Scripture: Luke 4:14-30
Video Link: https://youtu.be/gOnnJc8hsso
Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 28 Jun 2026 – Jesus’ Mission by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Structure:
- Introduction
- Jesus’ mission
- Jesus’ rejection
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
This June we have given special focus to mission work. Over the past three weeks we have heard about the work of Arotahi and our Baptist missionaries. Today’s message highlights the mission of Jesus, as outlined in Luke 4. From verse 14 of Luke 4, we read…
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” 20 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. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All witnessed to him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. 23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’” 24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 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. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosyin the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 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 off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
There are two halves to our message this morning. Jesus’ mission and Jesus’ rejection. What then was Jesus’ mission? What did the Lord set out to do?
Very simply, Jesus’ mission was (and still is) to make all things new. He came to redeem and restore, to put things right.
In his book the Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning tells the following true story about one of New York’s most loved mayors, Fiorello LaGuardia. [1]
One bitterly cold night in January 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.
Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.
“It’s a real bad neighbourhood, your Honour.” the man told the mayor.
“She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.”
But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill saying: “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. The mayor received a standing ovation.
I love that story. It gives us a picture of the justice and mercy of God.
After his baptism and forty days of testing in the wilderness, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. He went from place to place teaching in their synagogues and people praised him.
Luke records, in some detail, the sermon Jesus preached in the synagogue in Nazareth, where he had been brought up. The synagogue was sort of like a community centre or a church hall; a place where Jews could gather to say prayers and hear the Scriptures read and discussed.
When the attendant handed Jesus the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus selected some verses from Isaiah 61, where it says…
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
These verses describe Jesus’ mission, in a nutshell. They are talking about the Messiah making all things new. They speak of God’s justice and mercy, his redemption and restoration.
The first thing we notice here is that Jesus’ mission is prompted and empowered by the Spirit of the Lord. This is not something Jesus is doing in his own strength or by his own initiative. This mission is really God’s idea. And it’s an idea God has been planning for a long time. Isaiah gave this prophecy around 700 years before Jesus.
The next thing we notice is that Jesus’ mission is one of proclaiming. Three times in two verses Jesus says he has been sent to proclaim. To proclaim something is to announce it officially or publicly.
Proclaiming involves speaking words, of course, but in Jesus’ case it involves performing signs as well. For example, Jesus proclaimed recovery of sight for the blind by speaking the truth and physically restoring people’s sight. Word and deed, you see.
Jesus’ mission includes proclaiming good news to the poor. So, who are the poor? Well, we tend to think of the poor in economic terms; those who don’t have enough money. But to be poor in Luke’s gospel has a broader definition than this. The poor are basically those who are excluded or who have low status for any number of reasons.
For example, lepers were among the poor because they were not able to participate in corporate worship. They were excluded from society and regarded with fear. Likewise, tax collectors were among the poor, not because they lacked money, but because they were despised.
Jesus proclaimed good news for Zaccheaus the tax collector by inviting himself over for dinner. By doing this Jesus created the opportunity for Zacchaeus to repent and be restored to right relationship with God and his community.
In the context of Isaiah, freedom for the prisoners was a poetic way of saying the Jewish exiles would be forgiven and set free to return home to Israel.
In the context of Luke, freedom for the prisoners equates to forgiveness of sins, so that people may return home to God our Father. Jesus is the way home to God.
Recovery of sight for the blind has to do, not just with physical healing, but with opening the eyes of a person’s heart and mind. It’s about spiritual insight and revealing the truth, the truth about God and the truth about ourselves.
Mayor LaGuardia shows us what it looks like to set the oppressed free. When he paid the fine for the grandmother, he restored her, he released her. And, by fining everyone else in the court room, the mayor rebuked the people of New York for their callousness in letting this happen in the first place.
Setting the oppressed free comes from Isaiah 58 where the prophet says…
6 Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free? …“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…
Isaiah 58 is a challenge to those who practice false religion, those who don’t walk their talk. Those (for example) who sing songs about loving God in church on Sunday but then gossip about their neighbour the rest of the week or cheat people in their place of work or beat their wife and kids. Jesus challenged false religion when he called out the Pharisees for their hypocrisy.
