Lessons from Nazareth | Luke 4 | Gary Hamrick

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] luke chapter 4 if you're new to cornerstone we make our way through the bible from cover to cover and uh we are in the book of luke right now and uh we don't go necessarily chapter by chapter but uh i take sections out of time to make our way through a book and here we are in luke and we've already jumped to chapter four now i'll just summarize chapter two is familiar to many people it has to do with when jesus is born chapter three has to do with when jesus is baptized at the age of 30 by john the baptist and then into chapter 4 jesus is tempted by satan but it is this passage here in chapter 4 starting at verse 16 that i want us to look at today because jesus returns to his hometown of nazareth where he grew up and he's going to go to the synagogue and he's going to teach them on this particular sabbath day teaching the people that he's most familiar with people who are most familiar with him as well seeing as how he grew up there in nazareth and so that's the scene here from luke chapter 4 starting at verse 16 and i'm going to read down through verse 30. this is what it says and so he that is jesus came to nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day and stood up to read and he was handed the book of the prophet isaiah and when he had opened the book he found the place where it is written the spirit of the lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the lord and then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing and so all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth and they said is this not joseph's son and he said to them you will surely say this proverb to me physician heal yourself whatever we have heard done in capernaum do also here in your country and then he said assuredly i say to you no prophet is accepted in his own country but i tell you truly many widows were in israel in the days of elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a great famine throughout all the land but to none of them was elijah sent except to zarephath in the region of said on to a woman who was a widow and many lepers were in israel in the time of elisha the prophet and none of them was cleansed except naaman the syrian and so all those in the synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the city and they led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built that they might throw him down over the cliff and then passing through the midst of them he went his way so they tried to seize him at the end of this they try to throw him off the brow of the of the cliff but jesus just kind of miraculously is able to walk right through them and he avoids the whole scene but the question is why were they so angry at what he had said here that they wanted to kill him we'll talk about it we're going to glean three points here from the people's reaction and their response to jesus in our study today but let's first pause and have a word of prayer father god as we come into your house today we're just grateful for your grace and your love your mercies are new with every morning your compassions they fail not great is your faithfulness and so thank you lord that your mercies are new for today we need your mercy lord we need your grace and we need your guidance now by your spirit as we study these things together that you'd speak to us through the pages of your word through this story here in luke chapter 4 we commit this to you now we pray in jesus name and everybody said amen well most people are familiar with the fact that jesus was born in bethlehem but that's not where he grew up he grew up in nazareth this is the town about which we're speaking today nazareth is today the largest of the cities of israel in the northern district of israel nazareth today has a population of about 78 000 people and most of those are arab citizens of israel and of that arab population in nazareth about 70 are muslim and about 30 percent are christian uh the one of the largest arab christian populations is there in nazareth one of the good friends of mine who has driven the tour bus for me for 22 years when we go over to israel is munir syed and lanier is from nazareth it uh has a he is a an arab christian and it has one of the largest arab christian populations today in israel you know what's interesting is when you look at the makeup of nazareth now nazareth today again is northern israel it's outside of the west bank it's outside of gaza and yet it has this large arab population again 70 percent muslim and yet they get along very well with their jewish neighbors what's interesting to note is much of the conflict that you see in israel today is because of hamas hamas starts lobbing rockets from gaza into israel and then israel retaliates to defend itself and israel then is labeled by the international community as the aggressor and the oppressor but if hamas would just you know cease you could find that actually people live pretty peacefully in israel and nazareth is a good example of that today well it's a bustling metropolis today 78 000 or so people who lived there but in jesus day it was a very different town in fact it was pretty much an obscure village where no more than a hundred to perhaps as much as 500 people lived during jesus's day a far cry from 78 000 100 to 500 people in jesus day lived in nazareth it in jesus day was only about a 60-acre village that was situated atop a rocky hillside on a road