My wife used to work at Wal-Mart. One of the stories of Wal-Mart lore that used to circulate around there concerned the day that Sam Walton, the owner of the whole enterprise, visited one of his stores. Even though he was wealthy, Walton was known for his simplicity. He drove an old red pickup truck and didn’t always dress up. On this occasion, he was dressed in overalls and the store he was visiting wasn’t open yet for the day. Sam could have started by explaining who he was, but sometimes, by being anonymous, you can learn a lot. He approached the door and attempted to go in. A store manager stopped him. Rather than handle the scene respectfully, he was rude and disrespectful to this redneck hick trying to get in too early. He didn’t recognize that the man he was mistreating was the owner of his store. Guess who didn’t work for Wal-Mart anymore. Oops!
It’s funny when it doesn’t happen to you, isn’t it? But some of the most unbelievable words in the Bible are in the introduction to John’s gospel, and they speak of One Who was unrecognized.
(John 1:10-11) He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
For these next 2 months we’re going to be looking into a period in the life of Jesus. It’s going to take us through a lot of different events. We’ll consider a lot of different people. But, most importantly, we’ll be looking at how Jesus “came unto His own.”
We’re starting our journey in the life of Jesus as He’s just getting into His ministry. Jesus is going to impact the world from a geographically small area we know as Palestine. Today’s text is during a visit to the northern area of Palestine called Galilee, pretty removed from Jerusalem where the temple was. Matthew even cites Isaiah and calls it “Galilee of the Gentiles.”
There, halfway between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee is the city of Nazareth. Nazareth didn’t have that great of a reputation. We recognize it as the hometown of a married couple, Mary and Joseph. Even though Jesus wasn’t born there, he grew up there and became known as a “Nazarene.”
Understand that calling someone a Nazarene wasn’t a compliment in the 1st Century. That negative name stuck with Jesus and His disciples. In fact, with a little adjustment, it’s the same word that Muslims use to refer to Christians today – like us calling the followers of Sun Yung Moon “Moonies.”
So, Luke takes his camera from the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness and follows Him up to Galilee, and zooms in this one day that Jesus travels to His old home town of Nazareth.
To appreciate the impact of this text, we have to start with the finish. *vv27-28. Just a little earlier in this scene, everyone seems to appreciate Jesus just fine
*vv15,22. But now it’s ending in a mob scene!
“He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
Nazareth is just the first place. It turns out that some people just can’t seem to “handle” Jesus.
Now, I’m using that term in a way we use it – we talk about being able to “handle” something. We mean being able to endure it – “I can’t handle taking that medicine”; or we might just mean feeling comfortable – “I don’t think I can handle being around him all day.”
In more ways than one, the people of Nazareth couldn’t “handle” Jesus.
Apparently, neither can a lot of the people of Joplin, or of Missouri, or of the US, or abroad.
Why is that? What is it that turns them from thinking He was a pretty OK guy to wanting to throw Him off a cliff? Why can’t people handle Jesus? I asked that question as I studied this passage, and I hope that we can adequately answer it before we leave here today.
I want us to be able to answer it for ourselves – because, let’s face it, there are some things about Jesus that we all just don’t handle very well. I also want us to be able to answer it for the sake of other people who are struggling with Jesus. Maybe you’re one of them.
Why can’t people handle Jesus?
I. He’s Too Familiar
(Luke 4:14-16) Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.
Jesus was in the practice of worshiping every week. Don’t make the mistake of thinking He was there to hear the preacher. Can you imagine Jesus sitting as an old rabbi explained the passages about the Messiah?! But I notice that it was His custom to be there. Just note that.
The reports about Jesus’ preaching and miracles have stirred the crowds, even in a place like Nazareth. The town’s one synagogue was probably pretty crowded that Sabbath. There are rough seats – men on one side, women on the other. There, up near the front is a cabinet of painted wood containing the synagogue’s most precious possessions – scrolls - the books of Moses and the Prophets. In the front is a pulpit where the reader and interpreter stand to read. Someone first gets up to read from the books of Moses. The reader pauses after each verse to allow the interpreter to translate from Hebrew into Aramaic. The synagogue rulers are seated in the front, facing the congregation. It’s their job to read and interpret the lessons from the law and the prophets, but anytime a visiting rabbi is there, they’d usually invite him to speak. Today, there’s a teacher whose fame is spreading across the nation, and He’s a hometown boy! After hearing from the law, it’s time for the reading of the prophets, and Jesus gets up to read.
(Luke 4:17-22) The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.
