Luke 4, 16 to 22. And let me pray for us this morning as we come to God's word. Let's pray for his blessing. Father in heaven, thank you for another Lord's Day. Thank you that you have set aside a day for us to rest and to enter into your rest. And you have told us to come near and to listen. You have told us that if we would open our mouths wide, you would fill them with good things. You would satisfy us with honey from the rock. We pray, our Father, that today as we hear your word, we would not harden our hearts in unbelief, that we would not harden our hearts as the covenant people did throughout their history in the old covenant, as many have done throughout the new covenant. We pray, Lord Jesus, that the seed of your word would fall in good soil, that it would bear fruit 30, 60, 100 fold. We pray that you would do a great work of grace in us this morning. Lord, we need you. We need your help and your mercy. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. All right, Luke chapter four, and we're going to start in verse 16. This is God's word. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He rolled up the scroll and found the place where it was written. 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, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? That ends the reading of God's Word this morning. What I wanted to do today was to consider the subject of Christ and the Gospels. Now, you may be intrigued whenever you learn more about Christ in the Old Testament. The Bible is about Jesus, all of it, as he said to the two on the road to Emmaus. And you may be intrigued as you grow in your knowledge of the doctrinal truths about Christ in the epistles. And yet, I wonder if we all have never really stopped to think, how do I read about Christ in the Gospels? There He is. He's there. He is walking on the earth that you are right now walking on. He's there. He's walking among man. He's opening His mouth. He's teaching them. He is there. In this text, he is there in the synagogue. He is standing there before the people. Their eyes are fixed on him. He has the scriptures in his hand. He is there. And yet for all that, those in the synagogue could not see him there. They said, is this not Joseph's son? Is this not Joseph's son? And many people reading the Gospels cannot see him there. They cannot see the Savior there. They hear his words. They understand his ethical teaching. They see his miracles. They know that he was at least a good man. They know that he was a great teacher. They know that he was even a prophet. And yet for all that, they cannot see the Savior there. And I think I think that many within evangelicalism, many within Protestant churches, even conservative, even very confessionally reformed churches, oftentimes cannot see him there, cannot see him when they read the Gospels. I think there's one very glaring reason for that, and that is that there is a story going on within the stories that he tells. In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, behind the stories and the teaching that Jesus is telling, there is a story going on, and that story is the story of the Savior going to the cross. And that's the very basic foundational principle as we come to consider Christ in the Gospels is that he is always heading somewhere. He is always going somewhere. He is not there in one specific place, staying there. He is moving. Luke tells us he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. He is there because he is going to the cross. He is going to make atonement for sin. And that means that everything that we read, everything in the Bible, everything that we read about Him, must be read in light of what He's doing. Now, you may say, that's simple. Yeah, I mean, I get that. I get that. We don't get it so often. This is why myriads of books are written about the Sermon on the Mount. And theologians don't see him, the Savior, there. They hear the ethical teaching. They hear the high ethical standard. They hear the call to radical holiness. And they preach more effort, more endeavor, more zeal for pursuing that. And they miss that he is there holding up that ethical standard to show men that they cannot keep that ethical standard and that they need him in what he is there to do. He's standing on a mountain. He will die on a mountain. He is going. He is always going to the cross. And the more that we come to understand this, the more we come to bring these things together in our reading of the Gospels, the more we are going to benefit and the more we're going to grow in our knowledge, love, and love for Christ. Well, notice in Luke 4, this is Jesus' first sermon. He doesn't even get through it before they try to throw him off a cliff. That's good for me. I've preached more sermons. You haven't thrown me off a cliff yet. Jesus doesn't get through his first sermon before he makes everybody mad. He picks up the scroll of the book Isaiah, and he says, this is about me, and it's fulfilled today in your hearing. And what he