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And now if you will turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 4 verses 14 through 21.

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Now the past few Sundays we've been looking at the glory of Jesus Christ.

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We have seen Jesus glorified by turning water into wine.

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We have seen him glorified by raising Lazarus from the dead.

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Today we're going to look at another story in which Jesus Christ is glorified this time not by a miracle,

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but by what he taught and who he is.

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Let's now give our attention to God's word beginning at verse 14.

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Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit and news about him spread through the whole countryside.

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He was teaching in their synagogues and everyone praised him.

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He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue as was his custom.

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He stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.

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On rolling it he found the place where it was written.

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The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

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He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free.

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To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

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Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendants and sat down.

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And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.

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And he began by saying to them,

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Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

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Let's pray and ask God to bless his word.

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Our Heavenly Father, we need your Holy Spirit.

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We need the Holy Spirit so that we can understand your words so illuminate our hearts today.

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So that we can see the glory of Jesus Christ.

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In the task of teaching God's people.

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Our Lord and our God, we come to you now.

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Glorifying you.

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And one day in the new heavens and the new earth, we will continue to glorify you.

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I make this prayer in his name, amen.

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Both teaching and learning are difficult.

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I remember when I was in high school, I did not know what I wanted to do.

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I did not know what I wanted to be.

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And I really didn't want to go to college.

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I wanted to work for the railroad or drive a truck or something.

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Going to college was my mom's idea.

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So I remember it being in a lot of classes, not caring, not understanding.

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Now that was my fault. It was my own immaturity at that time.

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But I would also have to say to you, I had some pretty lousy teachers.

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I remember we had one biology class.

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And now there were some interesting things about the biology class.

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The dissection of the worm, that was fun.

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But most of the time, you know what we did?

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He would come in in the morning and write all the notes on these very long chalkboards.

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And for the whole class, we did nothing but copy down notes from the board.

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It took 40, 50 minutes for us to do that.

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And it seemed like we did it day after day after day of doing nothing.

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But that was one example.

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But I can tell you, I've also had classes, yes, even classes in the Bible,

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where I could not figure out what is this guy saying?

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I don't understand it. The lectures don't hold together.

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They're here, they're there, they're everywhere.

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And I came out of it. I didn't learn a thing.

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I also remember my first year at Covenant College,

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we had a class called Foundations of Modern Culture.

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And in this class, they went over a lot of philosophy.

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And I remember thinking to myself, and I had to listen to those Francis Schaefer films,

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which are hard to understand in places, and he would go on about existentialism,

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and being a small town boy from Virginia, I was thinking, what's an existentialist?

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I didn't know. I don't know if I learned anything, because I didn't know.

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And I've also had some teachers, and this is basically at the college, graduate school level,

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they were just grumpy with me.

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I remember I had an interview at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia where I wanted to go,

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and you had to have an interview before you got in, or they would accept you.

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The guy who was there, who was a big wig in the United Presbyterian Church named James Smiley,

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proceeded to yell and berate me for about an hour, because I went to Covenant College,

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Reformed Theological Seminary, and I was classmates with Matt Barker, who I ran across country with,

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and apparently at one time the Barkers were big league in the PCUSA,

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and they had left, it was a big, I got yelled at.

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Do you think I wanted to go there? No.

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I'd have to tell you, a lot of it is that way in teaching, and then there's preaching.

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That can also be troublesome as well.

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For example, in Virginia went to a very historical church, preacher wore the robes,

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which I think had been made in 1860, and he had this strange voice.

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It was not the voice he normally talked in, and I don't remember anything about those sermons.

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So part of the reason I decided I wanted to go to seminary, and I was not the only one.

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I want to know something about what the Bible says.

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Teaching and learning, it can be difficult.

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What I want, and probably what you want, is someone who can explain things,

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someone who's nice and approachable, so that when you don't understand or you made a mistake,

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they can correct you.

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That's what I was looking for, and I'm sure you are too.

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What you really want is a teacher like Jesus.

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And when you look at the life of Jesus, he was an excellent teacher.

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Do you realize people came to Jesus because of his teaching?

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Yeah, that's why they came.

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He did not teach as the scribes and the Pharisees did.

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His teaching was different, and what we find out is that people glorified Jesus

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because of the words he taught.

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And you can see that in verse 15.

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Everyone praised him.

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Now it may say something a little different in some of your versions.

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Some it will say he was glorified.

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They were glorifying him.

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Actually, that's literally what the word is.

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It's that same word in Greek that we get our English word doxology from.

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It was the same word that we've seen in other places for his miracles.

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They were glorifying him because of the way that he taught.

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If we would put it in modern day English, they were saying, he's a great teacher.

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We know what he's talking about.

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And this morning, that's what I want to look at.

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Why were people glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ?

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Why?

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To get to that, we've got to clear some landmines out of the way before we get into what is actually said in the text.

