Elmhurst CRC

Sunday Message - Luke 4-14-21

January 24, 2022 Jeff Klein
Elmhurst CRC
Sunday Message - Luke 4-14-21
Show Notes Transcript

- with Jeff Klein, Lead Pastor

Jeffrey Klein  00:01

Would you pray with me? Let's pray together. So, Lord, we're bringing your word out now. It's really been out the whole time, but we're bringing out to look at it more deeply and to think about it. We know that we need your Holy Spirit's help to hear from you, Lord God, what you have for us this morning. So we don't want to hear just the preachers yapping more; we want to hear a word from the Lord, surrounded and powered by Your Holy Spirit's power and your Holy Spirit's voice. In Your name, we pray Jesus. Amen. 

 Jeffrey Klein  00:36

So, my nickname in middle school in high school was Klein Stein. My last name is Klein, and my fellow students call me Klein Stein because I was really good at science back then. In fact, I entered the science fair in eighth grade and seventh grade and won an outstanding award in the science fair for my amazing scientific experiments. One of those experiments in eighth grade was to take my Iguana, which was a big old lizard that I kept in the house, much of my mom's dismay, and to study that Iguana and to see if I could actually change the Iguana's behavior, and health based on the environment I placed the Iguana in. So first, I put them in a little tiny tank that was too, too small for him, he became super sedentary and almost looked unhealthy. Then I built a larger cage, way bigger than I thought he needed. And believe it or not, he grew like a pretty big like lots in this big cage. Then I decided to try to change him from an animal that was awake during the day to a nocturnal lizard that was awake during the night and I was successful by changing the lighting in his cage. That was pretty fascinating. In my conclusion, environments shape living creatures, whether they know it or not. This is also true according to social scientists, humans, are shaped by the environments that we live in. We are formed over time are those environments. In fact, we may be being shaped by this environment we live in and not even know that we're changing. Because it happens over a slow amount of time little by little that these environments you live in, slowly shape and change you and you have no idea it's even happening to you. DuPage County is an environment. Yeah, it's been built by good people who have worked really hard. It's its environment is we work hard. And we accomplished a lot with our smarts. And we have lots of resources because of it. Right? We're able to build a lot of resources and gain a lot of wealth. We're super well resourced.. We have nice houses, big cars, manicured lawns, we are all about our kids getting the right ACT score and SAT score, so they can go to college and be successful just like us. True. We don't go anywhere without our cell phones. constantly going off. In fact, now my kids gave me this for Christmas, this darn Apple Watch. It just brings all the time on my wrist now. So I mean, I gotta turn the notifications off, even more, drives me bananas. We're super busy. We're so busy. And busyness is sort of a badge of honor if you can say that you're super busy. And you work 60 hours a week and you got this that the other thing going on. It's like we hold that up as a badge of honor, DuPage County. Now, here's the thing, we never asked ourselves, how did this environment get shaped? How did it get formed? Who made it? Who created it? How is it shaping us? We assume this is some sort of God-given environment that we live in DuPage. County, but what if it's not? What if it's been created by some other force to completely shape us into something that we are not supposed to be? Now you say, Klein, why are you talking about this depressing stuff this morning, when Jesus came into the world, he created himself as a human being and entered an environment. Right? And he came not to sort of just move in and blend into the environment, he came to change the environment to introduce alongside that environment, a whole new environment called the kingdom of heaven. So he came into his the values of the kingdom, the way of life of the Kingdom, the resurrection of the kingdom alongside the environment these people were already living in being shaped by now he came to a place called Galilee. And in Luke chapter four, we find out a little bit about His coming. So let's read this. "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread throughout the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him." Now, sometimes we read these verses, we don't catch it. They just see that Jesus came in the power of the Spirit

