gospel writers sometimes will put things in the exact order, but sometimes they'll arrange things by topic. Another example of this would be Matthew 13, where we have all those parables that are listed.

All those parables, that's like an anthology of all the parables that Christ taught. He's not saying that he taught every one of these parables in this exact order on this particular day. Matthew 13 just gives us an anthology of the parables, and the gospel writers would do that for theological reasons, just like a movie writer will arrange the material sometimes to get a particular point across or an effect. Does that make sense?

Nod your head. OK, cool. OK, so let's look and see what is, what's the hometown doing here. First of all, Jesus reads and he exposits some of the word.

Let's look at verse 16. So, he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. We know he wasn't born there, but he was brought up there. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.

And stood up to read. So probably the custom is, not only that he went to that particular synagogue growing up, but it seems like, maybe as he got older and hit his bar mitzvah, that there would be times where he would be allowed to read the scriptures. So verse 17, and when he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, see, he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

This is the 3rd time we've seen the Spirit mentioned. because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to recover, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. So he's reading from Isaiah 61 verses 1-2. And there's a couple little textual gloss things that we're not really gonna spend much time on.

If you guys have a new King James versus an NES there's like one little difference and that has to do with copies, not original. Sometimes, the copyist will say, hey, wait, this is in the Septuagint, and so it belongs here too, and And that has nothing to do with the original. A lot of times, periodically, you get an over scrupulous scribe that would say, hey, we need to touch this up a little bit. Sometimes it's a gloss and it'll make its way in.

So, not a big deal. so, we do know that he was reading from Isaiah 61:1-2. But notice down in verse 20 then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed upon him. So customarily, the guest preacher, so to speak, the aggressive guest rabbi would read a text, sit down, and now everybody's gonna wait for the homily or the exposition of the text.

Verse 21, and he began to say to them, Notice the word began. Do all of you guys have some version of began in your translations? So, what you're gonna see is not the entire homily, but a sampling of the homily. So, we just get the beginning of it.

Today, the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Pretty bold statement. This is the guy who grew up in town, who reads this passage about, everybody knows this is about the coming Christ or the Messiah. He reads, a portion of this prediction of the Messiah.

He doesn't go into the judgment part, but, but the jubilee part. And, and then says, it's fulfilled in your hearing. This is a clear claim. To being the Messiah.

And then, presumably, Jesus would have been continuing with the exposition because of the word began. Does that make sense? We don't get the rest of it, but we do get his opening, his hook, a shocking statement to get everybody's attention, hey, I'm the Christ. And so, then we move into their response, So the response initially seems to be marvelous, gracious.

Perhaps that's our boy. So, let's look down at their response, verse 22. So, all bore witness to him and marveled. At the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, and they said, is this not Joseph's son?

So they're, they're clearly marveling, that seems positive. They're saying, what gracious words? That seems positive. That last phrase, when they say, is this not Joseph's son, that could be taken negatively or positively.

Some commentators say they're now starting to, as the sermon is developing, they're getting more and more negative, and they say, wait a second. That's just Joseph's son. That could be one way to take it. Or it could be as he continues to preach, they're like, that's our guy.

that's Joseph's son. He's from our town. That's our boy. Either way, there's a turn that happens at some point.

and we're gonna see that turn here in a moment. And so that comes to like the, the next part. Clearly though, up, up to this point, they like what Jesus is saying. They like hearing the sermon.

Almost like the, the Jews like hearing Ezekiel in Ezekiel 33:32, the Lord says to Ezekiel, indeed, you are to them as a very lovely song of one who is a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, for they hear your words, but they do not do them. at this point, they love hearing Jesus' gracious words. This is marvelous. He's our guy.

We really like that turn of phrase. We like the way he uses his voice. That's a great illustration. when the Israelites would hear Ezekiel, there's a part of them that, boy, we really like the way this guy is speaking to us, almost like you enjoy a concert.

And we need to be careful when we come in week after week, we hear Milton, Pastor Milton, week after week, we get very familiar. that we don't just fall into this like, I really like that message. I loved his introduction. I loved his conclusion.

