Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 4:31-44
Amen. If you have your Bible, take it out, find the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4. There's an outline in the bulletin, if you'd like to follow along on the outline. Our theme verse for this study through the Gospel of Luke is Luke 19-10, which says the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And so every week as we study the Gospel of Luke, we're tying that in some way somehow. The idea that Jesus, the Son of Man, came to seek us and to save us, and that's going to be true this morning. Last week I told you that Luke, chapter 4, up to about Luke 9 forms a section in the Gospel of Luke that answers the question, "Who is the Son of Man?" The first three chapters, one, two, and three, talk about the Son of Man coming, and we think about the Christmas story and all that was involved with that. Luke 4 to 9 talking about who is the Son of Man that came to seek and to save the lost. And the answer this morning is he's the king, and this is just the big idea on the top of your outline. Jesus is the king who came to proclaim good news about his kingdom, the big idea of this passage. We're working through this section, we're thinking about the Son of Man coming to seek and to save the lost. In chapters 4 to 9 we're talking specifically about the Son of Man, who is he? What do we need to know about him? Luke is telling us this morning, he is the king who came to proclaim good news about his kingdom. So we're going to read Luke, chapter 4, verse 31 to the end of the chapter, all the way to verse 44, three miracle stories. Luke in his gospel includes 21 miracle stories, and we're going to look at three of them in this short passage. So you follow along as I read these are the words of God, Luke, chapter 4, beginning in verse 31. Scripture says that he, Jesus, went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching for his word possessed authority. And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, "Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us, I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent and come out of him, and when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm." And they were all amazed and said to one another, "What is this word for with authority and power, he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out?" And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region. And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf, and he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she rose and began to serve them. Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any or who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, "You are the Son of God," but he rebuked them, and he would not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ. When it was day, he departed, went into a desolate place, and the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them. But he said to them, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose." And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Let's pray. "Father, we do love you. We have gathered here to worship you. We believe that the words that we have just read are your words; they are not merely the words of men; they are not merely moving in inspirational words, but they are the very words that you have breathed out for our benefit." And Father, as we listen to your word this morning, and as we think about how Luke is describing Jesus, the Son of Man, as we think about how your Holy Spirit is teaching us about the Son of Man, we pray that you would open our hearts, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. There's lots of interesting stories from history about monarchs. We got on this mini-study kick just scrolling through a Facebook feed one night, and somebody had posted a link to an article, and it just sort of got me curious. You talk about a black hole in Google, just Google crazy kings and queens, and you can come up with the greatest stories. And some of them are just not appropriate for Sunday morning conversation, but let me tell you about two. I'll put their pictures up on the screen that I thought were interesting and appropriate for Sunday morning conversation. On the left is Justin the second. Justin the second. He was king over the Byzantine Empire from 565 to 574. So he had about nine years in there, nine or ten years. He was king over the Byzantine Empire. Constantly heard voices in his head, constantly. Looking back on it, you would say maybe he had some form of schizophrenia. He could not get away from these voices, talking to him, telling him things, asking him to do things, telling him to do things. And so he tried, throughout his little short reign, to come up with ways to combat this mental illness. And the first thing he found therapeutic was hiding under his bed. And so he would spend at first hours and then days and then weeks hiding underneath his bed, and that gave him some relief from these voices. But eventually that didn't work, and that wasn't satisfactory. And so he thought, well, maybe if I can't get away from them or hide from them, I can drown them out. And so he had organs installed, all throughout his palace. And he hired people to play those organs all day long. And so their job was to just sit in the palace and play