In verse 19 of Luke 4, Jesus jumps back into Isaiah 61 when he talks about proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour.
The year of the Lord’s favour is a reference to the year of Jubilee. The Law of Moses stipulated a Jubilee every 50 years, when debts were to be forgiven, slaves set free and ancestral lands returned to their original owners. The Jubilee was a year of restoration, a year of making all things new again.
It prevented the rich from getting richer and it gave people hope.
The verses Jesus read out from Isaiah 61 were a crowd favourite, one of Isaiah’s greatest hits. However, Jesus left out the part about proclaiming the day of vengeance of our God. And for the Jews of the first century this was the best part. They were oppressed by the Romans and looked forward to the day when God would destroy their enemies. Why did Jesus leave out God’s revenge?
Jesus had the congregation on the edge of their seats, at which point he says to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
This is a pretty audacious claim. Jesus is essentially saying he is the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Jesus is saying of himself, ‘I am here to make all things new, to restore and redeem, to set free and forgive. And I am doing it today. This is not some far off future promise. God’s plan of salvation has now gone live, in and through me’. Mic drop.
Jesus’ rejection:
Having heard what Jesus has just said, the people are amazed. Amazed, yes, but not believing. They ask, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” The people have a hard time believing the son of the local carpenter might be the agent of God’s salvation. They knew him when he was a toddler playing in the dirt. Their preconceived ideas about Jesus blind them to the possibility that Jesus could be the Messiah.
Not all creatures see colour in the same way. Unlike humans, deer have dichromatic vision, which means they can only see two types of colours; blues and greens. Reds and oranges, which stand out to us like a neon sign, appear greyish to deer. That’s why hunters often wear hi viz orange vests and hats.
It makes them invisible to deer but highly visible to other hunters (so they don’t get shot).
Bulls are similar to deer in that they can only see blues and greens as well. Contrary to popular belief, bulls are not angered by the colour red. In fact, red appears grey to them. Bulls become aggressive when they sense sudden erratic movement. It’s the flapping of the matador’s cape that triggers a defensive fight response in the bull, not the colour red. The matador’s cape is red to hide blood stains.
Not everyone sees Jesus in the same way. Some people see Jesus in his full spectrum of colour; he stands out as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, worthy of our worship. To others though, Jesus appears greyish; just another ordinary human being.
The people of Nazareth were spiritually blind; they saw the world in black and white and so they could not see who Jesus really is. Jesus was one of them (Joseph’s son, so they thought), and that made it nearly impossible for them distinguish him from themselves, much like deer cannot see reds or oranges.
Jesus is aware of this so he brings their thoughts out into the open saying, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’
In other words, if you are God’s anointed one why don’t you perform some miraculous healings like we heard you did in Capernaum.
But Jesus does not need to prove anything to them. He is secure in his identity as God’s Son. Besides, a prophet is never accepted in his hometown.
Jesus illustrates his point with two accounts from the Old Testament Scriptures. The prophet Elijah was not sent to a Jewish widow during the famine of that time. He was sent to a Gentile widow in the region of Sidon.
Likewise, Naaman the Syrian was the only leper healed by the prophet Elisha. None of the Jewish lepers were healed.
The widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian are both examples of the poor whom God set free. In the minds of the people of Nazareth, they should have been excluded from God’s grace; they were among Israel’s enemies, destined for God’s vengeance. And yet, they are people who demonstrated great faith in the Lord.
The widow of Zarephath was down to her last meal when Elijah turned up and asked to be fed. Elijah was a foreigner to her and he was literally wanting to take the bread out her son’s mouth.
By taking Elijah in and showing him hospitality, the widow was showing faith in Yahweh, she was trusting God with the life of her son. And Yahweh provided for her. As long as Elijah was with the widow, she and her son had food to eat. The oil never ran out.
Naaman the leper also demonstrated faith in the God of Israel. When Naaman, who was an army general came to Elisha, the prophet told him to wash in the Jordan river seven times. Naaman, a man of honour for whom reputation was important, was offended by this.