These people were familiar with Jesus! Their kids had grown up with Him. They’d been at feasts and funerals with Him. They knew His face. They had pieces of woodwork in their homes with His initials carved into them. They knew His voice. They had memories about what He was like as a little boy. He was familiar. After some 30 years in Nazareth, people were familiar with Jesus. He was the carpenter’s son, they said. Well, no actually He wasn’t Joseph’s son.
Maybe they didn’t really know Him at all.
And all around us this morning are people faced with a similar difficulty. Jesus is familiar, very familiar, but they don’t know Him.
More artwork has centered around Jesus than any other person, yet we’re not even sure what He looked like. Still, all I have to do is put up a picture and ask, “Who is that?” and the average person would be able to tell you, “That’s Jesus.” And as I look through the ages at all the attempts to picture Jesus, I’m amused by the way artists try to fit Him into looking even more familiar. It’s not unusual to see art from Africa, China, Italy, and Japan that makes Jesus look more like someone from that culture than like a 1st century Jew. The fact that there are so many versions of how Jesus looks ought to tell us something: we really don’t know. Oh, He looks familiar, but so many people really don’t know Jesus.
Doesn’t Jesus want us to know Him? Exactly! He wants us to truly know Him. To know Him falsely is what’s offensive.
In fact, it’s in that superficial familiarity that we’re able to keep Jesus at a distance. If we can keep Him on the canvass or on the book page, we don’t let Him into our lives. That, we can handle.
But when He goes from being the carpenter’s son to the Son of God, that’s harder to handle. We can look at a painting of Jesus on the cross and handle that, but when we’re called on to bow there and worship such a Savior, and call Him our Champion, a lot of people can’t handle that.
Ill – People who handle money a lot are trained to spot a counterfeit. I’m told that bank tellers are trained so that, if a phony bill ever passes through their hands, they’ll know – and they do that, not by studying all kinds of counterfeit bills, but by studying the real thing. The most effective way to alert them to a phony is to have them be very familiar with the real thing.
The same is true when it comes to your ideas about Jesus. You don’t need to study everyone’s misinformed or uninformed ideas about Who He is and what He’s like. You need to spend time with the real thing. This morning, some of you aren’t appreciating Jesus the way you should because you’ve come to know Him as a rosy-cheeked picture on the wall.
If the wrong image of Jesus has become too familiar to you, you need to get back to the real thing.
(Philippians 3:8-11) What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Get past acquaintance with Jesus. Get to know Him.
Another reason people can’t handle Jesus is that
II. He’s Too Demanding
Or so they say.
-Jesus had chosen Isaiah 61 to read from that day. That sounded good to synagogue crowd in Nazareth. It’s a passage telling how God was going to bless His people. We don’t have Jesus’ exact words here, but we also know that He proceeded to tell them He was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Even that was OK to the crowd that day. Things don’t come apart until v23.
Nazareth isn’t a whole lot different from the place where you work or the place where you go back to school. They’ve accepted Jesus as a carpenter. They’ve accepted Him as a teacher and a local celebrity. They’ve even, on that day, accepted Him as a reader and a teacher, but when it comes to Him being interpreter and agenda-setter, they can’t handle Him.
Luke 4:23-27 Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'" "I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian."
They know these 2 stories from the OT. They didn’t seem to have much to do with Isaiah 61 that Jesus had just read. But they have a lot to do with the attitudes and hearts of the people there in Nazareth. Jesus is making some demands of them. Couched inside those 2 stories are implicit demands they needed to hear, and, sure enough, that you and I need to hear too!
1. Come to grips with parts of the Bible that you ignore.
These Jews knew those stories were in there. But they chose to gloss over the facts in them. They’d tell you that those passages are true, but they never took some of the details there to heart.
We all have certain parts of the Bible that we choose to ignore. And if Jesus were the One speaking to you this morning, He might very well tell us to stop ignoring the things in the Bible we don’t want to listen to:
Stop ignoring where the Bible says to look out for the interests of others; to keep a rein on your tongue and on anger; to keep yourself free from the love of worldly stuff; to stop excusing impurity.
I imagine that for us it would be a lot like it was in Nazareth – Jesus would say to come to grips with parts of the Bible that you ignore.
2. Accept the fact that God cares about others besides you.
It isn’t too surprising that Jesus would challenge the Jews of Nazareth to see that God cares about everyone.
He had come from Sychar, in Samaria. There, the people the Jews hated responded to the news of the Kingdom and believed in Jesus. When He pointed out the OT stories of the widow and of Naaman, Jesus was demanding that they accept God’s care for everyone.
I wonder if Jesus wouldn’t remind us of the way God sent the Church into the world for the sake of reaching every person; if He wouldn’t just share with us stories of what God is doing in other parts of the world so that we could learn that people, all people, matter to God.
