Luke 4:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 4:20

Comments

‘And he began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.²² And’, at this stage, ‘all bare him witness, and wondered.’ They respected him very much and they wondered which in modern words means they marvelled, not puzzled, ‘at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.’ He had obviously given some more words beyond the bare reading of that quotation and they were just amazed. They were a little perplexed because they said surely this is only Joseph's son a mere carpenter's son and yet he's saying these amazing things. So far the offense had not begun. They bear him witness; they believed in him. This must be the Son of God and they said, is not this Joseph's son? And on it goes reported more elaborately in Mark 6 and Matthew 13, is not this Joseph's son? We know his sisters and he is one of us, and he has been brought up here. Belief gives way to pessimism. They are believing doubters. They acknowledge him and then they reject him.

Application

I wonder if there's somebody here like that tonight. You believe in God. You even believe in Jesus Christ. You believe in Calvary. You believe in the need for conversion. You believe that lost sinners must come and repent, but at that point you become a pessimist. You're a believing pessimist. Here is my problem: if I come to him and if I ask him to receive me, and if I repent of my sins and believe in him, nothing will happen. He won't hear me. He won't listen to me. He won't keep his promise. He is God, but after all he is fallible, he is unreliable. He is God, but after all he cannot do it. He lacks the power to do it for somebody as bad as I am or somebody such as me. Believing pessimists. The way out of that is to understand that pessimism is not a rational process. It is a state of mind. Pessimism is not a thought out, carefully considered position. It's an emotional thing where the heart rules the head and your bent of personality decides what you believe and what you do, not what is true or what is right. What you have to do is this: you say, ‘I must get out of this pessimism. I don't want to be an artificial believer. I don't want to throw myself into something I don't really believe, but I want to get out of this shell of pessimism which pours scorn and gloom on everything, including faith in Christ, as if I have recovered from a bad temper, or as if I have recovered from some depressing illness where I have been on antibiotics and it made me terribly depressed and everything looked wretched, but happily I came out of that. I have got to come out of this pessimism. Ask God to get you out of it. Ask God to help you to see the foolishness of it and the way in which this bent of personality is deciding your eternal destiny for you, and put it to one side. Say, no, I'm not going to do any more scorning, resentful writing off, just brushing everything away. I'm going to look at it. Who am I? Why am I here? Is the word of God true? Can it be real that Jesus Christ, God's Son, suffered and died for a sinner like me? Let me look at this way of salvation and its credibility and all that God has done, and let me get rid of the state of mind and stain of pessimism even as I do so – the pessimism of Nazareth.

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Luke 4:20 Commentary and Bible Study