But, with some encouragement from his servants, he humbled himself and did what Elisha asked. Naaman trusted God with his reputation and the Lord healed him.
The people of Nazareth won’t believe in Jesus. They want miracles as proof.
But God wants faith. By holding up two Gentiles as examples of the kind of authentic faith God wants, Jesus is saying the Jews of his hometown are less faithful, less righteous, less pleasing to God than the Gentiles they despise.
What’s more, they have misunderstood God’s purpose. God does not intend to destroy their enemies. God wants to save their enemies.
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They drove Jesus out of town with the intention of throwing him off the cliff. They wanted to kill Jesus. Their rejection of Jesus was vicious and unjust. This was a lynching.
We note here that it was the people inside the synagogue who were furious with Jesus. Many of the poor, whom Jesus came to help, would have been outside the synagogue, excluded for a variety of reasons. Jesus came for those inside and outside the synagogue. But, more often than not, it was the outsiders who accepted him.
When we left Tauranga to move to Auckland to train for pastoral ministry, some people were supportive. They could see the fit and sent us off with a blessing. Others were not so supportive. No one tried to throw me off a cliff, but some did not like our decision and their disapproval leaked out in various ways.
Perhaps these friends and workmates felt like we were rejecting them, abandoning them. Perhaps they felt a little hurt. Or maybe they thought,
“Who does he think he is? He is not better than us.” I did not think that.
I don’t want to defend or condone those in the Nazareth synagogue who rejected Jesus that day. What they did was wrong. I wonder though if they possibly felt like Jesus had rejected them. Who does he think he is? He’s not better than us.
Jesus was not rejecting them. Jesus was trying to open their eyes. He was trying to set them free from the narrow nationalism which was blinding them to God’s broader plan of salvation. Sadly, Jesus’ words triggered a defensive fight response, so they reacted like a bull being startled by sudden movement.
By God’s grace the angry mob did not manage to harm Jesus. Verse 30 tells us the Lord walked right through the crowd and on his way.
God protected his Son. As it is written in Psalm 91: 11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; 12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
Conclusion:
How then does today’s message apply to us?
Well, Jesus’ mission is our mission. Jesus invites us to participate in his work of proclaiming good news to the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed and the year of the Lord’s favour.
How might we do this? Well, grace comes first. We cannot proclaim good news to the poor until we face our own poverty and realise our need for God.
We cannot proclaim recovery of sight for the blind until we recognise our own blindness and accept the truth which restores sight.
We cannot proclaim freedom for the oppressed until we name our own demons and are set free.
We cannot proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and forgive others until we confess our own sin and receive God’s forgiveness. Grace must always come first.
What grace do you need to receive from God?
What grace has God given you to pass on to others?
We proclaim the good news by being the good news.
Let us pray…
Jesus, you came to make all things new. You are our hope. Help us to receive your grace, that we may embody your good news, your truth, your freedom, your forgiveness, your love for others. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
- What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- What was Jesus’ mission? Discuss reflect on the meaning of verses 18-19 of Luke 4.
- In what ways do we see Jesus’ mission carried out in the gospels? In what ways do we see Jesus’ mission carried out in the world today?
- Why did Jesus remind his listeners of the widow and Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian? What can we learn from the widow’s and Naaman’s example of faith?
- Why did the people in the synagogue at Nazareth reject Jesus so violently?
- How do we participate in Jesus’ mission? Why must grace come first?
- What grace do you need to receive from God? What grace has God given you to pass on?
Bibliography:
- William Barclay, ‘The Gospel of Luke’, 1965.
- Leon Morris, ‘Tyndale Commentaries: Luke’, 1976.
- Fred Craddock, ‘Interpretation Commentaries: Luke’, 1990.
- Brennan Manning, ‘The Ragamuffin Gospel’, Multnomah, 1990
- Darrell Bock, ‘NIV Application Commentary: Luke’, 1996.
- Joel Green, ‘New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke’, 1997.
- Kenneth Bailey, ‘Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes’, 2008.
[1] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2
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