I grew up attending a little Methodist church in our farming
community, the only church I knew up through high school. I became a
Christian at a Baptist church camp the summer of my sophomore year, but I
continued to attend our home church.
Even after I was saved, it never occurred to me that some in
our congregation might not be. I just thought everyone
else had already heard and believed the gospel.
Unbelievably our pastor asked me--a high school kid--to preach in his
absence a couple times. I knew nothing about preaching and
almost nothing about the word of God, but I had a book of Harry Ironside’s sermons. I memorized one of them, and it became the first message I ever preached. I thought that’s how all pastors
did it. People congratulated me on the sermon, but I just said, “I got it out of
this book.”
Things changed when I went away to college. It finally
dawned on me that a lot of religious people don’t really know Christ. I began
to share the gospel. I went home for
spring break and my pastor invited me to preach again. This time I knew what I
had to say. I told people they were sinners and that they needed Christ. I called on them to repent and believe in Him. And I gave an altar call. Out of the 80
people in our congregation, a dozen came forward to the altar.
But that was the last time I was ever invited to preach in
my home church. The leaders of the congregation regarded me with suspicion. I
was the kid they thought they knew, but who turned out to be a religious
fanatic, a weirdo.
I think of all that when I read about Jesus’ first sermon in
His home synagogue at Nazareth (see Luke 4:16-30). Not only did they regard Him as a weirdo, but they tried to kill Him. At the beginning of the service, everyone admired Him as the hometown boy. By the end of His sermon, they were
trying to throw him off a cliff.
Why does the truth about Jesus make people so upset? Why do people hate Christ? I don’t think
there’s any answer but spiritual pride.
When Jesus preached in Nazareth, He spoke from Isaiah
61:1-2: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the
captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are
oppressed (Luke 10:18). He described sinners—including the good folks at
Nazareth—in four unflattering ways: as destitute beggars, as hopeless prisoners, as people blind to spiritual truth, and as oppressed—a word that means
“broken.”
We don’t like to think of ourselves this way. Religious
people might be willing to admit that “some people” need a Savior, but
they don’t include themselves. The gospel is for the bad people, but not for them.
But apart from Christ, we’re all bad people. We’re beggars, captives,
blind, and broken. Just recognizing the truth of this desperate portrait is more
than sinners can do. We need God’s grace even to see how much we need Christ.
I admire Christ for telling the truth, even when what He said made His
audience want to hurl Him off a cliff. May His courage rub off on you and me.
