AN UNEXPECTED MESSIAH: HONOR HIM

 

3/18/2012

1.     HEAR GOD’S WORD (LUKE 3:1-20)

·        John is the voice and Christ is the Word! 

Luke 3:2

2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,

NASB

God had appointed that there should be but one high priest at a time, but here were two, to serve some ill turn or other: one served one year and the other the other year; so some. One was the high priest, and the other the sagan, as the Jews called him, to officiate for him when he was disabled; or, as others say, one was high priest, and represented Aaron, and that was Caiaphas; Annas, the other, was nasi, or head of the sanhedrim, and represented Moses. But to us there is but one high priest, one Lord of all, to whom all judgment is committed.

From Matthew Henry’s commentary on Luke 3:2

4 as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

" The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

'Make ready the way of the Lord,

Make His paths straight. 

5'Every ravine shall be filled up,

And every mountain and hill shall be brought low;

And the crooked shall become straight,

And the rough roads smooth;

6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.' " 

NASB

When kings would travel they would have an entourage go ahead of him and clear the way of any obstacles or hardships in order to make his travel more smooth.

2.     RECOGNIZE GOD’S SON (LUKE 3:21-38)

• Baptism means identification.
• Jesus was baptized to completely identify Himself with humanity.

3.     RESIST THE DEVIL’S TEMPTATIONS (LUKE 4:1-13)

• The word "tempt" has a twofold meaning. 
• "to incite and entice to evil"
• "to seduce"
• If a person can be seduced to do evil, that means there is something in the individual that causes him to yield.
• It would not be a temptation unless something in a person could yield to it. 
• For this reason, the Temptation of Jesus was not a tempting of His deity but of His humanity!
• Only one of His natures could be tempted and that was his human nature. 
• As God, He is perfect and perfectly holy. 
• To yield to temptation means that He would sin and there would be sin in Him, which would be impossible for One of the Holy Trinity.

4.     UNDERSTAND CHRIST’S MESSAGE (LUKE 4:14-30)

• We have the record of two visits that Jesus made to His hometown of Nazareth.
• Luke 4 relates the first visit -- He went there alone.
• On the second visit, recorded in Mark 6, we find His disciples are with Him.
• On both occasions He entered the synagogue and taught, and on both occasions He was rejected by His fellow townspeople.
• Possibly Joseph died between these visits.

Luke 4:22

22 And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, "Is this not Joseph's son?"

NASB

Mark 6:3

3 "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him.

NASB

4A. RECOGNIZE CHRIST’S MISSION LUKE 4:16-21)

16 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. 17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book, and found the place where it was written,

18 "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 downtrodden,

19 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord." 

20 And He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him. 21 And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

NASB

·         Jesus made it very clear that He was the one of whom the passage from Isaiah spoke; but the people were still spiritually blind and recognized Him only as the son of Joseph.

4B. RESPOND WITH ACCEPTANCE (LUKE 4:22-24)

22 And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, "Is this not Joseph's son?" 23 And He said to them, "No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, 'Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your home town as well.'"  24 And He said, "Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his home town.

NASB

·         They, of course, were judging Nazareth by themselves. 

·         They had no faith in One of their own, and they had no faith in themselves.

·         They thought they knew Him, which was their stumbling stone.

·         In other words, the people liked what He had said about the dawn of the Messianic kingdom, but they resented the implication (revelation) that He, Jesus of Nazareth, who grew up among them, was the promised Messiah!

·         Even sin-hardened scribes and Pharisees accepted the fact that Jesus worked miracles, but that did not make them believers in Jesus as the Christ; the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.

4C. RECOGNIZE CHRIST’S CONCERN (LUKE 4:25-27)

 25 "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; 26 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. 27 "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."

NASB

·         Zarephath and Naaman were two gentiles living outside of Israel during the ministry of Elijah.

·         The Lord is illustrating that they, His own people, were apt to miss a great        blessing because they would not accept who He was. 

·         They would be like the many lepers of Israel who were not healed during the time of Elijah.

4D. REACT POSITIVELY (LUKE 4:28-30)

28 And all in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; 29 and they rose up and cast 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. 30 But passing through their midst, He went His way.

NASB

·         The thought that anyone would picture them worse than the Phoenician widows and Syrian lepers filled them with wrath.