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And some of these barriers or landmines we're going to find out have to do with the reason that people come to church.

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Why do people come to church?

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For some, they come to church because it's the right thing to do.

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Now, back in the 50s and 60s, people came to church.

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And the reason they came to church is because they wanted their kids to get a proper moral education.

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That's why they came to church.

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So what would happen is, the parents would drop them off at church and Sunday school and the parents would go home.

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And then come back later to pick up the kids.

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What was the purpose of going to church?

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Because this is how good people are trained.

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They went to church to get a good moral teaching.

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You know, obey those commandments.

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I got to tell you, that's not bad.

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We all need moral instruction.

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We do need to know the difference between right and wrong, don't we?

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So I'm not going to complain about that.

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But we've got to ask ourselves this question.

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What's missing?

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It's not bad.

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But what is missing?

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Or you may have gone to church, or no others who have gone to church, simply because of tradition.

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My grandfather went to this church.

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My father went to this church.

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I am going to go to this church because they did.

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It's what we do in this family.

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And after you have gotten up 50 weeks out of the year on Sunday morning to go to church, it's part of your habit.

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In fact, it used to be in churches, and I still think we have it here.

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You'll notice on the side of the pews, we used to name pews for family members, I guess they bought into it.

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Now that, in the colonial times, was very big.

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You had the family pew.

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You're not going to break family tradition by not showing up and filling up your pew.

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And God forbid, if a visitor sat in your pew.

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Wouldn't want to have that, but why did you go?

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Merely tradition.

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It's sort of like the Andy Griffith cartoon, where Barney is going to church, he's sleeping through it,

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and he gets out of church and he says to the minister in one of my favorite lines in all of sitcoms,

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great sermon creature about sin and all that, what's missing? What's missing from that?

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Or you've got the, I call them the first church cry.

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You go to church because this is where the elite of society go.

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The bankers, the lawyers, the doctors, the judges, they all go there.

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And by the way, you've got to have a preacher who's got to be well-heeled, well-educated.

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And if he's not there on Sunday, well, we're just not going to go.

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But it's the first church crowd.

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Why are they there?

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Because this is the social life.

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This is where deals are made, but what's missing?

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What's missing?

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You know, I know in my own story that I went to church simply because my parents made me.

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I remember the first time they told me I had to tithe, and that was in the days when the weekly allowance was a dollar,

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and I had to give 10 cents.

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I thought it was outrageous.

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But I did it.

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I remember sitting through those sermons and not knowing what they were about.

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I wanted to know what the Bible said I wanted to, as it says in John, serve that we would see Jesus.

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Now I tell you these stories why.

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It's because this is a passage about the glory of Jesus Christ in his teaching.

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And you want to know why people don't see the glory of Christ in the teaching and reading of his word?

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Let me state it bluntly.

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That's not what they're here for.

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They're here for other reasons.

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Now maybe I'm preaching to the choir this morning, and I probably am since most of you are here.

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But beware, beware of coming to the house of God for the wrong reasons.

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You are here to hear about Jesus, whether it is Old Testament or New Testament.

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We are here to see Jesus Christ.

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And part of the reason people get turned off the church, I think, is the reason that they have come.

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It's in their hearts.

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Well those are the barriers.

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But let's get into why Jesus teaching is so glorious.

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And I'll tell you why.

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It's because his message is the good news.

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And you can see that in verse 18 where it says this.

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He, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

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He is saying I am the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, which is what this is a quote from,

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because he has anointed me to do what?

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To proclaim the good news.

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And later on to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

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Now I want you to think of people back then.

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Did they need to hear the good news? Yes they did. And I'll tell you why they need to hear the good news.

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First of all they need to hear the good news because the teachings they had received was awfully legalistic.

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There were all these rules about how you eat, how you keep the salad.

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Rules, rules, rules. You can only walk this amount on Sunday.

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You've got to do X, Y, and Z. And by the way if you don't do all these rules, you're not pleasing to God.

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And those rules that the Pharisees and the scribes came up with often had nothing to do with the Word of God.

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They were merely human traditions.

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And they had convinced people, by the way you want God to bless you.

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You've got to do this.

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There was also the idea that if you sin, you're going to pay for it.

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Why are you sinned? Why are you blind? Why do you have leprosy? Well you sin.

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That's why.

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But is that what the Bible always says?

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And then there is the socioeconomics of it all, high taxes.

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Having to give all their hard earned money, either to Rome, to the local government.

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These people that Jesus had to deal with were oppressed, spiritually, physically.

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And they're coming to Jesus.

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And Jesus is not adding on more bad news with more rules.

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And if you work for the government, you know about the expanding rules that we all have to deal with, which will depress you.

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Jesus comes to relieve them of that.

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And in Jesus' ministry, he goes after those false teachers who put burden after burden on God's people.

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Listen to what he says in Matthew 23, and it's quite harsh.

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Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.

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You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

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You yourself do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying.