There was a great illustration, very good oration, and that we just get Like we're just little sermon tasters out here on a, on a weekly basis, rather than being impacted by the word of God. And so, these guys, they're, so they're, they, they have very good things to say until Jesus gets to the hometown application. So, Jesus, he tends to know what's in people's hearts, right? how often it is, he'll, he'll ask a question or somebody will ask him a question and he doesn't really ask the question, he answers what's really in the heart.

And so that seems to be what's going on, even though everybody seems to be excited about his message. He becomes an impolite guest again. Verse 23, he said to them, you will surely Say this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country.

Then he said, assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country, but I tell you, truly, many, widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens, heaven was shut up 3 years and 6 months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land, but none of them was Elijah sent, except to Zarafa in the region of Sidon to the woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel at the time of Elisha and the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Namon, the Syrian.

So he says, surely, assuredly, truly, these are like almost oath level pronouncements that he's making over his hometown. And then he goes in, he gives them a proverb, and then he gives them two Old Testament stories.

these are Jews who are very familiar with Elijah and Elisha, right? But he picks two characters. He picks a widow from Zarafath. This is like the Phoenician area up in kinda Towards the coast in the north, and then he picks Namon, and who's in Syria.

He's more inland in the north. What do the widow and Naman have in common? Anybody know? Yeah, somebody, I heard somebody say it.

They're Gentiles, yes. So these are not goods synagogue going or Sabbath keeping Jews. These are Gentiles. So Jesus has turned to his home crowd and said, I'm gonna tell you a proverb that you're not gonna like.

And I'm gonna tell you a couple of stories from the Old Testament about how that when Israel didn't want to hear the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, God turned to Gentiles, a widow. And a Syrian, and he ministered to them, not to the Israelites. OK. They should just say, amen.

Amen. The Lord is gracious towards widows. He's gracious towards the sick. You've come to heal the sick.

You haven't done it here yet, you've done it Campernium. but let's notice their response. All of a sudden, this group that was saying, marvelous, gracious, that's our boy, suddenly becomes, A murderous, that should say murderous mob, murderous, wrathful mob. Notice what it says.

In verse 28. Down to 30. So, all those in the synagogue, So all I think here really does mean all were filled with wrath, not filled with the spirit, filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out. This is our word, cast down or cast out of the city, and they led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, and that they might throw him down over the cliff.

Then passing through the midst of them, he went his way. That final verse is a little bit odd because it just, it's like a what do you call it? you, the, the story, the narrative builds up, builds up, builds up, and then, oh, and then he went his way. it sounds like how did that happen, but how do you have, yeah.

Yeah, so yeah, it just plateaus. Yeah, it's a good, good, good word choice. But doesn't this strike you a little odd that you have this hometown crowd that seems like they're enjoying the message, and then a few minutes later, they're walking, not just walking, they're running him out to a cliff to throw him over? How does that happen?

How do you have a bunch of good religious Sabbath-keeping Jews enjoying their Sabbath day from their boy, suddenly ready to throw their boy down a cliff. You could be, yeah, maybe they've been drinking. You never know. That could be it.

I think we have some contextual clues both before and after this incident. Remember when the devil is tempting Jesus, Luke takes the story about the pinnacle, puts it last, buds it up right next to the the Nazareth narrative, and the devil is telling Jesus, throw yourself down. So, and then the father will bear you up. Then he goes into the narrative of Nazareth, and Nazareth is wanting to throw him not off of a pinnacle, but off of a cliff, and we do see some miraculous intervention, it seems in verse 30 because he passes through the midst of them and just goes on his way.

We don't know what that involves. Did all of a sudden he disappear or did he look at them in a way and they parted ways? Did the wrathful mob suddenly get quiet? There's no explanation.

It's just an odd ending. and so, but what we do, if, if you think about what this, what this mob has become, and then you also think about how that there's the devil butted up before the narrative, there's gonna be demon casting in the, in the back end of the narrative. Notice what we see in a couple of places about the devil and murder and wrath in Ephesians 4:26, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. wrath, this type of like, we're going to just, there's such anger that we're gonna murder somebody seems to be connected to the devil.

Jesus later on and later interactions with the Pharisee says, you are of your father, the devil, and, and the desires of your father and of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning. He begins to accuse The Pharisees of wanting to murder him and, and wanting to murder him, they're aligning themselves with the devil. So it'd be hard not to come to the conclusion that this mob that wants to murder Jesus has aligned themselves with the devil.