the organ, full blast all day long as loud as they could get it to go. And that gave him some relief. It just sort of covered up the voices for a while. And that worked for a short period, and then the voices just got louder and louder and louder. And at this point, some of his friends, some of his underlings stepped in. And this is true history. They took his throne and they put it on wheels. And they found that if they pushed him around the palace as fast as they could go up and down the halls, down the ramps, up around the room in circles, that that would distract him enough that he at least wouldn't be tormented. So under the bed, loud organ music, thrown on wheels and we're pushing the king around and he's screaming like a little kid. And as long as he's happy, your head's not getting lopped off. So that was a good situation for everybody. That's just in the second. On the right, an interesting guy, Charles VI, King of France from 1368 to 1422. So he had a long, long reign and he did lots of interesting things, some of which I'm not going to tell you about. But one interesting thing he did is he was known for attacking his own army on accident. They said he really didn't mean to do it, but he would get out there in battle and he would come up with some plane and he would say to his general here, "Hey, I'm going to outflank here on the right, I'm going to come over here and he'd come over here and he'd turn around." He'd say, "Hey, let's go attack these guys over here." And they'd come right back and attack his own army. He was very forgetful, had trouble remembering things, even forgot on an almost weekly basis that he was the king of France. And people had to remind him, "You are the king. You are the highest authority in the land. Whatever you say goes, people had to tell him about this." One of his favorite hobbies was pretending to be a wolf. And so he would run through the palace or crawl through the palace or whatever a human pretending to be a wolf does and he would howl and he would snarl and visitors would come to the palace and he would try to bite them and he would try to claw them, so who was that guy? Is that the court jester? No, that's the king. People sometimes would just try to restrain him and when they tried to restrain him, he's acting like a wolf and they're just trying to hold him down. He would just absolutely freak out, just total spaz attack because he firmly believed he was convinced to the depth of his being that he was made of glass. And people would start to grab him and say, "You're going to break me. You're going to break me. I'm going to shatter." He was convinced that he was made of glass. He said, "This man was in charge of one of the largest kingdoms, empires, nations on planet earth." He was the top and final and soul and only authority about what happened or didn't happen. And I don't know about you, but I listened to stories about Justin or Charles and I just have trouble understanding what was going on in the kingdom. That no one thought, "Hey, let's get rid of the guy who hears voices all day. The guy that we have to roll around on his throne or the guy that's pretending to be a wolf, maybe he's not the best person to rule over France. Is there anyone else more capable than the guy who thinks he's a canine to roll over France?" It's a different mindset when you have a king on the throne than it is in this country. And our mindset is if the king does something we don't like, what do we do? We'll fight you and we'll start our own country. We don't need a king. We don't want to listen to a king. And so we rejected all of that idea and we said, "We're going to form our own country and we're going to diffuse power. We're going to have some power in this branch of government, some power in this branch, some over here. We're going to have the military, separate from the police, and all this power is diffused. And in these ancient kingdoms, you did not have that. You just had power in the king. And so when you and I think about a king and when you and I read Luke and Jesus starts talking about a kingdom and obviously implying that he is the king, there's two dangers that we need to be very careful of. One danger is we don't understand the true power and the true authority of a king. And so we miss all of the significance of Jesus saying, "I'm the king." He didn't say, "I'm the president, I'm a congressman, I'm like a great senator." He said, "I am the king and my kingdom has come." And we might miss that because we don't understand the power and the authority that a king truly has. The other danger is that we look back at these knuckleheads and we say, "Jesus is a king?" You mean like these guys? These hapless, foolish, insane people? Jesus says, "Like those guys?" No, he's not like those guys. You don't image him in the picture of an earthly king, but you do try to understand what does it mean that Jesus says, "The kingdom is here." And I have come to tell people about my kingdom because I'm the king. The real question is this, what is the Bible? What do these verses teach us about Jesus being the king and about his kingdom? The first idea is this, the king possesses supreme authority. Jesus is the king, he's preaching about his kingdom and he possesses supreme authority. It's hard for democratic people to wrap our minds around this and to