 Jeffrey Klein  05:00

So he's not just coming. He's coming with power. He's actually just finished being tempted in the wilderness by Satan himself. And now he really overcomes that temptation. And he moves into his ministry in the power of the Spirit, because it's only by the power of the Spirit, he can go this new environment called the kingdom of heaven, and exert its influence on the people that live in Galilee, where he's coming to. Now, this place, he comes to Galilee, it's an interesting place. It's in the northern part of Israel, it's quite removed from Jerusalem. If you live in Galilee, he can't get to the temple all the time, because of the temples in Jerusalem. So your worship of God has to be different. You're not living in the holy city, you're living quite a ways away from the Holy City. Much to people's surprise, Galilee was a very religious place at this time. But it was also the center of cultures moving through Galilee, which was the main highway of the ancient Roman world that went through Galilee. So these people were influenced, and constantly in touch with what was going on in the wider culture. But they were trying to be distinctive, and live out their faith in this environment called Galilee. Notice it says that Jesus goes to the synagogue. Now the synagogue, occasionally about it began in the exile of Israel, Israel was in captivity, their temple had been destroyed. So they had no place to worship. So they started to form these synagogues, these buildings where they would go and they read the Word of God. And here's someone teaching the Word of God to keep themselves connected to the Word of God that he received from Moses at Mount Sinai, right? The synagogue service had three parts to it, there were prayers. And actually, there's a whole book of prayers called the I'ma die, that they still print the synagogues today. There were scripture readings from the Torah, which is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and from the rest of the Bible, mostly the prophets. And then there was teaching that went on now, you're gonna love this and the typical synagogue service, they would read the scripture for 30 minutes, they would preach for two. Whoa, you're like, that'd be cool. Tim's Tim's applauding. We have reversed it in the mud in a church. We read the scripture for two minutes. And then some preacher talks for 30 or 20, or 25, or somewhere in there. Right, the interesting gossipers was different. So Luke lets us in now one of these synagogue worship services, and he shows us in the hometown of Nazareth, Jesus goes, let's read the next verse. 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 stopped to read. You know, sometimes we think going to church as a habit is not good. But look at that Jesus, as was his custom went to the synagogue, whether he felt like it or not. He knew we need to be in the synagogue every week, to hear the word of the Lord. So he went, love that. Now, Nazareth is not this Podunk little town, it's actually four miles from the city of Sioux forests, which is the capital city of the province of Galilee. Galilee was built by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, and it's very possible that Jesus in his father actually worked in the forest building that city for her interest. That's probably where they got their labor. It's about a 45-minute walk from Nazareth. So here in Nazareth, this is his hometown, where he grew up, he goes to the synagogue, and he's invited to teach what in the world when we just ask anybody, like pick something out of the crowd, say, once you come up, read the Scripture and teach us today, John, come on. John, be like I'm not doing that. Right. But in this case, there's what they did in the synagogue in the synagogue if you were a respected member of the community, someone that people knew. And remember, we heard earlier that Jesus was already his, his fame was spreading, everybody is talking about him as he went from synagogue and synagogue. So of course, the local synagogue ruler is going to be like, Wow, Jesus is here. This is exciting. Let's have him read and then he can teach for us. So invite him up to teach and preach. So he gets up, look what happens next. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Giant scroll, he unrolling it, he found the place where it is written. So now there were reading schedules in the synagogues, but in this case, it looks like Jesus took the scroll of Isaiah, open it up and found where he wanted to read from, and look what he reads. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach the 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. This is Isaiah 61:1-2.

 Jeffrey Klein  09:52

The story continues, then he rolled up the scroll, gives it back to the attendant, and sits down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. began st by saying to them today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing one line, a one-line sermon. Can you imagine that some Sunday? You're going out? We can be home early for lunch, right? Well, I sermon he is one mind he's done. It says a ton in this thing in the power of the Spirit. He makes this claim that in, in your hearing today, because I'm sitting here, this scripture is totally fulfilled. Now, why did they think Jesus' sermon was so amazing? What was going on in this environment that made them go? Whoa, right. Pretty interesting. I think that's an interesting question to ask. Well, first of all, you have to understand the religious environment in Galilee. And all of Israel at this time was a religious environment that was set up by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the scribes and religious leaders. That was all about the law. So if you asked how to follow God back, then they would tell you this, try harder, perform better, here's a list of rules follow them. How would that go for you? That would go poorly for me. If I was given a list of rules, when someone gives me a list of rules, I just want to break them. I don't know about you, that's just my personality. So if you're a Jewish person who grew up in this in this environment, you feel weighed down, you feel heavy, you feel like pursuing God is not about having this relationship with God. It's about doing all the right things. So super weighty kind of thing. It's like, it's like, yeah, it's like the religion of a rulebook. It's like your whole faith is just following a bunch of rules. Now, we kind of laugh at this, but if you think about it, in popular culture, the Church of Jesus is seen this way. We're seeing this way. Remember that some of you know our old friend of the church lady, remember her? "Isn't that special?" Remember that Saturday Night Live? That was Dana Carvey. He's how he saw the church, a bunch of rule givers who couldn't follow their own rules, hypocrites. Right? Recently, I watched this movie over Christmas break. It's I think it's on Netflix, "Don't Look Up" I never like to ruin movies for people. And I don't like to recommend them. Because whenever I recommend them, somebody will be offended by some swear word that said in there are some seeing that I don't. I don't endorse right by saying I watch this movie. I don't endorse that, right. But this movie is interesting because again, it's shown on a popular culture views, Christians. So this movie the premises, there's the end of the world's coming. There's an asteroid approaching Earth, it's gonna wipe out the earth. And there are some people trying to warn them, warn the leaders of our country that they need to do something. They basically ignore them. And at the end of the movie, these people that were trying to warn the country are now gathered any someone's house for dinner, and they're all sitting there talking about me. And we, we kind of had everything that life was pretty good. But now here we are, and the world's literally about to end. Or at least it's not going to go well for them. And then one person says, "Maybe we should pray? Maybe we should pray?" And the one lady says, "Well, I don't know how to do that. Like, I haven't, I'm going to try to get my church on." she says, "Do you just say Amen?" And somebody else says, "Yeah, I'm calling to pray, like, where do you begin to pray?" And then in one of the characters in the movie is this young millennial kid, who is a recovered evangelical, he says it to us during the movie, "I'm a recovering evangelical, I've left the evangelical faith. But I've come back in my own way." Which is very much what's happening right now. And this kid says, "I got this." And he reaches his hands out. Everyone joins hands around this table. And this kid says a prayer that is absolutely unbelievable. Literally, transcendently amazing prayer, as if he actually knows the person he's talking to. When he prays. It was amazing. It makes me think of the synagogues thing when Jesus is sitting there. And he starts to speak. I can't believe these people had the same experience that I had watching that movie, that all of a sudden, they were lifted from this heavy place of law-abiding, whatever rules morals to suddenly like, Whoa, there's way more. There's way more than we can access through this guy Jesus.