specifically says in that first sermon is that it's about the salvation that he came to bring. Now, Jesus is not saying he came to bring salvation to poor people specifically over rich people. When he says poor, don't make the mistake that so many make in reading literal physical poor as if the poor somehow have an advantage over the rich. They don't. The law was very clear about that. The rich and the poor paid the same amount for the redemption money. A rich person could not discriminate against a poor person in a court of law. A poor person could not discriminate against a rich person in a court of law. God flattens and levels the playing field, as it were, in the socioeconomic sphere of things. So clearly, the Bible does say that the poor often are the ones that God has given faith to. They have less hindrances in one sense. Money is not always their God, as it is for the rich. And yet, Jesus says he came to proclaim good news to the poor. They are, I believe, spiritually poor. He says he came to proclaim liberty to the captives. And he came, he says, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. All those things denoting spiritual bondage, poverty, captivity, all the things that Jesus came to accomplish in setting free those who were in shackles, in bondage to Satan and sin and to the world. And he says in verse 19, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now, this is a reference to the year of Jubilee that happened if you lived a normal average lifespan of 70 years, it would happen one time in your life. One time in your life, the year of Jubilee, where all deaths were canceled, where all land was given back, where you were innocent, set free one time in your life. And the Lord Jesus came one time in history and said, this is the year of Jubilee. It's here. I've come. I've come to accomplish all things. And he says to them in verse 21, he rolls up the scroll. He says, today, the scripture has been fulfilled. And you're hearing not much of an exposition. It's not a 30 minute sermon. You guys might like to have Jesus just say one sentence after reading the scripture. It's done today. It's all fulfilled and then they get angry at him for telling them about election and how he chooses Gentiles over Jews and how it's his free grace and they try to throw him off a cliff. Jesus Christ sets in this first sermon the whole tone of his ministry. And that means when we come to the Sermon on the Mount, one enormous mistake that people make, because that is the largest and lampiest of the ethical teachings of Jesus. One of the largest mistakes men make is to take that sermon atomistically. atomistically, to separate it from the story that's going on that Jesus is writing as he heads to the cross. So they'll take Matthew 5-7 out and they'll say, well, Jesus doesn't preach the gospel there, so we don't need to preach the gospel all the time. And if you take the time to read through, yes, the gospel's in there, but it's not as explicit as it would be in Romans and Galatians and Colossians and Ephesians and all the New Testament epistles. What would one reason be why our Lord's teaching lacks some of the explicit focus on the gospel that we find in the epistles? And yet it doesn't lack it. Jesus seems to teach a lot of ethics. The apostles seem to teach a lot of gospel. Who is he speaking to? Speaking to Jews who are by and large apostates. who yet know the scriptures, know the Old Testament, and yet they don't know them because they don't see him there. They don't see him there. And so Jesus is correcting misunderstandings that they've built around the law. They've brought the law down, made it a lot more accessible. We do that too. That's why we judge people when they're not like us. I'm a good law keeper. No, we're not. And Jesus says, if you look at a woman in lust, you commit adultery. If you have anger in your heart, towards someone sinfully, you murder them. We are murderers. We are adulterers. That's the point. Jesus is, in the words of Gerhardtus Vos, he is holding up an unattainable ideal, an unattainable ideal. He is showing that the law in its purpose and intention as given by God is unattainable. You cannot keep the law in that perfection that God demands, which is why he's there. which is why he's there. Let me read you just a couple of quotes briefly. Voss again says this, If we have but eyes to see, we shall find our Savior in the outdoor scenes of the Gospels, no less than within the walls of the school of the Epistle to the Romans. If we have but eyes to see, we will find our Savior Notice he doesn't say our example. He says, our Savior, in the outdoor scenes of the Gospels, no less than within the walls of the school of the epistle to the Romans. It's a profound statement, because we read Romans, and very clearly there's the Savior, and very clearly the work of the Savior is set out. The answer to the question that I pose is actually a somewhat refined thought process for us. The Gospels give us the history of the work of Jesus. So