understand the magnitude of this. But as the king of all kings, Jesus possesses supreme authority. Three examples of this. Number one, he has authority to teach the truth. What he says is true. The words that he utters are truth. Jesus goes into this synagogue, verse 31, and it says he is teaching. The very next verse, verse 32, they are astonished at his teaching, why? Because he teaches as one who has authority. His words have authority. What they were used to was the rabbinic model of teaching where the rabbi would stand up. And if you were a good Jewish rabbi, a good Jewish teacher, you never said anything from your own opinion or thought process. You always sort of pass the buck to somebody else. And so a good Jewish preacher or teacher would stand up and say, well, Don Sal's told me this. And Mark Dawson puts it this way, and Jason Westfall, he sort of describes it like this, and Gary Riggs comes in with this, and you're always quoting other people, saying this is what they say. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus just stood up and he said, this is the truth. They weren't used to that. They were used to the rabbis. They were used to the prophets. And what did the prophets do? The prophets stood up and he said, thus says the Lord. In other words, I am speaking on God's behalf. Jesus didn't even do that. He just stood up and looked them in the eyeballs and said, this is the truth. And Luke says he's teaching them, and they're amazed at his teaching because he is teaching as one who has authority. He's not appealing to authority. He has the authority. He has authority to teach the truth. Number two, he has authority to exercise with an O, E-X-O, demons, to exercise, to cast out, to control the demons. Verse 36 says that they are amazed because he has authority and power to command the unclean spirits. There were plenty of exorcists in Jesus' day. There were even plenty of Jewish exorcists in Jesus' day. And unlike Jesus, all of the other popular exorcists, demon controllers, they used magic. They didn't have any authority in themselves. And so they tried to harness other spiritual authority to their own benefit. And so they would use secret words and chants and potions and certain plants or certain objects or fabrics or rings or jewelry or things that they thought gave them power over these demons. Jesus doesn't use any of that. He just talks to the demon and he says, come out of him and he does what Jesus says and they're amazed. I've seen people cast out demons, but they do it with a magic ring or they do it with a magic potion or they go through this process or they do all this stuff. You just speak to them. And Luke is saying he has authority even over the demons. Verse 3, Jesus has authority to heal disease. And we'll see this throughout the Gospel of Luke. Verse 38, we read that Simon Peter's mother was sick with a high fever. You can read this same story in Matthew and Mark. Those guys just say she had a fever. Luke, the physician, says using a technical medical term, she had a high fever. In other words, this is not, she just sort of felt run down. She's running a 99.5 and she just needs to take a nap. Luke, the physician is saying, look, this was serious. He's using this medical term to say this was a severe illness and they appeal to Jesus and he comes. He doesn't need a diagnosis. He doesn't offer a treatment plan. He just rebukes the fever and she's better. He just speaks and the disease is gone. Like a lot of healers today, he didn't need a crowd to perform a miracle. That one's just for free for you to think about. He has supreme authority and he didn't need a crowd, but when word gets out, all through this passage, Luke keeps saying the word spread. They heard about this in the region. The news is getting around. And eventually the crowd does come and that leads us to the second thing you need to understand about the king. Number two on your outline, the king rules over his kingdom in a way that confounds the wisdom of the world. Jesus takes this idea of king and he reshapes it and re-bends it into his own definition of kingship. And he's constantly having to tell the disciples, look, you don't need to look for leadership like the world looks for it. I'm redefining for you what kingship and what leadership and what power and what authority truly look like. Luke tells us this in verse 31, he went down to Capernaum. We'll put a map on the screen and show you where Capernaum is at. You look at this, he has been in Nazareth preaching and he goes north to Capernaum and you say, well, obviously Luke failed geography because he didn't go up or he didn't go down. He went up. But the idea here is elevation, not cardinal directions, north, south, east and west, but elevation and so he goes down in elevation from Nazareth to Capernaum on the north side of the sea. And what you find in the gospels is that Capernaum becomes his home base. This is where he operates from. He travels and he walks, but this is his home, not Nazareth, his hometown, not Bethlehem where he was born in a city that had religious significance, not Jerusalem in the south where you might expect a Jewish Messiah to be headquartered. He didn't choose that city, not Rome, the capital of the empire where all of the real authority and power was held, he chooses Capernaum way up north, out