Does this make sense? And I think we have contextual indicators for that, because Luke puts this narrative right after the temptation of Jesus, and right before another narrative that we're gonna look at where demons are all over the place, but the reaction is very, very different. And so let's, let's go to the third section of this chapter. By the way, they escape, the escape of Jesus from the temptation was through the word.

This one is escape to the midst of them. It seems to be a miraculous. escape And so, let's go ahead and look then. So we have the devil who, attempts to coa Jesus, the Nazarenes, try to kill Jesus.

Those in Capernaum want to keep Jesus, and so we see that Jesus' headquarters, they attempt to keep him. Let's look at verses 31 and following. Capernaum, by the way, is down there right on the, on the Sea of Galilee. So Nazareth, it would be a, a hike down from Nazareth to Galile to Capernaum.

That's why we see in verse 31, he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbaths. Do you guys all have a plural there? Sabbaths in verse 31? Not everybody has.

Some of you guys have singular. OK. Sabbath days if you have Sabbath days. OK.

What translation do you guys have? King James. OK. I'll have to look that one up.

and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority. So now we're gonna get an example. It seems like we have another bracket here of his teaching ministry, but now we're gonna get, for instance, example of him teaching. On a Sabbath.

By the way, they were astonished, just like the Nazarenees were amazed, these are astonished because his word was with authority. And now we're gonna get a 24 hour snippet of what like a day in the life of Jesus looked like in Capernaum. We know that he was in Capernaum quite a bit. this does end up becoming his headquarter area.

Peter and Andrew are from this basic area. And so, let's look at what happens here in verse 33 and following. Now, in the synagogue, there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice.

Saying, let us alone for what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Let's just stop right there for a second.

So, Jesus is in the synagogue. So there's somebody in the synagogue who's possessed with an unclean demon, so this would no doubt be a Jew. This is not a Gentile. And he says, let us alone for what do we have to do.

So one demon speaking on behalf of either many demons that are in this person or speaking on behalf of the multitudes of demons that are in the Copernum area that are possessing other people. We're not exactly sure, but notice he calls him Jesus of Nazareth. We know that Jesus of Nazareth becomes a title that is probably one of his more famous titles. I don't know that it's entirely escape our notice that a demon is calling him Jesus of Nazareth, right on the back end of this narrative that we've just heard of Nazarene's wanting to throw him over a cliff.

And so perhaps the demon is wanting to remind Jesus or wanting to point out the fact that you're about ready to head to a place where people are not gonna be so kind to you. Now, remember this narrative, when it comes to the actual timing, he, is he in Capernaum first or Nazareth first? Capernaum. So this comes before what we've just read about.

So, so this demon calls him Jesus of Nazareth, and, and the actual ordering and the actual historical ordering of things, it's later on that the Nazarenees try to throw him over. did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God, the Holy One of God comes from Psalm 16, a Davidic. A psalm that's clearly pointing to Jesus as the one that would fulfill that Davidic promise.

Jesus says, there in verse 35, he rebuked him, be quiet, come out of him. And when the demon had thrown him into the midst, it came out and did not hurt him. That's the, I think, 4th time we've seen some synonym of the word throw. Jesus, throw yourself down.

They tried to cast him out and throw him down. Now this demon throws him down. When you see that type of repetition in a narrative, especially a writer like Luke, it's probably not accidental. This concept, the, the demons are involved in throwing people down.

In this case, the demon's unable to hurt this individual, verse 3:6. Then they were all Amazed. So they're astonished and now they're amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, what a word this is, for with authority and power, he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out. And the report about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.

And Nazareth is what? In the surrounding region. Nazareth would have heard about these, these rebukings of demons, these casting out of demons. and so on.

So that's what happens in this 24 hour snippet. Luke's wanting to give us some examples of Christ's amazing and astonishing teaching with authority, goes into the synagogue, he's teaching a bunch of Jews, one of the Jews is demon possessed. The demon possessed knows that he's the Son of God. The devil had previously said, if you're the Son of God, the devil knows.