they're giving us the facts of Jesus. They're showing us what happened in time and space, where he walked, what he did, what he said, where he was going. They give us the history. The Apostles give us the divine interpretation of that history. There's no dichotomy. There's no contradiction. what Paul and Peter and John write, because they were there with him. They are writing about the theology, as it were, of the history. They're writing the theology of the history. It's very helpful. And much to my surprise, many ministers miss this. They miss that very nuanced distinction. Jesus doesn't preach the gospel anywhere, everywhere, because he is the gospel. Jesus is the gospel. John Piper has a book, God is the Gospel. God is the Gospel. Jesus is the Gospel. He is the good news. Sinclair Ferguson will say, Jesus is the grace of God. Grace is not a thing out here. It's a person. I actually think Ferguson's right. Jesus is the fulfillment of everything. He is God manifest in the flesh. He had come to make atonement for sins. He had come to shed his blood for the transgressions of the law that he expounded in the Sermon on the Mount. And so, J. Gretchen Machen says this, the Sermon on the Mount, like all the rest of the New Testament, really leads a man straight to the foot of the cross. The Sermon on the Mount, like all the rest of the New Testament, really leads a man straight to the foot of the cross. I could stop and say, that's the big point. There's nothing bigger than that. You could then apply that to everything you read in the New Testament. And yet, I want to take us just a little bit further in this principle and how this principle gets outworked. Turn over to Luke 15, well-known parable, Luke 15, verse 11 to verse 32. We won't read it all. This is the well-known account of the prodigal sons. I guess you guys have heard that. That's the old Puritan interpretation, Reformed interpretation that both sons are rebellious. Edwin Clowney kind of revived it. Sinclair Ferguson and Tim Keller popularized it. But this is the Reformed always got that. Both sons are rebellious. Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. They are the elder brothers. Elder in Greek is Presbuteros. We are not like the elder brother, hopefully, as Presbyterians. But the elder brother is the Pharisee and the elder brother thinks that he's good. And the elder brother has been serving the father and working for the father's pleasure. And the younger son, who we usually tag as the one who's really bad, is the one that actually gets saved. He's the one who takes the father's goods and lives a wild lifestyle. And then he comes to his senses. God grants him repentance. He comes back and the father is running out to meet him and embraces him and kills a fatted calf and throws the best robe on him and a ring and gives him some of the elder brother's inheritance, actually. And the elder brother's angry. You never did this for me. All these years I served you. He views God as a taskmaster. Very legal way. I've been working for you. You never did this for me. And this, your son, this son of yours, instead of my brother, this son of yours, he says, comes back, squanders everything, comes back and you throw a party for him. When this son of yours, verse 30, has devoured your property with prostitutes. And you have killed the fatted calf for him. The elder brother is indignant. Jesus is proving a point. The point is that the Pharisees are unhappy that prostitutes and tax collecting thieves are entering the kingdom and they are not. And Jesus is saying to them, listen, you need to see your rebellion. You need to see what's wrong with you. Here's the point in bringing all this up. Theologians have pointed to this and said, see, God accepts everyone regardless of who they are, regardless of what happens. that we don't need what conservative theologians have called atonement for sin. Because where is there atonement in this story? The son changes, he comes to his senses, he goes home, the father receives him. And so liberal theologians have loved this passage because they've said, well, you don't need the Protestant doctrine of penal substitution on the cross. You don't need the doctrine of propitiation of the wrath of God because God is loving. He loves everyone. He is a loving God who is ready to embrace and receive anybody that turns to Him without an atonement, without the shedding of blood, without this cosmic child abuse, as some would say today, this theory of God crushing His Son at the cross. And they say, and this, this story teaches it. What are they forgetting? What enables the father to run out after that son? It's nothing that the prodigal son does actually. What enables him? There's a third son. There are two sons who are rebellious. There's a third son. He's telling the story and he's going to the cross to make it possible for the father to be reconciled with rebellious sinners like us. That's the point of the Sunday school lesson because so often we miss that. So often it's