in the sticks, just off the lake. Now, it wasn't totally just a poverty-stricken redneck village. There was a very vibrant fishing industry there. In fact, Peter and Andrew and James and John all had businesses there in Capernaum and Peter was doing well enough that he had a home there that his mother-in-law was staying in because we read about this in Luke 4. So there was some industry taking place, but listen, Capernaum was blue-collar, as blue-collar is blue-gets. And Jesus doesn't pick Jerusalem and he doesn't pick Rome and he doesn't pick his hometown, which you might expect. He doesn't pick Bethlehem where he was born. He picks Capernaum and he says, this is the kind of place that I'm going to start at. And these are the kind of people that I'm going to use. He's exercising kingship in a way that confounds the wisdom of the world. You see the same thing in this passage when word starts to spread in Capernaum and there's a buzz and there's excitement and these people are coming to see Jesus. And what does Jesus do? Does he get the disciples, the early guys who are with him together and say, look, we need to capitalize on this momentum, right? We need a press conference and we need to get this, we need a rally and I need to be up on the platform, everybody needs to see me and we need to get all this momentum going in the right direction. Luke says, he just leaves. He just walks away from it. He goes out to a desolate place, translation, he goes out into the desert, to the middle of nowhere, to the wilderness and he leaves all of this stuff behind. And the disciples, when this happens over and over again, they're saying, Jesus, these people want to hear from you. These people want to make you the mayor of Capernaum. These people want to make you the town doctor. They want to make you the town prophet. They want you to teach at the synagogue. They're so excited and Jesus just walks away from it. These people come and Luke says they would have kept Jesus from leaving. They wanted Jesus to stay and what you see in Jesus' response is that yes, these people are coming to Him, yes, these people are in a sense responding to Him, but Jesus is not interested in people coming to Him or responding to Him so that they can use Jesus for their own ends. And he walks away from it, from fame, from excitement, from celebrity and he says, no, that's not the kind of king that I'm going to be. I don't want all the hoopla because you don't really want me, you just want the healing. You just want the exorcisms. You just want the stuff. Listen, the same thing is true today. People today come to Jesus. People today respond to Jesus, but they do it for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes it's that they think it will make life easier. Sometimes it's that they think it will make life more exciting. Sometimes it's that they think Jesus will take care of them financially. Sometimes they think it's for any number of things that Jesus might do for them. And Jesus is saying to the disciples and to us this morning, I'm not interested in people coming to me if they're coming to use me and to manipulate me. I'm the king. I have supreme authority, authority to teach, authority to heal, authority to control the demons, and you will not control me. And so Jesus walks away from all of this excitement. Number three, you need to see this. This is a big one in this passage. Even though doomed to fail, the kingdom of darkness is vehemently opposed to the king and his kingdom. It is doomed to fail. There is no question. There is no possibility about that. There is no odds you need to place on this. It is doomed to fail. And yet darkness is still vehemently opposed to Jesus. Look at verse 34, the demons are the only ones in this passage that know who Jesus is. Verse 34, they know he's from Nazareth. They call him the holy one of God. They know that one day he's going to destroy them. They know all of that. Look at verse 41. It says the demons knew that he was the son of God. Jesus wouldn't let them speak because he knew that they knew he was the Christ. The demons knew he was the Messiah. Now Luke tells us about this man in the synagogue in the worship service who blurts out in a loud voice Luke says something about Jesus. He's demon-possessed. He's in church. Think about that. Demon-possessed man. This demon-possessed man is not living out in the tombs, cutting himself, running around naked. He's in church. Possessed by a demon. And as Jesus is teaching, he blurts out at the top of his lungs, "Ha! I know who you are. You're the holy one of God. Are you here to destroy us?" Now I don't know about you, but I have never experienced anything like that. I've experienced distractions in a worship service. If you've been here the last couple of months, sometimes you thought this sound system was demon-possessed. Some of the noise that comes out of it, you've wondered, "Do we need to have an exorcism? Do we need to do something here?" I've been in Bible studies where there's been disruption and somebody a student in the class has become highly disruptive. I've experienced that. I've been in worship services where this is just sort of depending on your taste and what you're used to, I guess, but where people in a very charismatic service were running laps around the worship center. For me, that was very