to nowhere i mean this was nazareth was so obscure that it is never mentioned in the old testament it's never mentioned in the jewish mishna it's never mentioned in the jewish talmud it was never mentioned by the historian josephus that's how obscure that it was in fact you might remember in your bibles there's a conversation in john chapter 1 between philip and nathanael two who will end up being a part of jesus's twelve disciples and philip goes to nathanael and says philip we have found the messiah he is jesus of nazareth to which nathaniel responds by saying nazareth what good can come out of nazareth you remember that conversation that's john 1 46 because that's the way they saw nazareth back in that day a little podunk town what good can come out of nazareth it would be today like somebody saying hey we have found the messiah it is jesus of paw paul west virginia far far west virginia by the way anybody from paul paul west virginia anybody know about paul paul west via hello cuz yeah good to see you population 492 people that's all in paw paw west virginia today but anyway jesus returns to this little town of nazareth for one final visit to the people who are most familiar with him and by the way it seems to me because there's no other record that jesus ever returns there again this is his last visit to nazareth and you're going to see why as a result of what happens here and so we're going to learn three lessons in this story from the reaction or the response of the people to jesus's visit here so let me recap and and bring us up to speed and help us understand why are they so angry at him so um the bible says that after jesus was baptized by john the baptist he goes into the wilderness he is tempted by satan comes out of the wilderness and then his public ministry begins he's the age of 30. and he begins to visit the various towns within the galilee region think of galilee like a county and then there are various towns and villages within the region or the county of galilee in fact josephus said that there were roughly 207 he's first century historian 207 towns or villages within the region of galilee and each had an average of 10 000 people so in jesus day there were like 2 million people in the region of the galilee by the way today there's only about a half a million people in the region of the galilee and so there jesus goes and he ministers in the various synagogues within these various towns of galilee and one of the places he goes to is his hometown of nazareth and he shows up there i'm sure he gets the hometown boy welcome and people are excited to see him back but now you know he's an adult now and he's also entered into his ministry so he's seen as a rabbi and they do the honorable thing he comes to visit them in their synagogue on the sabbath in nazareth and they hand him the scrolls the scriptures that he would read and then teach them and so he is given the uh scroll of isaiah now in the new king james that i'm reading from it says the book of isaiah but back in that day they didn't have books bound like we do today there it was written as a scroll it's more literally translated the scroll of isaiah and he unrolls the scroll here to the place of what we know to be isaiah chapter 61. now in in jesus day they didn't have chapter and verse delineation those are modern additions to our bibles to help us find places chapters were added in the bible about the 13th century a.d and verses were not added until about the 16th century a.d so in jesus day there was no chapter or verse but he knows exactly where to go and he unrolls the scroll to the place of what we would say is isaiah chapter 61 and he reads from what we have as verses 1 and 2 of chapter 61. if you look in your bibles here at luke 4 verses 18 and 19 is when he quotes from isaiah the prophet here and so i'm just going to read again verse 18 and 19. jesus quoting here from isaiah he says the spirit of the lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the lord now he stops right there but what we know from isaiah 61 verses 1 and 2 is that he stops mid-sentence the rest of verse 2 of isaiah 61 that he did not read says and the day of vengeance of our he stops when he simply says i'm here in addition to all these various things that preceded to proclaim the favorable year of the lord he stops he rolls the scroll back up hands it to the attendant he does not read and the day of vengeance of our god why because that part happens at his second coming his first coming was coming to proclaim the favorable year of the lord the acceptable year of the lord we are currently under the age of grace when jesus dies on a cross for our sins we can come to faith to jesus by believing that he died for our sins our sins can be forgiven we can receive the grace and mercy of god we can pass from death to life so that when we die knowing jesus will go to heaven we are living in the age of grace but there will come a day when jesus returns and when he returns it will not be the age of grace it will be the day of judgment and it is important for every single person to understand that the book of revelation teaches following seven years of tribulation jesus returns on a white horse to make war and he will defeat the enemies that have come against israel and the god of israel and he will judge people but right now we're able to escape his judgment if we receive salvation through faith in jesus because of what he did for us on the cross see when people come to relationship with