Shiloh Lutheran Church
January 31, 2016
Years ago I was supposed to run a slide show for the organization I was working with, but about a day before the meeting I was given another job and had to train another guy to do it. I was going through the slides with him and said, “the music is in 4/4 time, so just change the slide every two measures.” He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language, so I played the song for him—the song had a very strong beat—and counted out the rhythm; I then said “just change the slide every eight beats.” He told me that made absolutely no sense, that he had no idea what I was talking about. In the end, we went through the song together and identified where to change the slides based on the song’s words because musical rhythm was incomprehensible to him.
I’ve often heard people testify that after turning to Christ their whole outlook has changed, that they’re able to see things that they couldn’t see before. They’ve heard the gospel preached numerous times but it has never made sense. They’ve tried reading the Bible but it’s been a closed book; they haven’t been able to get into it; it’s meant nothing to them. But then something happened and a whole new world opened up. John Newton refers to this in his hymn, Amazing Grace: “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” He was blind, but now he’s been enabled to see things he could never see before.
In this gospel reading we encounter people who are blind, who are utterly unable to see who Jesus is. With that in mind, listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 4: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (vv. 3-4). We need to know that spiritual blindness is connected with certain behaviors, with certain patterns in our lives. It’s not something that just happens to a person, like catching a virus. Our gospel reading gives us a graphic demonstration of how it works out in one particular case.
Jesus is in His hometown of Nazareth. He visits the synagogue, reads from Isaiah, then announces, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The people are impressed and startled. They’re “amazed at His gracious words.” Clearly they are confronted here with something they aren’t prepared to accept. They’ve heard reports about what Jesus has been doing, and hearing Him in person startles them: “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” The parallel account in Mark’s gospel goes into more detail in describing their reaction: “‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.” (Mark 6:3). They’re amazed, both by the reports they’ve heard and by the gracious words He is speaking, but they take offense at Him. Why? It all sounds so promising and positive. Why do they take offense, since He is doing and speaking such great things?
The first thing is that they are blinded by their familiarity with Jesus. They think they know Him; they think they know all they need to know about Him. He’s the carpenter, after all; they know His brothers and sisters. They’re in the presence of the Word made flesh, but they’re blinded by the fact that they know His family and knew Him as a child. They know His occupation: He’s a carpenter, for goodness sake; it’s not like He’s been trained in the rabbinical schools. How can He be doing and saying these great things? Who does He think He is?
Familiarity can blind us to mystery. We get to know something, or someone, and we think we know all there is to know. We reduce reality to our experience: “I’m not that impressed; obviously there’s not much here.” A friend of mine told me about talking to some neighbors of a well-known missionary who had spent his entire career in North Africa, a very difficult mission field. He had written a number of books and was someone we both looked up to. So my friend asked what he was like and they responded, “oh, he’s not very impressive.” He didn’t have a lot of natural charisma, so they wrote him off. “Obviously he doesn’t have anything to offer us.” What he had to offer wasn’t evident on the surface, but he had a lifetime of walking with God in very difficult circumstances; he had remained faithful over the long term despite many temptations to throw in the towel. But they missed it because they couldn’t see anything impressive at first glance.
There is more to people than what we see on the surface, more than what we perceive in our superficial dealings with one another. The people of Nazareth were blinded by the assumption that they knew all they needed to know about Jesus, and the same thing is often true in our own experience of one another. Opening our minds and our hearts to the reality of mystery around us can be the first step in allowing God to heal us of our blindness. Simply opening our minds to the thought that there might be something more than what we are aware of can be a step in the direction of allowing God to open our eyes.
The second thing is that the people were blinded by a sense of entitlement: “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum” (v. 23). This, together with His words in vv. 24-27, is what leads them to react with violence. Jesus is saying that Gentiles have received God’s blessing in the past at times when Israel has rejected it. He’s saying that being part of a certain group doesn’t entitle them to anything from God.
God’s promises are intended for the whole world, and this is certainly illustrated in these two stories. We could legitimately see them as a foretaste of the book of Acts, in which the gospel goes out into all the world. But this does not mean that there are no outsiders, that everyone is now accepted, that all we need to do now is open the doors and extend our boundaries. The call of the Church is to preach the gospel to every creature and welcome all who respond with faith. And the reason we need to preach the gospel is because we are all outsiders by nature. The gospel begins with bad news, not with a general statement that God now accepts us as we are and doesn’t care much how we order our lives. The gospel is good news because we all, by nature, are in desperate need.
Paul reminds the Ephesians, “remember that you were... without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (2:12). They weren’t people in need of acceptance, they were people in need of redemption. They were people in need of rescue. They were outsiders to the kingdom of God. That’s the truth about us, apart from the promises of the gospel. The gospel comes to us as good news, because we, in our natural state, are “without hope and without God in the world.” And the consistent message of Scripture is that those who reject God’s promises remain outsiders because they refuse to bow before God’s lordship. Jesus, after all, talks about separating the sheep from the goats, and the goats are those who will remain, throughout all eternity, outsiders.