distracting. People just running laps. And all I could do was count laps. How many laps are you running? There's one. There's two. I was very distracted. Maybe you've been in worship services where you've experienced some kind of distraction. My guess is you've never experienced anything like this in a worship service. When possessed by a demon, blurts out and starts screaming. Now you've read the story so you know what happens. But if I was to tell you, once upon a time Jesus is preaching in a worship service and a demon-possessed man in the church started screaming things, what would you expect him to scream? Maybe something about how Jesus was a liar? That might be something a demon would say. Would you expect the demon to say something like Satan is the greatest? You guys need to worship the devil? You guys, what do you expect a demon to say? Do you expect the demon to stand the man up in church and to say the truth about Jesus that no one else knew in church? That's not what you expect. Of all the things that the demon could have moved the man to say, he moves him to say, "I know who you are. You are the holy one of God." That's a title for God in the Old Testament. I know who you are. You are God. And I think that you're here to destroy me, am I right? Why would the demon say that? Is it because the demon wanted people to know the truth about Jesus? Because that's what he did. He just told everyone in the room who Jesus was and it was a hundred percent true. Is that what he wanted? I don't think so. You look at this and you say, "What in the world is going on?" That the demon would speak up, stand this man up, and proclaim and a loud voice for everyone to hear the one thing they really needed to know about Jesus. I don't have a really good answer for that other than to say, "I think part of it is rage." And it comes in at the end there where he says, "Are you here to destroy us?" He knows who Jesus is better than anyone else in the room. He knows that one day Jesus will destroy him and all of his buddies. And all he can do without repentance, without remorse, without conviction, without any of it, is just rage against Jesus and say, "Ha!" as a disruption, "I know who you are." Maybe there's an element to where he's trying to get authority over Jesus saying, "I know something about you that no one else knows, but he's raging against the doom that is certain." And I think what you see here is that James is exactly right. The demons know the truth about God and they shudder. They're fearful. And as soon as Jesus walks into his midst, he just assumes, "My time is up because you can do to me whatever you want to do, and I know that one of these days you're going to put an end to me." Maybe there's something to what John talks about in 1 John where he says, "The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil." And they know that now that the Son has come, that the clock is ticking and their time is running out and all they can do in response is just rage and anger. You see this sometimes in people, not just demons. You see this in people where their heart becomes so black that all they can do is be angry. Do you ever watch those prison reality shows? You see some of these people who have committed unspeakable crimes, literally. You don't want to talk about what they have done. And you see them. They've been caught. They've been tried. They've been convicted. They've been incarcerated and they're just angry. They just rage. They want to hurt anyone that comes in their cell. They want to harm other people. They want to be vile to other people. All that is in their heart is blackness and rage and they just rage. Even though they know there's nothing they can do to be free, there's nothing they can do to change their situation. They're just angry. That's the only overflow of their heart. You see it in normal people too. It looks different than the prison reality shows. But you see it in normal people who may be experienced some kind of tragedy in their life or heartbreak in their life and they blame God for that tragedy. And they're angry about it and they won't get over it and they won't move on and they just simmer on it year after year after year. They're not the crazy tattooed skinhead maniac on the prison reality show. They look just like you and me. They go about their daily lives. They punch the time clock at work. They go home. They watch the news in the evening. They're all through it. They're just simmering and they're filled with hurt and they're filled with anger and they're filled with rage and they know that there's nothing they can do to change it. But their only response is this rage. And I think that's what you see here. This demon just overflows with the only emotion he knows and he's angry and he's raging. He knows that his doom is sealed, that there's no way around it. But he is vehemently opposed to the king and to his kingdom. And even though he's like a dog on a leash, he's going to do as much damage as he can in that little leashed-in area. He knows he can't break free. He knows he can't have free reign. But in his little area of influence, he's going to bring as much hurt and destruction and pain as he possibly can bring. You know that this is true for us today. This idea that evil is opposed to light. This idea that the demon speaks up when Jesus