This year we are spending our time each Sunday on a different passage from one of the four gospels.

Why?

Well, if we are claiming to follow Jesus, couldn't we all benefit from a clearer picture of what He told us? In a day where even religion is becoming polarized, let us fix our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith.

So about this first sermon. Well, it's the one the writer of Luke placed first. It's his introduction of Jesus and His ministry of teaching. Jesus gets baptized, makes a lap through Galilee and then goes home. Straight hometown hero welcome. He goes to the place that raised Him and then volunteers to give a reading and thought one day at church.

And after that nothing really stays the same.

Jesus' first sermon.

Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, 19 and that the time of the Lord's favor has come." 20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. "The Scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day!"

22 Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. "How can this be?" they asked. "Isn't this Joseph's son?"

23 Then he said, "You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: 'Physician, heal yourself'—meaning, 'Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.' 24 But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.

25 "Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. 27 And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian."

28 When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. 29 Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, 30 but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way. LUKE 4:14-30 NLT

Jesus certainly has shaken a few things up. It happens because he realizes those folks who knew Him as a child assumed a few things about Him. And Jesus wanted them to know that this wasn't going to be easy.

Easy Doesn't Fix Eternity

We like things to be easy. So let's talk about how this first message from Jesus can still challenge us today. Because we have our own ways and our own things we assume about Jesus.