jesus through faith in jesus you are not going to be judged on the day when people are going to be judged we then receive the mercy and grace of god the wrath of god is satisfied by what christ did on the cross and we don't get the punishment we deserve how many of you are thankful for that amen praise god but there's coming a day when jesus returns and he will bring with him his judgment and he will judge people and so it's better for you now to get saved while you're under the age of grace because there's coming a day when there will be the day of judgment so jesus intentionally does not read that part the day of vengeance of our god because that happens at a second coming he rolls the scroll back up he hands it to the attendant and then the bible says we read it a moment ago that he sat down which was the posture of the rabbis back in the day when they were about to teach so we can try that here sometime if you'd like i'll sit down and you stand that's the way it would work in the day the rabbi would sit the people would stand i think in large part to keep you from falling asleep rabbi would sit you'd stand it's pretty hard to fall asleep while you're standing but anyway there jesus is and he sits down and he begins to teach them and they are filled with wonder at first no doubt you know they're thinking this is the hometown boy let's let's fix our attention on him and hear what he has to say and he says in verse 21 after having read isaiah chapter 61 he says there in verse 21 of luke 4 today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing now these people who were there in the synagogue they would have been very familiar with the fact that what isaiah wrote what jesus quoted was a messianic passage long anticipated messiah they were waiting for him they were hoping for him they were wanting to see him little did they know they were looking at him right in front of them but nevertheless they understood that the passage jesus read from isaiah 61 was a messianic passage that in fact when messiah would come he would be anointed by the holy spirit he would proclaim the good news to the poor that doesn't mean poor materially necessarily it means poor spiritually we are all poor in spirit we all need the good news the gospel that he would come also to heal the brokenhearted and to give sight to the blind which really speaks of how he came to help those who are physically emotionally and spiritually blind and broken again it applies to all of us of course jesus ministry uh included miracles where people were physically helped and healed but the whole purpose of his ministry really was to bring wholeness and healing to the human soul and so this is what messiah came to do and also to proclaim liberty to the captives and the oppressed to set us free from the bondage of sin and death we are all held captive to sin and death until we put our faith in christ who came to set the captives free i've said this before but the truth is that there are some people who are not in prison but they're captive to sin and there are people down the road here on sicklin at the adult detention center who are in prison but perhaps they've come to know jesus as a result of their imprisonment and their eyes are open to their own need for him and the reality is that though they're still in a physical jail they're more free than some people outside of jail because real freedom comes in knowing that you're forgiven of your sins and you're set free from the bondage of sin and death and as jesus recites all these things about the coming messiah in chapter 61 of isaiah the people at first they're thinking this is really sweet this is our hometown boy jesus he's come back here to to share all this stuff with us what a treat and so it says in verse 22. if you look at your bibles the first part of verse 22 it says so all bore witness to him and they marveled at his gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth until he said today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing and then the rest of verse 22 they're like wait a minute isn't this just joseph's son isn't this the son of joseph and their question showed their refusal to believe what he had just said which was that he was the fulfillment of the words of isaiah the prophet concerning the coming messiah in essence what jesus was saying was i am the messiah about which isaiah prophesied i'm here i'm fulfilling these words today to which they replied is this not joseph's son three things for us to understand from the reaction the first of which is jesus is the son of god not the son of joseph you see if jesus was just the son of joseph then he was just an ordinary man numbered among great teachers or prophets whoever lived the truth is that in jesus day that's the way the jews saw him just a great teacher perhaps a prophet a worker of miracles but an ordinary man the truth is that that's how many jews today still see him now good news is many jews are coming to faith in jesus yeshua as mashiach as messiah but the fact is that still a great majority of jews think that jesus historically was an ordinary man performed some miracles good teacher perhaps even a prophet but that's about it today muslims believe the same thing about jesus great teacher great prophet they say he's not even as superior as muhammad but he was still a great prophet that's the way they've reduced him this is the way a lot of people believe about jesus today that he was an historic figure a great teacher perhaps a