His demons are like, you are the Son of God. And casts this person that he's inside of down on the ground, but is not able to hurt him and Jesus is able to do exactly what's spoken of in verse 18. He is setting captives free. Now, we'll move quickly through verse 38 and following where Jesus, after rebuking a demon, he heals a mother-in-law.

he arose from the synagogue, entered Simon's house, probably not too far away from Capernaum, what is it called? Betheda. And Simon's wife's, mother was sick with a high fever. They made a request of him concerning her.

So he stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her and immediately she arose and served them. So he has power over demons and over fevers. And then at sunset, there's healing and demon rebuking. So verse 40, then the sun was setting, this is, so he's had a full day of ministry, all those who had Any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.

So everybody who comes to Jesus is getting healed. Verse 41, and the demons also came out of many crying out and saying, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And he was rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that he was the Christ. So, so this is bookended, the devil saying, if you're the Son of God, do this, that his demons are coming out saying, you are the Son of God, and he is casting them out.

So, what is the response? So you have, in, in verse 42, there's a, a morning of cleaving and leaving. So we had that sunset scene, but then verse 42, now when it was day or when it was morning, he departed and went to a deserted place. He'd start, we'd start this chapter with Jesus in the wilderness.

Now he goes back out into a wilderness like area and the crowd sought him and came to him and tried to keep him from leaving them. That's their reaction. The Nazarenees, where he grew up, they wanna throw him off a cliff. They don't just wanna get rid of them, they wanna kill him.

Those in Capernaum, they're so moved by his teaching, they're so moved by his healing and his casting out of demons that they wanna keep him around. Jesus, please stay with us. but then how does Jesus respond? he, he says, I, I really can't do that.

I, I must preach the kingdom of the, of God to all, or to the other cities also because for this purpose, it is necessary for me, for this purpose, I have been sent. And in verse 44, he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea, some translations say Galilee, that Galilee, that sets up the, the other bracket. that he continued to go and preach all throughout these areas. And so we have three different responses.

We have a, we have the devil's response, who's trying to coax Jesus. We have his hometown response where they ultimately want to kill him. And then we have his, his headquarters response at Capernaum where they wanna keep him. And so, the question that we're kinda left with is what What accounts for these responses?

obviously, the devil responds because he hates the Son of God. He's always opposed God, so he hates the Son of God. But then it seems like, and you can think about this yourself if you want, Luke front loads the Nazareth narrative right up against this temptation from the devil and demonstrates and shows us how that this completely calm crowd that seems to be enjoying the homily for the morning suddenly turns into a wrathful mob is not full of the spirit, they're in all likelihood, Filled with demons or being somehow aligned with the devil, that they would want to murder him, just like the Pharisees in John chapter 8.

It's the devil has been a murderer from the beginning.

You are like your father, the devil. and so, There does seem to be some indication of that. Then you move into the Capernaum setting, and Jesus is fully being confronted by demons, and they know that he's the Son of God, but rather than this group wanting to throw him off of a cliff, they're now, they're hearing his ministry, they're receiving his ministry. They don't want him to leave their town.

And so, kinda, it, begs the question for ourselves. these folks that we see in, in chapter 4, these are not Pagan people. These are religious people, and by way of application, we could, we could bring this to today. This is people at Cornerstone.

How are people on a weekly basis responding to the preaching and teaching of God's word? How are they responding when Pastor Milton gets up here to preach or Pastor Carlos or myself or our guests? How are we responding when the word is being sung, when the gospel is being sung? How are we responding in our Sunday school classes, at our women's meetings, at our men's meetings?

Well, there's really only two responses to the gospel, and there's really no neutrality that we see in the page of scripture. Either we submit to him as Savior and Lord or pretend to rule our own little kingdom, which in reality is the devil's kingdom. he, there's two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of light, kingdom of darkness.

We know from scripture, first, was it 2 Timothy chapter 2, or is it 1 Timothy chapter 2, it says we have to be patient with all, knowing that the people that we're talking to have been taken captive by the devil to do his will, right? Even Peter, not possessed by the devil, but Jesus looks at Peter at one point says, get behind me, Satan, because you're not mindful of the things of God. That tells us that even believing people can somehow unwittingly align themselves with the purposes of the devil.

and so we have to ask ourselves on a daily basis, are we for Christ or against him?