begins to teach the truth and speak the truth. And I'm telling you, today in the United States of America as great as our country is, if you as an individual or we as a church are faithful in the truth and if you truly want to shine a light for the truth of Scripture and for Jesus Christ, you better expect opposition. Evil opposition, maybe in the form of temptation, maybe in the form of suffering, maybe in the form of persecution, maybe where it hurts worse than the pocketbook. But expect opposition. Be ready for it. Be ready, but not afraid. And that brings us to the last thing that you need to see about the king. Number four, the king came to seek us and to save us and to bring us into the kingdom of God. Jesus cast the demon out of this man. He heals Peter's mother-in-law. He heals everyone in the town. The son goes down so the Sabbath is over and they feel free to come to Jesus. He heals all of their sicknesses, all of their disease casts out all of these demons. And at the height of this popularity in Capernaum, he just walks away from all of it. And they come to find him and they say, "We don't want you to go. We want you to stay." What a different reception than Nazareth. Nazareth takes him to the edge of town and they want to throw him over the cliff. Capernaum says, "Man, we love you. This is awesome. We're excited about this. This is fantastic." Jesus walks away from both of them. They've got him at the edge of town in Nazareth, ready to kill him. What does Luke say? He just walks away. Here they are in Capernaum. They want to keep Jesus. They want to use Jesus, manipulate Jesus, take advantage of Jesus, and what does he do? He just walks away. And the disciples say, "Hey, what's going on? Why are you leaving?" And Jesus said to them, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God. I must preach the good news of the kingdom." This is the first time Luke has used this imagery or this word of king or kingdom. Mark begins with it. In fact, in the Gospel of Mark, the first thing out of Jesus' mouth is the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. So when Jesus says, "I must go talk about the kingdom," that's what he's saying. He's saying, "Listen, I don't have time to be used by these people in Capernaum. I must go here and there and all over the place. And I've got to preach about the kingdom. What does that mean? What are you going to talk about? I'm going to tell them the kingdom is here. And I need to tell them that they need to repent and believe in the good news. What is the good news, Jesus? The good news, Luke 19-10, is that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. And I have come to seek these people out and I have come to save these people and my death and my resurrection and I've come to bring them into my kingdom. The call on your life is absolutely no different than it was out of the lips of Jesus 2000 years ago. The kingdom has come. The king is the king and one day he will come back. And until the day when the king comes back, he has sent us, his people, the church, into all of the nations on the earth to tell people just like you what you need to do is repent and believe the gospel. Turn away from your sins and put your faith in Jesus. Believe the good news that the Son of Man came to seek you and to save you and to bring you into his kingdom. I want to pray for you if you will bow your heads. And my hope for you this morning, my prayer for you this morning is that you have been moved as scripture says out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of the Son. If that has never happened in your life, if you have never obeyed the words of Jesus when he says repent and believe, turn from your sins and put your faith in me. My hope is you will do that today, that you will do it right now, that you would confess your rebellion and your sin before God, that you would believe there is nothing you can do to save yourself but that Jesus has done everything to seek you and to save you. And that you would just simply ask God to move you into the kingdom of the king of all kings. The Bible describes that as being born again, as being a new creation. Father, we come to you this morning and we pray, first of all, a prayer of thanksgiving that we have heard the good news about Jesus and that by your grace, many of us have turned from our sins and put our faith in your Son, the king. Father, it is of no good thing that we have done, it is of no noble thing that we can offer you, it is all of your grace and your mercy. And Father, we pray for those who are here with us this morning, singing the songs, filling out the outline, reading the same words, Father, but they have never turned from their sin and trusted in Jesus, we pray that today by your grace they would do it, that they would be bold in proclaiming that before man and sharing what you have done in their life and the decision that they have made and Father that you would receive all the honor and all the glory. Father, thank you for your word, thank you for the stories about Jesus. We believe that they are true, we believe that they make a difference in our everyday lives, Father, they present us with what we are to believe about your Son. And so we pray again this morning for hearts to receive it, hearts to believe it, and we pray in the name of our King Jesus, amen.