prophet a worker of miracles some today obviously have written a lot of songs about jesus there's been a lot of books that have referenced jesus there's been a lot of movies made about jesus by the way i think the the series the chosen has been a great movie series if you haven't watched that it's only available by app on the chosen or youtube shows it but before the chosen came and and portrayed jesus in a more authentic way i always was mystified at how most movies portrayed jesus as a blue-eyed white guy with a british accent like what that that not that's not really who he was people will give credit to jesus when they win an award and they will curse him when they don't that's the idea that people have of jesus but he was not the son of joseph only to the extent that joseph gave jesus legal covering because joseph was the legal guardian of jesus he was the adoptive dad of jesus but he was not the biological father of jesus jesus is the son of god not the son of joseph but what does it mean when we say that jesus is the son of god does god have children well jesus is not god's son in the sense that a human father has a human son god didn't procreate and then jesus was born as his son now what we need to understand when we use that phrase jesus is the son of god is that jesus is god made manifest in human form that a miracle occurred when the holy spirit came upon mary as a virgin and the seed of god became the incarnation of god where god took on flesh and walked among us we beheld his glory the glories of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth that's john 1 14. john 1 1 and the word became fl in the beginning was the word the word was with god and the word was god jesus is god and he came to earth and took on flesh and made god manifest as as he appeared on earth hebrews 1 3 says that the sun so when jesus is the radiance of god's glory and the exact representation of his being and so jesus is god that's what we mean when we say he's the son of god because he is god made manifest in human form by the way when luke gives the genealogical record of jesus in chapter 3 he inserts a parenthetical comment before joseph's name so that we all are aware of the fact that joseph is not his biological father look in your bibles just glance backward to chapter 3. if you look at chapter 3 and verse 23 when luke lists the genealogical record of jesus and he says there in luke 3 23 now jesus himself began his ministry at about 30 years of age being parenthesis as was supposed the son of joseph luke wants us to know he was not really the biological son of joseph he was the son of god it was the reason why just one verse before that when john the baptist was baptizing jesus that it says there in luke 3 22 and the holy spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon him and a voice came from heaven which said this is god the father speaking you are my beloved son in you i am well pleased that's the reason why before that in chapter 2 when jesus was 12 years old by the way this is luke is the only gospel that records this scene here when jesus was 12 and what happens is it's mentioned there in luke chapter 12 luke chapter 2 when jesus was 12 years of age he got separated from his parents his parents came to jerusalem for one of the feasts they usually travel in a large entourage so when they left joseph thought that mary had him mary thought that joseph had him they thought he was just playing with the kids as they went back to nazareth but instead they had left jesus back at the temple area and then they realized oh we don't have jesus we got to go back and find him now don't shame joseph and mary this happens i remember years ago there was a family here at cornerstone not here anymore we were at the old building and they were a rather large family had a lot of kids and they got the van full and left one kid at church it happens they realized after about three weeks and came back but now it was like 15 minutes they realized hey we forgot and circled back but it happens okay it happens but when jesus was found by his parents joseph being the adoptive dad mary his mother they were frantic and jesus says in in luke 2 verse 49 why did you seek me did you not know that i must be about my father's business my father even further back in chapter one when the angel gabriel comes to mary to announce that she is going to give birth to messiah this divine moment here the angel says to her in luke 1 35 therefore the holy one who is to be born will be called the son of god so back here in chapter four the people of jesus day in that synagogue they did what a lot of people do today concerning jesus they reduced him to an ordinary man an ordinary man who did revolutionary things but still the same just an ordinary man but everybody needs to understand that no ordinary man can die and atone for your sins and no ordinary man rose from the dead and no ordinary man can save you because jesus was no ordinary man but the people didn't believe that he was messiah they were dismissive and they were proud and this is why when jesus continues to say what he does in the passage we read that he basically turns to rebuke them he will tell them that they will quote a proverb to him and he says you're going to quote a proverb to me physician heal thyself and what he was saying was the miracles that he did in capernaum you're going to want me to do to perform for you but i won't perform for you i won't perform for you and then jesus says in verse 24 look in