Wheat, tears, sheep and goats. We know at the end of the, at the end of days, there's gonna be people that really thought they were, they thought they were religious people, they thought they were following God, and they'll stand before Christ, the judgment day, and he will separate sheep from goats, and not everybody will be on the narrow path. This is a painting from, I believe the 1700s. That portrays the broad path and the narrow path, the broad path, the destructions on the left, the narrow path to the right that ultimately leads to the cross and then up to heaven.

What's interesting in your curriculum, this, this is a very interesting thought that the wide path that leads to destruction is actually so wide that people on the opposite side of the path might think that they are in totally different paths. And so, for instance, and this is basically a quote from your curriculum, the outward religious and moral person who claims to be a Christian and thinks he's following Jesus as a good teacher, looks across the path at the Hindu, worshiping an idol and doing yoga or the voodoo priest sacrificing animals and casting spells, and he thinks that they're on a different path, but they're not.

The path is broad and leads only to destruction. That's a very interesting point.

The broad path, there's all kinds of ways it can look. It can look very religious and good, it can look, you can have people who are Satan worshippers, and yet it's still the broad path. The narrow path is the path of submission to Christ, of humbling ourselves before Him and his ministry. So some questions for us to, to pray about and consider.

In light of this morning, a response to Jesus, this whole quarter, we've been talking about Jesus' authority, Jesus' teaching, his power over is to do miracles, and his power of the devil, and, and the, and the various responses that people have just teaching ministry. I think here at Cornerstone, one of the things we should ask ourselves is, has Jesus become too familiar? It's always, I don't know about you, but there's times where, I'll be out singing a hymn, and all of a sudden my mind will just start wandering, and then we get to the end of that hymn, and I'm like, what did I just sing?

I, I, and that's part of the weakness of our flesh.

We're thankful that we have a gracious Father that pities us, sees that we are but dust, and we can say, oh Lord, I've, my mind is wandered, help me to really focus in. But the problem becomes, is when we can go for week after week after week and hearing the word taught and singing the same songs, and then it's just not impacting our hearts anymore. And then on the side, we're giving ourselves over to things of the flesh and unwittingly giving our some of our will over to the devil and that can have a deadening effect.

We know that Christians can be deceived because of all of the exhortations in the Bible to not be deceived, right?

So Christians can be deceived. we pray, right? Our, oh Father, or, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive one another. do not deliver us into temptation, right?

But deliver us from evil or the evil one is the way most people take that gloss. So we, on a daily basis, we pray for the Lord to deliver us from the evil one. Why? We're Christians.

Because we need to be delivered from the evil one. He is a lion seeking whom he may. Devour. And so, one of the things that can help us is, is to just go to the Lord and say, Lord, help me not become so familiar with you that I behave like the Nazareth's and say, oh yeah, that's, that's that little boy that grew up over there at Joseph's house.

And we just become sermon tasters and we're, we're just kinda like little mini sermon critics. In seminary, When I went to school, you get up, you prepare a message, and then part of the way you practice is you get up in front of all your other seminary students in your preaching lab, and you preach a message while they're all out there like writing on this little critique sheet. And it's very good for preachers to, to do that and you get a video, you go home, watch the video, you have to critique yourself.

But it's somewhat disconcerting, right?

you're, you're trying to preach and get passionate, and you see people, oh yes, I like that. Oh, I like that inflection right there, and you need to tighten up your introduction. You don't really understand your hook and how it, it, it matched the conclusion and maybe if you brought your intro and use that in your, so these are good things that are helpful for us. But if we're behaving that way on a Sunday, And all we're, instead of just listening to what the Holy Spirit wants to say to us through the word as it's being preached, rather, we're out there like, oh yes, yes.

Oh no, I don't like the way that they said that right there. Now, they need to tighten that up. You mispronounced that word. That's what I do to myself every Monday when I'm walking around the auditorium here listening to my own message.

I'm like. I'm critiquing myself, right? I mispronounced that word. but we, we don't want to become too familiar.

Secondly, do him as your Lord and Savior? I think, our children need to be constantly asked this question, is do you, have you really embraced Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you just grown up in the synagogue and then Jesus shows up and you've, you've been hearing this since you were little, and it's just very familiar and you've heard the story of Jonah and the whale and all this stuff. You're like, yeah, Dad, we know.