easy. not to think about the Jesus telling the story. Who's telling the story? Where's he going? Why is he telling the story? What is he going to do? This is what Sinclair Ferguson says. He says, you see, it's the story that's taking place outside of the story of Luke 15 that makes the story of Luke 15 both possible and glorious. It's the story that's taking place outside of the story of Luke 15 that makes the story of Luke 15 both possible and glorious. Everything that Jesus is saying when he walks on the face of the earth is said in light of what he's doing. The third son is the son of God. He is the son of his heavenly father. He's telling the story about his father in heaven. What Ferguson's point is, what Voss's point is, what Mason's point is, what I think is the biblical point is that there is a foundation on which all teaching rests and that is Jesus, his person, and his saving work. Every story that Jesus tells is in light of the son of God. So when we say there's a third son, the one telling the story, we're saying that everything that he says, all his teaching is in light of who he is in relationship to his Heavenly Father. There's the obedience sign. who is the son of his father, who goes to the cross to make it possible for the Father to receive us back. Because there can be no reconciliation, as we'll hear today in the sermon, there can be no reconciliation without the cross. The cross is the great instrument of reconciliation. The cross is the agent of reconciliation. The blood of Jesus is what reconciles us. So, the prodigal son is a story of reconciliation. and what makes that reconciliation possible. It is a fanciful way to say there's a third son and he's going to the cross, but it's a rhetorical device, so it's not necessarily exposition in that sense. It's a rhetorical device to really enhance the redemptive historical background of the Gospels. The context is that Christ is going to the cross. It's adding the background story into the story is what it's doing. And I missed it for years, and when I discovered that, it changed the way I read the Gospels. Anytime I read something that was searching or challenging, anything that called me to radical discipleship, that has to be seen in light of the radical salvation we have in Jesus. Otherwise, we'll be driven legally, and everything will be illegal, fear-driven, rather than gratitude-driven for what He did. In real estate, what are the three rules of real estate? There's three rules in reading the Bible. Context, context, context. And what's the context of Luke 15? Well, the book of Luke. What's the context of the book of Luke? Jesus is the Great High Priest, the Physician of Souls, the Savior of Sinners, Savior of Jew and Gentile. That's pretty much the premise of the Gospel of Luke. Matthew would be a different context. Jesus is true Israel. He is the Son of Abraham. He is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mark, he is the Son of God, with that inscription at the beginning. Luke's really telling us that he is the second Adam, too. John is telling us that he is the eternal word. He is the Logos. He is the everlasting son of God. And so each gospel kind of gives us a different emphasis about Jesus. So that would be the second context. What would be context, text, context, book? What's the third context? The Bible. And what's the foundation of the Bible? What verse? Genesis 3, 15. Context, context, context, if you could envision, because we don't have anything to envision it with, if you could envision a bullseye, and right in the center is Jesus, and then whatever text you're preaching or reading, that's the most narrow context. You're focused in on the prodigal son. You've got to take the details, as you guys are saying, but that detail's not in there. You've got to take the details that are there. And then you've got to go out larger and say, okay, what's the context of Luke? It's high priests going to the cross. That's the story behind the story. And then you've got to go the largest context, which is what? God promised redemption to Adam and Eve in the garden, Genesis 3.15. The rest of the Bible is a footnote to Genesis 3.15 in the words of Ferguson. The rest of the Bible is a footnote. to Genesis 3.15. So how do you understand the Bible? You understand Genesis 3.15. How do you understand the prodigal son? You understand Genesis 3.15 and the Gospel of Luke. I chose this lesson because people raise the same objection to a portion of the Old Testament, for instance. David is clearly said to be a type of Christ. Right. King David is a type of Christ. Jesus is called David in Ezekiel, the messianic title. He is the head of the covenant. It's promised a son who will sit on the throne forever. And David's life historically is typological of Jesus's life. He is the beloved David. The father says to Jesus, this is my beloved son. He is born in Bethlehem. He is from the house of David. He is in the same lineage as David. He is the rightful king. He is the king after God's own