your bibles there at verse 24 he says to them assuredly i say to you no prophet is accepted in his own country now by country he meant his own province his own his own known familiar area there which was nazareth this is a true statement that jesus is making here the people who knew jesus the most accepted him the least said in a in another way as a lesson for us it's point number two the people you are able to influence the least are often those who are familiar with you the most why is it that your closest family members are also usually your greatest critics don't look at anybody right now look right at me why is it that the people who know you best are the ones who treat you worst because there's an old saying familiarity breeds contempt it's been around for many centuries in fact esop the ancient greek storyteller illustrated this in his esop's fables in the 6th century bc he tells a story about how a fox had an encounter with a lion and when the fox had this first encounter with this line he was scared to death and the fox had a second encounter with the same line he wasn't quite as scared and by the third encounter esop wrote that the fox was chatting with a lion and then in the fable he says and so it is that familiarity makes even the most frightening things seem quite harmless sometimes the most difficult people to witness to if you haven't already noticed this are your close family members and friends they will judge you for your faults they will remind you of your shortcomings they will dismiss you because they don't take you seriously that's what happened with jesus not not that he had any faults or shortcomings but they just didn't take him seriously he was the hometown boy from nazareth he was joseph's son i tell people all the time when they get frustrated about how they find it difficult to share their faith and to witness to family members and close friends and how unresponsive their family members and friends seem to be and why is that i quote this verse right here because a prophet is without honor in his own country in his own hometown people who know you most people who are most familiar with you are least likely to accept what you have to say so what i tell people is pray for others to come along the way of your family member and friends who will share jesus with them because you're too close to the subject you know people have this tendency to look at you and and they will remind you if not verbally they will in their heads well you're the one i used to drink with on friday nights we would get hammered every friday night what are you telling about jesus for you know they'll look at the way it used to be before you came to know christ they'll remind you of things in the past they'll think about you things that discredit and dismiss you so what we have to do is sometimes we find that we're not really accepting our own family and friends in trying to win us and share and we're not really being taken seriously so we have to pray for god to bring along other people who will say some of the same things we're saying but they can't hear it from us they need to hear it from other people this is what was happening here the third lesson the last lesson we'll look with has to do with the reaction that the people have this violent reaction to the examples that jesus gave of god's grace that god extended to a couple of people during the days of elijah the prophet and elisha the prophet so jesus gives two examples here the first one he talks about is how elijah the prophet and this is from their own jewish scriptures this is in the bible he's telling them some a story that they're familiar with he's saying remember how elijah the prophet was called not to any widows within israel during that three and a half years when there was a famine but he was called to a widow in zarephath which was up in saigon okay sidon is on the coast of the mediterranean and today on a map would be lebanon he said elijah went outside of israel to go help a widow in zarephath even though there were other widows starving within israel jesus is like remember that and then the second example he goes and then remember during the ministry of elisha the prophet he was sent to naaman the syrian also outside of israel naaman was a general in the syrian army and naaman had leprosy and jesus said remember a lot of people had leprosy in israel in the day but elisha the prophet was sent to naaman the syrian why do you suppose that was and at this point people are irate they are furious now why are they so angry two reasons number one because jesus is calling them out and he's basically saying because of their question isn't this joseph's son they've dismissed him they've rejected him they don't believe he's the messiah the fulfillment of isaiah 61. and so jesus is calling them out and he's basically saying yeah remember how it was that for the most part elijah and elisha were not received either and that's why god sent them outside of israel to help people who needed god's favor because they were rejected too just like you're rejecting me the second thing that ticked him off and probably went even deeper touched a nerve was the fact that the two examples he gave the widow and zarephath and naaman the syrian were both gentiles they were not jews they were gentiles god's favor and grace was poured out on a couple of gentiles and at this the people are furious why because the jews in the day felt the gentiles were god forsaken people these people were not loved