Or is it really impacted your heart, where you've understood your own sin and, and you're seeing the Lord humble you. But even as Christians, just like Kumi was saying last week, right? That we can fall into one of those four soils, we can bounce back and forth at times where our hearts can start to get hard to God's word and, and yes, he is, we are born again, but sometimes we can start to sneak out here and wanna take control of certain aspects of our lives and we always need to be going back.

Lord, help me on a daily basis, forgive my sins, help me to forgive others, help me to hear your word this morning.

Have you been humbled by the Holy Spirit or like the devil, are you exalted in pride? I think that's part of the key of this chapter, chapter 4 is we see that In the middle part with the narrative, if you have a bunch of people wanting to murder Jesus, that cannot be humility that's led to the Holy Spirit. Would you guys agree with that? We, we see the Holy Spirit all over this chapter, but somehow the people in the middle had not.

Engage the Holy Spirit, and they want to murder Jesus. that's the devil's work. whereas the, the in Capernaum, at least at this point in the life of Capernaum, the Spirit had brought a sense of need and humility. They saw that, yes, Jesus is the one who preaches the gospel to the poor.

We need to become poor in spirit. If every one of you in this room were as rich as Bill Gates and I offered you $100 to help you out, what would you say? Like, what are you talking about? I'm Bill Gates, right?

But if every one of you in this room had lost everything they owned last week, and you're wondering where you're gonna get your next meal and I offer you $100 what are you gonna say? Thank you very much. And part of the spirit's role is to help us see every day, we are poor people in need of the gospel every single moment. And when we see that we need the gospel every moment, that's the work of the Spirit in our lives.

Can we waffle, did I spell that right? Can we waffle between Nazareth and Capernum? I think so. I think so.

I think there, there can be total people who aren't born again yet, right? That are over here in Nazareth, and there could be people who are born again that are Capernaum, but we know from scripture that there are times where our hearts can go back and forth, and so we do need to pray, Lord, keep me where Capernaum is, at least this moment. The sad thing is, a few chapters later, later on in Christ's ministry, what do we see Jesus saying about Capernum? Luke 10:15, you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades.

Remember when he's going through that diatribe talking about if the works that, that had been done here were done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented long ago. So Capernaum starts out well in their response to Christ's ministry. But something happened where they stopped responding and became much more like Nazareth, so much so that Jesus brings this diatribe against them and says, you guys are worse off than Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon. And so we have to, as individuals, as a church, we have to be constantly aware and on guard, crying out to the Lord to, to, to keep our hearts, our hearts soft and so on.

So that's, that's basically what we have this morning. So I wanna, just lay out those applications to you. I really commend this chapter to you for your own personal, study, I, I'm just amazed that Luke's, obviously he's being, he's inspired by the Holy Spirit, but part of the Holy Spirit's role was raising Luke up from the time he was a little guy, bringing him up to be a doctor, a guy who has the command of language, just the way that he crafts this chapter by inspirational the Holy Spirit, and just the length, the word choices that he uses to try to drive home this point, through Christ's historical ministry.

Is to me, just nothing short of amazing.

So let's go ahead and pray and then. If you guys have questions, you can come on up. Next week, we will be covering, we'll be moving into, really the initiation of the church. If you look at the packet that's on the back there, we're moving into another quarter where we've finished up basically the life of Christ now.

We'll be looking at his death and passion next week to kinda springboard into, into the church era. And so it's gonna be a good A good quarter as we, as we transition through the year into 2019. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you so much for this time for us to study your word together, how amazing it is and to see your wisdom, your power over the devil, your power over demons, and the power of the gospel to come and, and change our lives as we are made poor in spirit.

We thank you, Lord Jesus, that you came to preach the gospel to us that are captives, spiritually blind, needing to be set at liberty. And, we thank you, Lord, that your word went out to your apostles and, 2000 years later, we hear the gospel ourselves and, and here we are in this room, experiencing the freedom that comes through your spirit. We pray, Lord, that on a daily basis that you would protect us from the hardening of our own hearts, protect us from the devil who is always going about seeking to devour people.

There's many different plots that he has sometimes, just to lure us into, to sin, to lure us towards your kingdom, various warnings that we see in scripture, but, we don't always understand all these, how all these things work and interact with our flesh, but we trust you and Ask God that That you would forgive us of our sins, help us to forgive one another, protect us, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

We pray all this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, and all God's people said, Amen.