heart. He is a shepherd. David was a shepherd. Jesus is the good shepherd. He is a warrior. David was a warrior. Jesus is a warrior. David was a lover. Jesus is a lover. David had a betrayer at the end of his life, Ahithophel, who when David was fleeing and crossing over the brook Kidron, his betrayer's plot gets foiled. And he goes and kills himself. Jesus, going to the cross, crosses over the brook Kidron. His betrayer's plot is uncovered, as it were, and he kills himself. The parallels are all over. Jesus has a few mighty men that walked through the grain fields on the Sabbath and plucked grains. David had some mighty men that went into the temple and took the showbread at every turn. Now, if we read, and a lot of Reformed theologians actually have a hard time with this. If we read the life of David, and I said all that, If I went to a synagogue and said all that, they'd be like, you're out of your mind. And yet Jesus says a greater than David is here in Matthew 12. So he says he is the greater David. He is the greater Solomon again. So what makes that typology possible? It's not that some men are smarter than others. It's not that the New Testament writers were like, Hey, let's, let's match this story about Jesus up with all this. It's because of Genesis 3.15. It's because God's plan to send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent in time and space sets the stage for the story that will unfold. And in the old covenant, all those historical people under the covenantal dealings of God are picturing forth the Savior either negatively or positively. So if they're disobedient, there's going to be an obedient king. If they're obedient, usually they become a type. of the obedient one. Persons, places, events, all those things. But if you read 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, that's not in the text, per se. It wouldn't seem that that's the point of the text, but it is the point, because when we come to the New Testament, the apostles and Christ give us that divine interpretation of what that meant. Not in total. I mean, if it was in total, we would have a Bible You know, it would be enormous if the apostles and Jesus told us in every way what they want us to do is to get the principles and then to go into the scriptures and apply those. And that's what I'm really trying to press home today is that we collect these principles. And then when we go to the Gospels, we try to apply that. Turn to Matthew 20. We did this on Wednesday. I'm not going to reteach the whole thing, but This will, we'll close with these. One of the interesting points about the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is that they're not written like a biography is written. If you wrote a biography about somebody, you would space out the years of their life fairly evenly. Early years, you know, young adult, middle age, later in life. You would have your biography set out, you know, depending on who you're writing about, and it would be pretty balanced. With the Gospels, you don't have that about Jesus. Instead, you have a decent amount about his birth, nothing about his adolescence, and then a tremendous amount about the last three years of his life with an even more tremendous focus on the last week of his life. And as you read the Gospels, what kind of happens is You go from these little close steps, close steps, close steps, to all of a sudden giant leaps into a focus on the last week of his life. And what God the Holy Spirit seems to be doing is saying, this is the focus. And so my point about reading everything else Jesus said in light of that is because that's even how the Gospels are written with that focus on the death and the resurrection. Long chapters. at the end of his life, focusing in because that's the fulfillment of Genesis 3.15. That's it. That's the climax. I'll come back to Matthew 20 in one second, but this is what Machen says again about the Sermon on the Mount. And you could, again, apply this to any interpretation of anything that you read in the Gospels. Without the cross, the Sermon on the Mount would be an intolerable burden. With the cross, it becomes the guide to a way of life. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus held up an unattainable ideal. He has revealed the depths of human guilt. He has made demands far too lofty for human strength. But thank God, he has revealed guilt only to wash it away. And with his demands, he has given strength to fulfill them. It is a sad, superficial view of the Sermon on the Mount, which substitutes it for the story of the cross. a deeper understanding of it leads straight to Calvary. I think what he says about the law and its exposition in the Sermon on the Mount can then be applied to anything Jesus taught. It doesn't mean the parable of the prodigal son is an unburdenable weight. It's not. It's a delightful story for us who know our sinfulness. But if it doesn't take you to the cross, then we're left saying, we have a warp view about God, that he can just accept sinners