1480 - “The Great Story of Redemption runs through the synagogue in Nazareth” Luke 4:14

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1480. Today we're going to continue what we started yesterday related to Shabbat, the seventh day, and the sabbatical year, the seventh year, and then the week of Sabbaths, that is, seven sabbatical years or forty-nine years to reach that mark, and then Yovel. Jubilee, the fiftieth year, when everything and everyone gets a brand new beginning. You see, every week God gives us a fresh start. Yes, every day does, every twenty four hours we get a fresh start. Every hour God gives us a fresh start. But every seventh year God said, I want the land, I want the earth to get a fresh start. And so in the sixth year, just as he did on the sixth day, he gave a double portion on the sixth day so that all of the manna that was gathered was double on that day. And that was the only day of the week when it was miraculously given a double portion. On the sixth year before the sabbatical year, God said, I'll give you enough to last to the harvest of the eighth year, because they would have had to sown that eighth year and then waited until harvest. So God really gave them enough for two years until harvest time of the eighth year. And that was to be done for a week of Sabbaths, which is forty-nine years, seven sabbatical years, and then there was Jubilee, Yovel. It was the blowing of the trumpet, it was proclaiming liberty throughout the land. All of that is recorded in chapter twenty five of the book of Leviticus. But it's interesting how Jesus used this very concept early in his ministry in Nazareth, his hometown in the synagogue. Now I want to get you ready for what I want to talk to you about. You see, when the people of God went into captivity, it was because they had left God. They had forsaken the Lord, not just with idolatry. Yes, they did that. Not just with forsaking God, they did that. But one of the primary things that God gave to them to remember his goodness toward them was the sabbatical year. And the prophet Jeremiah said that for seventy years, which represented seventy sabbatical years. That's right, half a millennium, they had forsaken one of the basic things that God gave them to remind them of his goodness, and that is the Sabbath, the sabbatical year, and the week of Sabbath, forty-nine years, which was a sabbatical year, and then the fiftieth year, God gave everybody and everything a brand new beginning. And so when Ezra, who came along in four hundred and fifty-eight as a man of God, going back to Jerusalem after being in captivity all of his life, he was in Persia, and God had blessed the people while they were even in captivity, as Jeremiah told them to plant and to plant themselves and to reap a harvest and to pray for their captors, because when they had it good, the captives would have it good. And you remember Jeremiah's letter to the captives, and he said, You need to just bloom where you planted there because you're going to be there a while. Well, when God allowed them to come back under Cyrus the Persian, and the decree was issued 538 BC, only 50,000 went back in the initial ingathering back to Jerusalem. And they built the temple, as you know. They started the work in 535. It only lasted one year, and for 14 years only the foundation was laid, and because of intimidation they did not finish the job. God raised up Haggai and Zechariah in 422, 421, and in 420 they started back the work. In four years they finished it, and it was dedicated in 516 BC, and they finished it 70 years to the year, from the time the first temple, the Temple of Solomon, was destroyed. And so now they're back in the land, but they are not where they need to be spiritually. And we read the beautiful story of Esther and God's providential care for them. And all of that happened around somewhere around 475 to 472. During that three-year span, we read of the great story of Esther and God's deliverance. But back in the homeland, things were not well. And when Ezra heard about that, his heart was torn. And so he went to the king and he said, I need to go back to my homeland. And of course the king was gracious and God opened his heart. And Ezra went back with an entourage back to Jerusalem. When he got there, he saw the spiritual ruin of his beloved homeland. And God raised up another man named Nehemiah. In four hundred and forty-four, fourteen years after Ezra arrived, Nehemiah went back, and the walls of the city were in total disarray. That means from 438, almost a hundred years later, Jerusalem did not have its walls. Now you remember I've taught you that in the ancient times a city was not a city until it had walls. And so the city was in total disarray. And together, under the spiritual leadership of Ezra and the administrative leadership of Nehemiah, God restored the city. But Ezra said, Things are not going well. You went into captivity because you forgot the law of God. You failed to intentionally read the Torah and the prophets and the history of Israel. And so he developed what later became known as the Torah portion in English, the Parsha. And that was Ezra took the five books of Moses and he divided them up on a weekly basis so that the people would read through the entire Torah, the book of instruction, the books of instruction, and this would be done each year. And Ezra believed that would help the people to stay into the Word of God to intentionally have a track to run on to do that. And so that became the way that the people did that. And so starting during the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Torah portion was started where the people of God, worldwide, whether they were in the homeland of Israel or whether they were in the diaspora, scattered all over the earth, they read the Torah each year and they read through the entire five books of Moses. All of that happened until 168 BC. In 168 BC, when the Persians had been conquered by Alexander the Great and the Greeks years earlier, one of the rulers, Seleucus, Seleucus, as he's called, was in charge and the kingdom was broken up and he became the ruler over what is modern day Iraq, what is modern day Syria, Saudi Arabia, all of the land of what