Welcome everyone to the Together on Mission Podcast, where we seek to be with and we seek to be like Jesus. We begin a conversation with Jesus every morning, through scripture, through prayer and meditation. And then we continue that conversation with them throughout the rest of our day. Your host is Travis Twynman, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California.
In this season of the podcast, we will be discussing the narrative, the biography, the story of the life of Jesus, according to Saint Luke. Good morning and welcome to our Together on Mission Podcast. My name's Travis. I want to welcome all of you that are normally tuning in, all of you that are fairly new to the podcast party.
Together on Mission Podcast, every day with Jesus, where I read a passage in the Gospels. We talk about the historical context, do a little bit of application. I ask a question. And then we enter into a prayer, meditation, journal, scripture, conversation with Jesus that will then last throughout the day.
And so it's been a great season. It's been a crazy season, but it's been a great season. And I'm thrilled that you are here if you're with us for the first time. I'm going to touch on a subject this morning.
That is a difficult subject. It's a combative subject. It's a subject that raises some tension. It's a subject that moves political really, really quickly, because there are some things going on in our world right now that raise questions about racism.
And so I'm just simply going to title this podcast, Racism, and go to a passage of scripture that deals with racism, but I'm not so sure we knew that it dealt with racism. And so that's the title of the podcast. The question is simply this. Are you aware of racism in our nation?
Are you aware of racism a little bit closer to home in maybe family of origin? Are you aware of racism in church? Are you aware of racism in your workplace? And I think maybe the most difficult question, are you aware of racism in your heart?
Because it's very, very easy. And peoples have been doing this for as long as peoples have been broken and fallen. And it's very easy to say, well, the enemy is out there. And because that's true, it shields us from what really allows us to grow and change and become more and more like Jesus, realizing that the enemy is also in here to some degree or another.
And so we're going to look at a passage. It's actually one of Jesus's first sermons in Luke chapter 4 that didn't go very well. And we're not maybe so sure why it didn't go very well. But just to kind of catch us up, he's in Nazareth.
It's his hometown. He reads from the passage of Isaiah about proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and setting the oppressed free. And then he says, and it is the favorable year of the Lord. And then he follows that up by saying today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
So everybody was excited up to this point. In fact, it says that all those that heard praised the gracious words that came from the lips of Jesus. But then things took a bit of a different turn. So we're going to pick up reading in verse 24 in Luke chapter 4.
Jesus says, truly, I tell you, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his own home or in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a superior famine in the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to a widow in Zerethath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of the Elisha, the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman, the Syrian.
Now all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up. They drove him out of the town, took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Now most of us have probably heard this story. But what we maybe didn't realize is that Jesus in this story, as he's announcing the kingdom of God, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, good news to the poor, and particularly the favorable year of the Lord, he is challenging racism in Israel. He's challenging religious bigotry. He's challenging bigotry.
He's challenging first century Israel's ethnic superiority identity. And that comes very, very clear when he begins to say by talking about this widow in Zerethath, that was a Gentile widow. And when he talks about Naaman, the Syrian, that was a Gentile in the commander of the enemy army. And what Jesus is saying in his hometown is that this is going to be a Christ family, not a biological family.
It's going to be all nations and all tribes and all people and all colors coming into the kingdom of God on equal footing in Israel in the first century. Whether they knew it or not, whether they simply thought, well, the enemy's out there and were unable to own the enemy and hear whether they knew it or not, they were steeped and sunk in religious bigotry, elevating their ethnic identity over another ethnic identity. And this help explain all the animosity between Jews and Samaritans. You see, Gentiles had no Jewish blood, no part of the Jewish race in them.
And Jews hated Samaritans. They called them half-breeds. And in fact, when a Jew was going from Galilee to Jerusalem, they would take a long way around Samaria so they wouldn't have to see those half-breeds. A Gentile was even worse to a Jew than a Samaritan.
A Gentile was even worse than a half-breed. Sometimes Gentiles were referred to as Gentile dogs, according to Jews. And I think some of the Jews in Jesus' day were so steeped and it learned this in their family of origin that they could not even see how deep their bigotry, their religion, and their family. And their bigotry, their religious bigotry, and their oppression of Samaritans or Gentiles went and Jesus brought it to the surface.
Jesus spoke to it. Jesus confronted it. Jesus acted. Jesus maybe was crucified among other things for suggesting to the Jewish nation that Gentiles are going to come in on equal footing.
And of course, if your view of Jesus in the first century is not that Jesus was crucifiable, then you need to change your view of Jesus because Jesus was indeed crucified. He was killed. He was murdered at the end of a three and a half year ministry. But what Luke is saying here in Luke chapter four is that he was almost killed, almost murdered at the end of a three and a half week ministry when he confronted Jewish, ethnic, superiority, and religious bigotry.
And that's not often seen in the Gospels. And one of the reasons why maybe it's not seen is because whatever we do see in the Gospels, we have to then say, okay, do we find any of that in our own heart? Do we find any of that in our nation? Do we find any of that in our family of origin?
Do we find any of that in our churches? Do we find any of that that we have to deal with? It's very easy to look at the speck in your brother's eye and miss the plank or maybe the speck in your own eye. So that question presses.
And right now we're in a situation culturally and politically and religiously where that question is pressing. Jesus fought for justice. He fought for equality. He spoke and he acted and he confronted what maybe first century Israel did not even realize was an issue.
And it brought about a situation that ultimately led to the crucifixion of Jesus. And so I would just like to spend a little time this morning, maybe read this passage, meditate on it. Sometimes we don't read far enough in this passage and we don't realize that when Jesus talks about the widow of Zerephath and name in the Syrian, that he's confronting Jews about their religious bigotry. And their arrogant ethnic identity.
And when they do, they try to kill Jesus, who was a friend, a relative. And so let's have a conversation with Jesus. Let's pray. Let's meditate.
Let's read the passage. Let's journal a little bit. And ask the question, is there religious bigotry? Is there inequality in our nation, in our churches, in our family of origins, and maybe even having seeped into our heart a bit?
And if so, let's repent. Let's repent. And let's ask the spirit of God, okay, what do we do? Pray, speak, write, get informed.
What do we do? Because we want to see things as Jesus saw them and we want to act as Jesus did. So have a conversation with Jesus, walk and talk with the one today that sometimes brings up topics that we may not want to bring up. We'll talk tomorrow.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Together on Mission Podcast. We truly hope that you are blessed and encouraged by it today. If you had any questions at all about the Inland Vineyard, our ministries, or our Sunday services, connect with us on our app which you can find in the Apple or Android App Store. We also have our social media pages which you can find with the tag at Inland Vineyard, just to see what's going on with our community within our church events, our Revival youth group, as well as our children's ministry.
Or you can always check us out on our website at inlandvignard.org.