without propitiation and atonement. So I think that's where I wanted to go with that. Now, just briefly, as we close, Matthew 20, Jesus tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Right before he does, you have Peter saying, we left everything. What are we going to get, Jesus? And then right after it, you have In verse 20, Matthew 28, 20, you have the sons of Zebedee, James and John, putting their mom up to going to Jesus and asking for the best seats in heaven because, you know, forget these guys. We want to be number one, Jesus, with you. They want to use Jesus to get to the top. And what does Jesus say right before that and right after that to correct Peter and James and John? What does he do in verses 17 through 19? And then in response to the sons of Zebedee, tell them about the cross. That's the corrective. He says, listen, you're missing the story behind the story, behind the story of your life, behind the story of all my teaching, behind the story of what you think about me. There is the story of the cross. And that is the story of all stories by which every other story must be understood and interpreted. And all of our actions, Peter, who wants to be the greatest. James and John, who want to be the best. The cross. He'll do that often, won't he? He'll say, a servant is like his master. It's enough for you to be like me. And I came not to serve, not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. Again, pointing to the important thing. As you read the Gospels, Jesus he will repeatedly start to talk about his death more and more and more and more. Not just because it's imminent, not just because it's close at hand, but because it is the important thing of all important things. It's the spoke, it's the hub of the wheel. All the spokes move into that. All the stories move in and out from that. It's the best way to think about the atonement. And he does the same thing to James and John. Notice in Matthew 20, 20 and following he says to them when they asked to sit on his right hand and left in his kingdom verse 22 Jesus said you do not know what you are asking are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with what is the cup what is the baptism the cross it's the cross it's the cross that Jesus is going to so It's actually very simple. What I'm teaching this morning, I think, is a very simple thing, and yet it is a very difficult thing to kind of get that formed in our minds, that whatever we read in the Gospels, we must read against the background of the cross, because the two errors that we want to avoid is, number one, being driven by the legal demands, and there are legal demands, and there are demands for discipleship, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. You must. If you are a true disciple, you must be doing that. We must be pursuing holiness. The Bible says if you don't do that, you're unconverted. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. But if we detach that from the atonement and the salvation we have in Jesus, we become legalistic. Even if you say, no, I'm talking about in sanctification, because what you'll forget is your justification. You'll forget that you needed to be cleansed from the guilt and the power of sin. And we're constantly going back to that. Peter, in 2 Peter 1, He has that long list. He says, add your faith virtue and virtue knowledge and the knowledge godliness and the godliness, brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love. If you do these things, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful and an abundant entrance will be supplied to you into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He who lacks these things is short sighted, even to blindness. And it's forgotten that he was cleansed by from his old sins. So if growth and grace is not happening in your life, it's because you've forgotten the gospel. So when we pursue holiness without an eye to the cross and a heart of gratitude kneeling at the foot of the cross constantly, we become legalistic and actually we won't have those things in our lives because there will be no power. So that's kind of the cash value for us personally. Number two, we don't want to have wrong thoughts of God. I know that that seems like a small evil to the minds of most Americans. Having wrong thoughts of God, having wrong thoughts about the creator of the universe, the Bible very clearly says we want to have right thoughts about God, and especially in light of His holiness and the atonement, the death of Christ, because you can commit horrific sins and be forgiven, but if you get the gospel wrong and have wrong thoughts about God, you may spend eternity in hell. So that's why that's so important. God's honor, he doesn't want to be misrepresented. Saying he can just forgive people without atonement is heresy. That's soul damning heresy. So that's why, I know you guys get that, but that's why we want to emphasize so much, you know, the cross and the story of Jesus that undergirds all the other stories.