God’s call to Abraham was intended to bring salvation to the world. God said to him, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). But the people of Nazareth have narrowed everything down. They think God’s promises belong to them alone and that if Jesus is doing great things He should be doing them in their town for their benefit. It angers them to hear that others, Gentiles even, might receive something that belongs to them. Here’s the problem: God is gracious and merciful, but we are entitled to nothing from Him. When we think we deserve something from God, we become blind to His grace and mercy. We become blind to our own sin and unworthiness, and we begin to think that God is obligated to bless us. And the further we go down this path, the more we become hardened.
The third thing is that their familiarity and sense of entitlement lead them to react violently to Jesus’ words. They become angry and seek to destroy Him. “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” For some reason, several commentators insist that this is not a miracle, that Jesus simply manages to escape in the confusion of the moment. I’m not sure why this is so important to them, but it seems like an unlikely explanation. It’s not like the crowd doesn’t know what He looks like. He grew up in their town and He’s been speaking to them publicly. They don’t succeed in killing Him, because His time has not yet come. Their attempt to kill Him is unsuccessful, because God, in His sovereign purposes, intervenes; Jesus is going to die, but not yet and not in their town.
This is not primarily a story about accepting one another; it’s a story about God’s sovereignty. The emphasis is on God and what He is doing. Unfortunately, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is often surrounded by confusion and controversy. It’s the sort of thing people tend to argue about but get no further than that. What does God’s sovereignty mean, primarily? It means that He is the Sovereign, that He is the King. It means that He is in charge and we are not. When we think we’re entitled to something from God we’re forgetting who we are. We’re seeking to “be like God.” God’s sovereignty also means that He is free to act according to His own wisdom and purposes without consulting us. The two Old Testament examples Jesus uses are about God acting in ways that don’t fit their expectations of Him, and they respond with rage. Why are they so angry? Because they want to be like God. They want to have control over Him. They want Him to act according to their expectations. Everything within them cries out against what Jesus is saying and they attack Him, seeking to kill Him. They reject Him completely and finally. We don’t know that He ever visited Nazareth again. They close the door on Him and on His words.
Let’s remind ourselves of what Jesus read which led to all this, the prophecy which Jesus said “is fulfilled in your hearing.” He read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He’s come with a message of hope for the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. The gospel is addressed to people in need who recognize their neediness, who come to Him with empty hands. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Those who think they’re entitled to claim anything from God are blind. They’re thinking they can demand something that God only gives as a sheer gift. As long as they hold onto their sense of entitlement, they will be blind to the reality of who they are and who God is. The gospel is only for those who are willing to let go of their sense of entitlement and come to Jesus with empty hands. “Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to the cross I cling.”
So what about us? Have we allowed our familiarity with Scripture, hearing these things over and over, to blind us? Do we encounter the Bible as a word from God or as just one more thing to get out of the way, so that we can move on to what we really want to do? If familiarity is blinding you to the wonder of the gospel, cry out to God for healing and mercy. Ask Him to heal your blindness and enable you to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Do you feel entitled? I spoke with a man some years ago who was angry at God. He had been raised in the church and had done the things he thought he was supposed to do; he’d attended church and read his Bible. But his life hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to. He said, “I did what I was supposed to do, but God hasn’t held up His end of the bargain.” He was embittered against God, because he felt entitled to a different life than the one God had given him. His spiritual life had shriveled to nothing; he had been blinded by a sense of entitlement. If you struggle with this sort of thing, look again at Jesus on the cross, paying the price for our sins. We are, by nature, children of wrath, Paul tells the Ephesians. The only reason we have for hope is that Jesus paid in full the debt for our sins. We’re entitled to nothing. What we deserve, what we’re entitled to, is eternal separation from God. Our only hope is in the sheer mercy and grace of God.
God is God, and we are not. He is sovereign; He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our most fundamental temptation is the one the serpent used on Eve: “you will be like God.” It comes to us over and over again in a variety of ways. If you’ve lost sight of God’s sovereignty, if you have begun thinking that God should do things the way you want, take some time this afternoon and meditate on the last three chapters of Job. Job, remember, suffers horribly at the beginning of the book. He responds well, but as time goes on he begins to doubt God’s goodness; he begins to think that God is treating him unfairly. So in chapters 40 and 41, God asks Job a series of questions which remind him of who he is. Read and meditate on those questions in God’s presence. After God questions him, Job respond: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3). Humble yourselves before God and ask Him to open your eyes anew to the wonder of His gospel. We need, over and over again, to remind ourselves of who we are and who God is. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” May He open our eyes and enable us to receive the good news of the gospel with empty hands. “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