by god these people are not part of the plan of god in fact to the jews of the day they believed that gentiles were created by god for one purpose as father for the fires of hell that's the way they saw gentiles and jesus brings gentiles as a wonderful example of god's grace and favor extended to them and said now these people are like we're going to kill you now we're going to kill you i remember years ago i was doing a funeral for a lady who who died and she was jewish she was a jewish believer came to faith in jesus near the end of her life and her daughter wanted me to do the funeral and to preach jesus but she said to me all of my mom's friends are going to be jews so when they come and they fill the funeral home i still want you to just preach jesus i'm like okay and i got up there and i just started preaching jesus and i'm not exaggerating you know in the new testament it didn't say it in this passage but there are places where it says that the jews gnashed their teeth i in the middle of talking about jesus all of a sudden i look out and people are going i mean it was serious they were seriously angry and i just thought this dear lady in front of me is not going to be the only dead person in a few minutes it's going to be me and so i know the reaction that that's going on right here okay these people are angry because you have highlighted gentiles as examples and their own prejudice and their own dislike of gentiles rose to the surface here and and what we have to remember is you see that jesus came for all that all might be saved he drew on those examples on purpose because he wanted the jews to understand that he came not just for the jew but also for the gentile he died for all people on the planet every person who would have faith to receive and believe can be saved even the apostle peter had to understand his own prejudice against gentiles when god told him in acts chapter 10 i want you to go to the house of a gentile by the name of cornelius i want you to share the gospel and peter was reluctant at first god had to deal with jesus's own disciples there was long standing on animosity between jews and samaritans in the new testament and there was one occasion and it's later in luke it's chapter 9 when jesus and his disciples were passing through samaria on their way to jerusalem and they tried to find lodging and no samaritan would give him lodging and james and john go to jesus it's in luke chapter 9 and they say to jesus lord should we pray down fire from heaven to smoke them this is the a-team you know what i'm saying to you smoke them that's what we want to do the same prejudice you see among samaritan storage jews when jesus was ministering to the samaritan woman at the well she he says to her can you give me a cup of water out of the well and she basically says to him oh oh you're a jew i'm a samaritan oh now you want to talk to me juice don't normally talk to samaritans but now you're thirsty and you want a glass of water you know that's why she in the message bible it says but why was she saying that well there's animosity between us we don't get along okay and what this highlights for me is this important thing and it's and it's the last point it's number three be careful not to write off certain people jesus came for all that all might be saved is there someone a particular person that you thought to yourself they could never be saved is there a group of people that you have subconsciously written off maybe people have done that to you god doesn't do that god doesn't write anybody off i'll close with this funny story our pastor of children and family ken wright i brought him on staff about six years ago but before that before he became a pastor on staff here he was the athletic director for all of loudoun county public schools and before that he was the ad at loudoun county high school and that's where i first got to know him because all three of our kids went to loudoun county high school graduated from there and and because they were involved in athletics and sports then you know i came in contact with ken and and i got to tell i texted ken uh before church this morning i said i'm going to talk about you today and and i hope you don't mind and he says if i can serve as a bad example use me so here's the bad example he was known as a pretty gruff guy really rough around the edges had a mouth had an attitude okay people who knew him can testify to this and in fact one time during a basketball game he threw a chair on courtside and because he was so mad at the ref and got kicked out of the game and the whole deal was quite quite a fiasco first time i met ken though i had known about him heard about him right first time i met ken i'm up in the announcer's booth on the field at loudoun county high school i'm going to call one of the football games because our son austin was playing uh football and so as a dad i'm volunteering i'll call the game so i'm up at the announcer's booth and in walks can and you're like you don't even look at me just like and he and he hands me a cd he goes yeah play this and i'm like what what is this doesn't even look at me and like not hi i'm ken wright athletic director loudoun county high school what's your name hi i'm gary hamrick nice to meet you oh you're sound please swivel yeah none of that play this like all right what is this because the national anthem when the game starts popping in the cd player play it walks out like wow what a sweet man that guy is and so did what he asked you