was Eastern Turkey, all of that was under the rule of Seleucus. One of this great ruler's descendants, called Antiochus, he was actually Antiochus IV. He was also called Epiphanes because he claimed that he indeed was the ruler, a divine ruler. He forbid the people, all of the Jews that he started out on a good relationship with, but it soured when they wouldn't worship him and do what he said. And so in 168 BC, he outlawed. Now listen, he outlawed all prayers of the Jews. He forbid Sabbath worship. He forbid the reading of Torah. He said, You can't be circumcised anymore. Well, those were five biggies, and those were the things that distinguished the people of God as the people of God. And so they wanted to comply the best they could, but yet obey God. They were in a dilemma. This ended, of course, with the Maccabean revolt. But before we get to that, let me just tell you what they did. You see, almost all of the great passages in Torah are dealt with in the prophetic material or somewhere else in the law, the prophets, and the writings. And so for every Torah passage, there was a passage in the Neveim, the prophets. And so they picked these out so that if the Greeks came in and said, You know you're not allowed to read Torah, they were saying, We're not reading Torah, we're reading the prophets. And indeed they were, but they were reading the passages that had to do with that particular passage that related in the Torah. So the Torah portion became known in the prophetic readings as the Hafturah, the Haftorah. They would read these passages and they became, even after the Maccabean revolt, they kept those Hafturah passages, the prophetic passages. And so after the Torah was read, the Parshah, the Torah portion for the week in the synagogue, they would also read then the Hafturah. And all of these passages were on certain Shabbats, certain weeks, everything was read, and then along with that portion, there was the Hafturah, there was the prophetic portions. And so this was set in stone. This is what they did. Well, we fast forward to the Lord Jesus coming into Nazareth after he had been baptized by John the Baptist, tempted in the wilderness for forty days, had overcome the devil, now he comes back to his hometown of Nazareth. And so the Bible says in the New Testament, Luke chapter 4 and verse 14, then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, that is, after he had been in the desert. That's what he's been talking about, and been tempted. And the news of him went throughout all the surrounding region, and he taught in all their synagogues, being glorified by all. Now this is a clear passage that says that Jesus taught in all of the synagogues in the Galilee. That's right, he was in the synagogue at Magdalah, at Magdal. He was in the synagogue at Capernaum, at Bethsaida. At all of these places where there were synagogues, Jesus was teaching there. And verse 16 says he came to his hometown of Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, his habit was, he was a religious Jew, observant Jew. He went into the synagogue on Shabbat, and he stood up to read, and he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. So what does this tell us? This tells us that the Torah portion had already been read and explained by the rabbis, and now it was time for the guest rabbi or the person of their choosing to read the passage that just as the Torah portion had been set out some four hundred and fifty years earlier, so the Haftorah had for almost two hundred years now. This was not a random passage. This was a passage that in the providence of God was to be read on this particular Shabbat by this particular person after the Torah portion. The Torah portion no doubt had to do with something of captives being set free. Perhaps it was Leviticus twenty-five. Why would you say that, Pastor, simply because of the passage that he read? What was it? It was Isaiah 61, which has a reference in it to Leviticus 25. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, the very words of Leviticus twenty five and verse ten. And recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, who are enslaved, those who are held captive, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. That is a reference to Jubilee. Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendants, sat down the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today the scriptures fulfilled in your hearing. Now think about this. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, in his hometown, reading a Torah portion that he had heard all of his life, read at this same time every year. Now on this particular Shabbat that he had heard over and over again, now in the providence of God, the one that it was written about is now going to read the passage. He is the Messiah, and now after the Torah portion, he is reading the Hafterat. And it is the portion that is about him and him setting the captives free. Him being the fulfillment of the year of Jubilee. And he reads this and everybody's staring at him. And now he says, Today this is fulfilled in your hearing. What did he just say? He said, I am the Messiah, and I have come to set the captive free. Hallelujah. Praise the Lamb. The Lamb of God is among them, who will be the sacrifice for sins. Now why am I telling you this? It's because the story of the crimson river runs deep through Leviticus. It runs through the stories of all of the great Moed, the Moedim, the festivals, the feasts, the fast day. Yes, Jesus is in every one of them. And as you read through these types and foreshadowing of the Messiah, just remember that Jesus is the one they were talking about. And not only do the feasts talk about his first coming, but his second coming, when he's going to set up his kingdom on earth, and he will tabernacle among us for a thousand years, and you and I, who are followers of Jesus, he said, You will reign with me throughout all of the kingdom, when the kingdom is restored to Israel, and Jerusalem is the center of the earth, and you will be ruling with me. I cannot wait. I pray that God will help you to connect the dots as we navigate this great crimson river of redemption. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.