You're not thinking; "Oh Jesus. Doesn't he sound wonderful?
Isn't he a good speaker? You know, he's so eloquent. Okay?"
Words of grace does not refer to Jesus' eloquence here. Words of grace
refers to the fact that he's omitted the revenge stuff against the Gentiles.
But what you have going on here is you have Jesus step into a synagogue.
Okay, in Nazareth, let's just go back to our map here.
Just so I think Nazareth appears on the map. We've got here, Nazareth right here.
Right there in Lower Galilee. Again. So this is right there in the area
that we're talking about, where Jesus begins his ministry,
and he goes into the synagogue. And he quotes Isaiah 61.
And Matthew has already let us know about Isaiah 9 «Galilee of the Gentiles.»
And what Jesus says in this sermon, even though he's quoting the Hebrew Bible,
is going to be distasteful to some, because as we'll see, it's going to loop in
the Gentiles. And it's not going to define, Jesus is not going to define
certain terms the way his audience sort of expects them to be defined.
Now, I'm quoting a little bit here from Hertig's article, which for the sake of this class
I gave you as optional reading, and Hertig points out, and scholars have noticed this
it's not hard to find out, if you use the cross references in your Bible you'll discover it too,
that it's not just Isaiah 61 that Jesus quotes.
That's mostly what he quotes, but he loops in Isaiah 58, as well.
He adds to Isaiah 61, «to set at liberty those who are oppressed.»
And it's right out of the Septuagint as well.
So that you're not going to find in the Isaiah 61 passage.
So what he does is he combines Isaiah 58, little bit from that, a little bit from Isaiah 61.
And he introduces these terms in the quotation:
the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed.
So that's the first thing he does with these Old Testament passages.
Secondly, he also cuts the citation of Isaiah 61 short, Jesus omits
«and the day of vengeance of our God» from Isaiah 61:2.
Let's go back to Isaiah 61. And see what he does here.
«The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me», okay, reading from Isaiah,
«because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound»,
the reference to the blind comes from Isaiah 58.
«To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.» That's where he stops.
He doesn't finish what we have is verse 2.
So «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me... to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.»
Well, in Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord God was upon the speaker, the servant here
in relation to «the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.»
Jesus doesn't include that in his citation.
If you studied Isaiah 61, you're going to find out that that loops back into Deuteronomy 32:43,
which if you're reading that verse, just like verses 8 and 9, verse 43,
has a textual issue there that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it references the other gods.
In fact, why don't we just go there. ESV has it. I will type in Deuteronomy 32:43.
This is going to be different than a lot of your translations have
because the ESV uses the Dead Sea Scrolls here, just like they used it in verses 8-9
with the reference to allotting the nations according to the number of the sons of God.
Here in verse 43, «Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods,
for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries.
He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people's land.»
This is Day of the Lord language, about getting rid of the Gentiles from the land,
and the Gentiles who are the oppressors of Yahweh's people,
taking revenge on them and their gods.
You'll read things like this in Isaiah 34, Isaiah 24, Psalm 82 for sure.
But when Jesus begins his ministry, he doesn't include that element.
He doesn't include the Day of the Lord element.
And the people sitting in the congregation at Nazareth, they're gonna notice that.
They know their Bibles. They go there every week. They hear the Scripture read.
Certainly you're going to have the scribes and Pharisees,
the people who were experts in the text. They're going to be there.
They're going to notice this as well. He removes all hint of hostility to the Gentiles.
And lo and behold, where do we get this story and the citation? We get an Luke.
Who's Luke writing to? first four verses of Luke, he's writing to a Gentile.
He's writing to Theophilus, his friend. And Luke considers this important;
recollecting what Jesus did in the Nazareth sermon.
It's important because Jesus is telegraphing something about the Gentiles.
He does the same thing in Luke 7:22. He splices together some passages.
And if you look at those passages, all 3, near context of those passages
include divine revenge against the nations, against the Gentiles.
But when Jesus cites them during his early ministry,
this is Luke 7, it's only a few chapters later.
That's not the message. This is not the Day of the Lord.
Okay, the Day of the Lord's vengeance. This is a light has shine to the Gentiles time.
We're not here to be hostile to the Gentiles. And of course, this is what...
If you're thinking you're still in exile, remember, a few sessions ago in the class,
we talked about the Jewish consciousness of still being an exile,
they're still being oppressed, they're still under dominion of a foreign power.
They expect, they want the Messiah to show up and clean house.
They don't want the Gentiles around anymore. They don't want this dominion.
And they have forgotten passages in their own Bible that talk about how Israel
is supposed to be a blessing and a conduit to the Gentile nations.
That God in His sovereignty is going to use this circumstance
to bring them back into the fold.
They remember the warrior passages really well, the revenge passages,
Day of the Lord stuff, but they've forgotten this.
And Jesus knows why he is initially, this is his first coming, his first advent,
he knows why he's here.
He is the fulfillment of the promised Abraham, he is the seed
that will bring the Gentile nations back into the fold.
And so he's not citing any of the revenge stuff. He's a light has shown in the Galilee.
He starts with Galilee, because when you finish the Old Testament Galilee,
these two tribes; Naphtali and Zebulun, are kind of left hanging as failures.
And so he picks up with those two tribes in Galilee.
And at the very beginning of his ministry, it's like I'm the Messiah of the Gentile as well.
I'm here to liberate them.
You Jews, you think you need the liberation because you're under Rome, okay, we get that.
But the Gentiles are under bondage as well.
They're under bondage (Psalm 82), to these hostile gods. They're oppressed as well.
You know, they're victims of the geopolitical Empire as well.
And worse than that they've been cast off by Yahweh. They've been outsiders,
awaiting the time when Yahweh will act to bring them back into the fold,
into his family again, and that time is now.
So this is not what they're expecting to hear in the synagogue at Nazareth,
but he's talking about deliverance for everybody.
So this is back to Hertig's article, the optional reading.
«The congregation initially speaks well of Jesus' proclamation
and marvels at his "words of grace".»
And that's nice, but their amazement at Jesus' words of grace
refers to his citation of Isaiah's message of salvation, not revenge.
That's what they're talking about. It omits that expected reference to judgment.
So they're kind of amazed. They're not thinking, "Oh, Jesus.
Doesn't he sound wonderful? Isn't he a good speaker? You know, he's so eloquent. Okay?"
Words of grace does not refer to Jesus' eloquence here.
Words of grace refers to the fact that he's omitted the revenge stuff
against the Gentiles, so they're amazed. It's not what they're expecting.