 Jeffrey Klein  14:46

The second thing that I think makes his sermon so amazing as Jesus basically takes and reinterprets Isaiah 61. He broadens it for them. Isaiah 61 If you read the literal part of it, the person who was anointed initially as Isaiah the prophet He's anointed to go to the actual literal captives in Babylon, and talk to them and say, "Hey, the Lord's coming in for you. He's here to free the oppressed. I'm here to announce it." But Jesus basically says, "No, it's bigger than that." Right? He's talking to a broader audience, that people on this earth and the human race live in an environment where they're captive, where they're oppressed, where they're poor, not just economically poor, but poor in spirit, poverty inside. People are pursuing all kinds of phony remedies to their issues and problems, stuff that doesn't really make any sense that Jesus says, I've come to announce, to announce that in my hearing with me here, blind people will see not just blind people seeing with their eyes, but spiritually blind people will see spiritually oppressed people will be free, spiritually, captive people will be opened up and resurrected. None of you know this, but the Bible all through the Bible describes our condition. I put a few verses up. These are just a few. Look at this II Corinthians 4:4 "For the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers. So they cannot see the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." I have said and talked in camps and conferences and without fail. There are kids sitting there who are so blinded, that no matter what illustration I give them, or what I say in them, or how profound the speeches they don't see what I'm talking about. Because the God of this age who created this environment has blinded them to the truth of the gospel in the glory of Jesus Christ. Look at this Romans continues "For although they knew God, these are glorified him, as God did not give thanks to him, but they're thinking became futile, and they're foolish hearts were darkened." So not only can you be blinding your eyes, you can also be blinding your heart, your heart can be darkened and unable to actually embrace and grab on to the truth that God has for you. Look at Ephesians "Once you were dead, because of your disobedience and your many sins used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world, He is the Spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way following the passionate desires, inclinations of our sinful nature." Now, when you read these passages, can you relate at all to this? Have you ever been captive? You've been blind. Everyone oppressed? Have you ever needed Jesus to do something for you that you can't do for yourself? Because guess what, if you've never acknowledged that or understood that about yourself, then you really aren't going to pursue God and what Jesus offered here in this passage in the synagogue, think about it. You've all been on a plane, right? When the stewardess gets up and says, okay, the safety announcements, here we go, here are the exits. I think they point with two fingers, here are the exits. And then let me show you when the oxygen mask comes down and put that on. And then there's a light jacket under your seat if you need that. And then and then there are these people heard by the exits. But of course, they've told us they're ready to open the doors for us in case something goes haywire. Of course, they really meant it. Right? How many of you are listening during that safety announcement? Nobody was like, read their paper looking around. nobody even thinks why because we don't believe it is gonna happen to us. We're fine. We're fine. We're safe on the plane. This is exactly what's going on in the human race. Tons of people out there living in this environment. This environment in DuPage County can lull you to sleep. Because think about it, you can provide a lot for yourself. You can get you to have all the money in the world to do things for your kids. You can give good education to them. You can get them good jobs, you can get good jobs. It's amazing. But the thing is, you can be in this environment and still be totally dad, totally oppressed, totally captive, totally blind. And unless you acknowledge it, lets you listen to the safety announcements that are being given. Once you realize you're captive and need help, then you really won't be desperate for this Jesus. You really won't come to him when he offers himself to you and says, I have anointed by the Lord, to make the blind see, to make the captives free to free and give the press to proclaim the Lord's favor over your life.