know game went on well a few weeks after that we're at the old building on miller drive and i see ken and his wife kim and their daughters walking into church and uh little did i know at the time that his daughters had actually been coming to church first they were a part of the youth group checking out the youth group and so ken decided to come to check out this cult that they were part of well he'd only been here for i don't know a couple months and then easter came and uh they were here for easter and the first easter that ken was here at church he gave his heart to christ and he got saved he got radically saved and later that week he wrote me a nice email and basically said listen you know ken wright i think we've met a few times and just once you know i gave my heart to jesus on easter sunday and i can't believe i always totally changed my life just radically already like i have a different attitude different perspective i've cleaned up my language just all this different stuff i know he's done his work in my heart because i couldn't have done this myself and there's this wonderful email i'm reading this okay so my son austin who played football and knew ken right i go in this is like 12 years ago when this happened and so austin wasn't married as a teenager still at home in high school i knock on his bedroom door i'm like austin you're never going to believe this i got this email from ken wright and he's like you didn't i said yeah i just have to read it to you and so i read the whole thing that i just basically summarized to you and when i finished reading it i'm like what do you think and austin's looking at me deadpan the whole time i'm reading the email and i said to him what do you think and he looks straight at me and he says i don't believe a word he wrote true story yeah sitting right here in the front row yeah didn't believe a word he wrote i said you got to be kidding me i kept thinking i kept thinking he's going to be like rejoicing like wow jesus changed another soul's heart you know instead no he follows up by saying a bunch of baloney don't believe a word of it now god got the last laugh look they're both on staff now as pastors here at cornerstone yeah [Applause] yeah yeah somebody that you wrote off look you wrote them off my point is this there's some people in our lives that we look at and we think maybe because of their past or maybe because of this because of that we just write them up think ah no they couldn't get saved but god can save anybody because he died for all that all might be saved charles spurgeon said this before we can be winners of souls we must first be weepers for souls may god break our hearts for people who need jesus don't write them off may god break your heart for them and may god bring them to the saving knowledge of jesus christ and may he use us to do it what a glorious privilege let's pray father we thank you for your word and we thank you for luke chapter four and a reminder to us uh lord about a few things and as we just close out here we just thank you that we live in the age of grace and that you died to set us free to set the captives free to bind up the brokenhearted to open the eyes of the blind i pray lord right now for those who have been blind so to speak to the truth of jesus but right now you're opening their eyes you didn't write them off you died for all that all might be saved and so i pray for those individuals right now that need you that recognize they need to come to faith in jesus thank you lord that you don't write us off but you're patient not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance i'm going to pause on my prayer right now and i just want to appeal to you with your heads bowed and eyes closed whether you're here in the sanctuary or watching online if you don't know christ as your savior there's no greater time than now to accept him trust him as your lord people in his day were skeptical people still today are skeptical that doesn't change the fact that jesus is who he said he is that he died on a cross for you because he loves you he wants to set you free if you want to be set free then pray this prayer with me receive him as your lord and savior just pray a simple prayer with me right where you are just whisper this after me make it your prayer just say lord jesus i thank you that you love me that you died on a cross for my sins i pray right now that you'll come into my life and change me save me forgive me i surrender to your lordship i confess with my mouth that jesus is lord i trust you today help me now to live my life for you jesus i surrender to you in your name i pray now if you prayed that prayer with me after the service will be a pastor down front to give you a bible just to remember today's decision if you prayed that prayer online if you're on our website you can click the button i have decided if you're watching by youtube or facebook you can text 703-844-9969 let us know you've decided we'll mail your bible god is good amen all the time god is good god bless y'all you

Channel: Cornerstone Chapel - Leesburg, VA

Views: 21,332

Rating: 4.9106145 out of 5

Keywords: Cornerstone Chapel, Calvary Chapel, Gary Hamrick, Biblical sermons, leesburg va, cornerstone chapel leesburg virginia, great sermons by great preachers, luke 4, lessons from nazareth, nazareth, is Jesus the son of god, is jesus the son of joseph, how is jesus the son of God and joseph, synagogue

Id: _qsZqHWvY_E

Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021