3. You should care about others
-the Jews taught that the reason God created the Gentiles was to fuel the fires of hell. That was their explanation. And with that attitude, they were just as glad to see them go there.
But Jesus implicitly demanded that these Nazarene people needed to start sharing God’s concern for all people – even the Gentiles.
You and I need to be reminded of that – constantly. Whether it’s the bag lady who hangs out by the Joplin Library or the Libyan guy you saw in a National Geographic, you and I should care about them simply because God does.
4. Accept What I Am
-the Jews of Nazareth had a preconceived idea about the appearance of the Messiah. He was going to be a deliverer, a mighty man. The Romans were going to shrink in front of Him as He ushered in an age of prosperity like no other.
How many of you have had some certain view or idea about Jesus only to have it changed as you got to know Him better?
The bottom line is pretty simple: Jesus demands to be treated as Lord. Now, that’s tough to handle, but the alternatives are a lot tougher. The Nazarenes couldn’t handle that about Jesus.
And you and I know people who are in the same place. Jesus is fine as long as I don’t have to call Him Lord. There are even churches that present a Jesus like that. You can take Him as Savior, but you don’t have to call Him Lord. There’s a lot of appeal in that kind of teaching – there’s just no truth in it.
Yes, Jesus is demanding. He demands to be Lord of your life. Some people can’t seem to handle that. But those are the same people who can’t handle their lives that are lost, empty, and devastated by tragedy. They’ve just given in to someone else’s demands instead of Jesus’.
III. He’s Too Powerful
Luke 4:28-30 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
This is a miracle. Jesus isn’t just slippery or a fast runner. This angry mob was going to kill Him. They have already forced him out of the town, out to the edge of the cliff – but that’s where it stops. The time isn’t right. Somehow, miraculously, Jesus passes through the crush and puts an end to it all.
Up to this point, I’ve been talking about peoples’ inability to “handle” Jesus. Here’s another one. Jesus will go to the cross and die according to His plan. He isn’t going to have His life accidentally ended that day. They don’t accept Him because He demands that He be called Lord, and now they can’t destroy Him because He is Lord! They couldn’t “handle” Jesus because He’s too powerful!
What did they say as Jesus walked right through them? What was the look on their faces as they just let Him by? Did they have the same attitude as only a moment before?
I see, in this story, a preview of everyone’s confession of Jesus: We can proclaim that Jesus is Lord now and live like it with great joy, or we can deny it now and one day, when it’s too late, proclaim He is Lord with terror.
(Philippians 2:9-11) Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We buried Bonnie Hardin this past week. Not really. We buried Bonnie’s body this past week. Bonnie has gone on. But you know what? One day, maybe today, there’s going to be some kind of staggeringly loud shout. There’s going to be the blast of a trumpet that’s going to be heard worldwide. And Jesus is going to come through the clouds just like He left. And all around, the people who have died with Jesus as their Lord are going to rise from the dead with new bodies and launch into the sky! And, if we’re alive when that happens, we’re next! We who remain are going to be caught up with them and launched into the clouds where, all together, we’re going to meet the Lord in the air and be done with every bad thing that ever happened on this earth.
Now, I’m not sure what’s going on with all the people for whom it’s too late - who rejected Jesus to this point, but I’m pretty sure of one thing: as they stand there and watch this happen, every one of them is going to be confessing Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father! You don’t just stand by and watch this happen and remain an unbeliever!
One day the tongue of every unbelieving person is going to proclaim it: Jesus is Lord!
That’s what the Scriptures tell us. You can’t handle that kind of power. You need to let Him handle you.
Conclusion:
Almost 30 years Jesus lived there in Nazareth. The people of Nazareth recognized Jesus. But, He knew them too. He’d grown up with these people. Perhaps some of them were his companions from childhood or His neighbors next door. Maybe some of them were people who’d taught Him skills.
Can you picture Jesus as He walks away toward Capernaum? And as He walks along, He casts a glance back to His old home town – a town where it seems now they just can’t handle Him. What does He think?
Now, picture this. Jesus is passing through here this morning. By the retelling of His story, by meeting around His table, by this time for decision, Jesus is passing by. And as He goes by again, another Sunday, and He glances back at you, what’s He thinking?
You don’t need to handle Him. You need to let Him handle you. Let Him handle your doubts and fears. Let Him handle your uncertain future. Let Him handle your mistakes. Let Him handle your bad habits. Get familiar with the real Jesus. Let Him go to work on you. Pronounce that He is Lord today, while there’s still time.