 Jeffrey Klein  19:48

Supernatural favor the power of the Spirit that you can't get anywhere else. There's one last thing in this passage that jumps out at me. I think Jesus offers these people a chance to join him in his mission. Because when you say yes to Jesus when you finally look at him and say, I want that abundant life, you're offering Jesus, I want to take that in. Then you also say yes to becoming part of the group that joins him in his mission. Jesus said we would do greater things than he did. How was that possible? Really? I've never raised a dead guy, and never brought the arm back or made some blind person see, yeah, but guess what? Jesus call me one place at a time and is flushing the human body back then, with Jesus planted inside of us by the power of the Spirit can be lots of places at one time. So we can do lots of great things because we're all going to different places throughout the week. Fact, I Corinthians 12 says this way, "You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. Being the body of Christ means we're the presence of Jesus in the world." You are the presence of Jesus' words, you could say to your office today. These promises are fulfilled in your hearing. Because you're sitting there with the power of the Spirit in the presence of Christ in your life, you can do that. That would be an accurate statement. Folks, we are trying to build an environment here at Elmhurst Church that is distinctive from the environment you're constantly in DuPage County. We are trying to do things here to help you access what Jesus is offering it. We've tried to do things here to make sure that we actually live as the presence of Jesus in the world because we are the Jesus is the only hope that people have who are blind and captive and oppressed. Right. So we constantly are offering out these ways for this environment for you to access and connect to this environment. One of the things you've heard talked about appears in front - Haverims. It's a Hebrew word, it means "a group of friends" who gets together with the Scripture, to read the Bible together. And to sort through together, what it might mean for you to follow Jesus together as a group of friends. I can tell you, too many of you in this community, too many of us in the church in America today, not just in this community, the church in America today, we're so busy, we're so pandemonium running around, we have no time. No priority for the Lord anywhere in our calendar. A Haverim is a chance to say "I'm going to give one hour a week, think about one hour a week to get around the word of God with some friends, and work on my following Jesus." So that can be the presence of Christ, wherever God sends me. That's an environment we're trying to build. We're trying to offer that opportunity, but you need to access it. Just like these people in the synagogue need to access what Jesus offers, you need to access it. Right, we get to preach the Good News to the poor, we get to free the captives, we get to release the oppressed, but only if we actually have Jesus in us and the power of the Spirit with us. Which doesn't happen by just hearing me preach. It takes more. It's shocking, I know. But it takes more. It says here, in a, there's a book called "I Once Was Lost." And it says the people in the world, their biggest problem with Christians is they don't trust us. So if we get on the mission of God, their first job is to get them to trust us to actually believe that we're really what we say we are. How do you do that? Well, you go out and you actually start to live in ways that are trustworthy. So why do we do 5th Sunday Serve next Sunday, instead of sitting here listening to someone preach, we're going to go give the sermon with our lives. We're all going to go out and serve the world in some way. When you serve the world, you put on display for people that don't trust the church or trust God, that God cares about them and loves them. That's the whole point of this. Are we going to change the world in two hours on a Sunday morning? No, we're going to build some trust. We're going to make some statements we're going to put on display these things that people can see it. Now, when it comes to sharing your faith, I know a lot of us in this room are not great at this row don't know how to put things in words very easily. So okay, that's what we do Alpha here.

 Jeffrey Klein  24:32

If you want to bring a friend to Alpha, just bring some friends to Alpha and the Alpha videos are amazing. They'll do all the talking for you. They can just be there and be alongside your friend and walk with them on this journey toward Jesus. It's amazing, but again, you have to access it. Do you have a friend who's lost? who's blind, who's captive? Who're oppressed prisoners, then the stuff that you care enough about to bring the Alpha? That's up to you. That's the environment we're trying to build here. It's an environment filled with the power of the spirit with the kingdom of God. So I hope, just like these people in the synagogue, I hope that you will think about your priorities. Think about how you want to access this life that Jesus is offering. And you'll take some steps this week, I'm telling you to put it on your calendar, because we all know whatever's on our calendar doesn't get erased, right, pray your calendar, make it happen. 

 Jeffrey Klein  25:37

All right, let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. And being willing to take on this mission of introducing the world to another way. Thank you for coming in bringing the power of the Spirit to come against our blindness and captivity and oppression. To proclaim to us the Lord's favor to show us what that's like. Jesus, I pray this morning that you would help each of us to long for go after desire what you're offering your name Jesus we pray. Amen.