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Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.

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You travel over the land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

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That is not a very positive assessment of teaching in the time of Jesus.

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And what does Jesus do? How does he respond to their misery and the false, lousy teaching of the day?

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He tells them it's the year of God's favor.

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They were thinking God is against us.

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Jesus says no.

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God in his mercy is for you.

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He's not against you.

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He's not here to destroy you.

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God is going to have compassion on his people.

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That is essentially what he's telling him.

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That's why it's the good news.

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Now, let's think a bit about this.

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Let's think about church for a moment.

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First of all, I'm not saying the minister or the preacher should not tell you about sin.

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Yes, they should.

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But I've also got to say this as well.

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There's a reason it's called the good news, because it is to relieve you of some of the spiritual suffering that you are going through by sin and guilt.

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And one day to relieve the physical ailments that you have as well.

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Jesus has come to give you life and to give you life abundantly.

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So beware if you go to a church or you're listening to sermons all the time where it's all negative, negative, negative.

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Where it is all about the sins of you and the world.

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There's more to the gospel.

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Sin has always been there.

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But we need to have some good news.

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Beware if you go to church or you listen to messages where the grace of God is not present, but just more rules for you to follow.

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That's not good news.

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Are there rules to follow? Yes.

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But let's remember the good news.

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I'll tell you, here's one of the things that always bugged me when I went to seminary.

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It was when we were told in one form or another, you guys are really dumbed.

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Why were we dumbed? Because we didn't come into seminary knowing Greek and Hebrew.

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Since the early 1900s that has been going away in college education.

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So what are we supposed to do?

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But do you see that negativity there?

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Would you want to learn from somebody who's telling you you're dumb all the time?

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Do you want to go to church if they're telling you the bad news about yourself all the time and believing there is bad news?

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There's also the good news.

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There's also hope.

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And that's why Jesus is being glorified.

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It's of who he is and that message that's going to be drawing people to the cross.

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And let me tell you something else here about why this message is so glorious.

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It is a message of grace.

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Look at verses 18 through 19.

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Look at what he's saying. His message is listen to what the spirit of the Lord is saying through him.

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He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

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Now let's look at that for a minute.

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Poor.

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Now in Luke's Gospel it does refer to those who are economically poor.

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But that's not all it refers to.

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It refers to those who are also poor in spirit.

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They are humble before God.

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And Jesus is coming to them and saying despite the fact that you are poor,

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despite the fact that you are humble and believe me in our modern American society, humility gets you nowhere these days.

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God's good news is I am for you.

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He also says he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.

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You are in chains by sin and guilt.

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You are a prisoner but Jesus came to free you from the chains of sin and guilt.

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He's feeling guilty all the time.

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You don't have to feel that way.

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He also talks about setting the oppressed free.

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Free from Satan.

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He also talks about in recovery of the sight for the blind.

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Now literally Jesus gave people sight.

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But let's also be clear here.

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Sometimes that refers to spiritual sight.

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Being able to see the kingdom of God.

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And why is all of this happening?

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Because it is all what Jesus accomplishes.

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You can't do this on your own.

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You can't free yourself from sin.

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You can't give yourself sight.

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You can't overcome your own oppression.

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It's what Jesus does.

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That's why it's grace.

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He's doing those things for you.

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It's what Christ has done for us.

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We've got to keep in mind.

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The ministry of Jesus is to get rid of the misery of this world.

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Either because of sin or the effects of the curse.

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Jesus says, I'm going to take care of it for you.

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I'm going to take care of it.

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What we've got to understand is when you come to church,

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and what you need to hear from the pulpit is the glorious grace of our Lord.

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Yes, you need to repent, but you also need to hear about God's grace.

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A grace which overcomes our sin.

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A grace which grounds us in the forgiveness and love of God.

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A grace that's going to provide a new heavens and a new earth,

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which is infinitely superior to what we've got to deal with today.

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With all of the curse that's around us.

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Isn't that what we all want?

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The problem in the church today is it can become too negative.

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It can become so many things that it is not designed to be.

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It can be a church where they're talking about the social ills all the time.

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It can be a church which is merely another form of behaviorism,

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but the gospel is a lot greater than any of that.

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It's to restore you by God's act.

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God's grace brings glory.

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And let me tell you, when you look at the teachings of Jesus,

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why are they glorious?

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Because they're the good news of His grace.

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And as this year continues to unfold, let us glorify Christ.

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Let us see Jesus, because He has given us the grace of our Lord Jesus.

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Jesus Christ.

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Let's pray.

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Our God and Heavenly Father, be with us now.

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And help us this day to understand the glorious grace found in the words of Jesus Christ.

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And if we are tempted to turn away from those glorious words of grace which we find in the New Testament,

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Holy Spirit, turn us back.

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Help us to see that for your people you are favorably disposed

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and are going to do wonderful works in the future.

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Here are prayer. Amen.