Luke 4:17-19 “The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

Jesus was reading his sermon text from the prophet Isaiah. Notice the kind of message it is. There are some unflattering or unhappy assumptions about the people who are hearing it. If you are motivational speaker trying to inspire your audience to accomplish great things, you hand out compliments. You try to build up their self-confidence. They are gifted. They are talented. They have what it takes. They can believe in themselves.

Those things may even be true, so far as their physical talents are concerned. But the gospel is aimed at a different sort of audience. The prophet describes them as poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. In one way or another, what they all have in common is their lack, their need, whether it’s money, freedom, sight, or happiness in the picture. These people don’t have what it takes to succeed. They are not going to be able to solve their own problems. They are trapped in the misery that is their lives.

Can Jesus be speaking to you and me? Martin Luther observed on his deathbed, “We are all beggars, this is true.” I may live a comfortable middle-class life as a free man in a free country with twenty-twenty vision (owing to corrective lenses in my case) and treated reasonably well by those around me. But Isaiah’s descriptions all apply to our own desperate sinful condition. We have nothing to offer God and no way to save ourselves. Sometimes we may lose sight of how helpless we really are, like the congregation Jesus once wrote to in Laodicea: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Our sin sinks us in a spiritual poverty from which no man has the ability to escape.

In spite of this, Jesus preaches good news. Going against the tide of every other world religion, he tells us, “The answer does not lie within you. Don’t look inside yourself. Trust in me. The good news is, I will pay the spiritual debt you cannot afford. I will set you free from the prison that has been holding your soul in hell’s chains. I will give you eyes of faith that can see God as he really is, the loving, merciful Father who will forgive your past and only wants you to come home. I will release you from the heavy burden of guilt and shame that has been crushing your soul and cramping your heart. Follow me, and I will lead you to a new day, a new year, a new life in which you are the focus of the Lord’s favor and the object of his love.”

If that is not what we are hearing in the hymns and prayers where we worship, maybe we have not been listening close enough. If that is not what you are hearing in sermons and classes, maybe it’s time to pay closer attention or to sit your pastor down for a talk. This promise of relief, and release, is the central message, the big idea, that makes Christian preaching and teaching Christian. It is the good news Jesus preaches, and when it is heard, faith will flourish.

Luke 4:16 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.”

If you know anything about Jesus’ ministry, you know that he preached in many venues. The Sermon on the Mount, as the name suggests, was preached from a hillside. He once got into a boat so that he could preach to people while they stood on the beach. Many times the home where Jesus was staying was packed with people who came to hear what he had to say. Some of his best sermons and classes were delivered on the road, while he and his disciples were traveling from one place to another.

But there was one place he consistently showed up to preach or hear God’s word at the end of each week. The Sabbath found him in the synagogue. That, Luke says, “was his custom.” That’s where God’s people gathered to worship. We may call it “church” rather than “synagogue.” And we may hold it a day later, on Sunday. But that’s still where God’s people gather to worship, and there are some lessons for us to take from Jesus’ practice.

First, Jesus’ custom of attending worship each weak confronts our less than consistent practice. “But I don’t like going to church,” some might object. “It’s boring. The music is lame. I don’t find the message relevant.” None of those things stopped our Savior. Sometimes they let him preach, but not every week. I don’t imagine the music was better for him, singing thousand-year-old songs played on primitive instruments. Do you suppose the all-knowing Son of God learned anything new listening to merely human rabbi’s comment on texts they didn’t fully understand, words that had been composed and given to the prophets centuries earlier by Jesus himself? Still, he went. Still, he gathered with the people of God for worship, “as was his custom.”

Second, by his very presence at these services, Jesus was living and creating the good news he came to bring. This was more than a habit, a custom. It was obedience to the third commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day.” Jesus’ perfect obedience to God’s command was part of the formula for our salvation, offering his Father in our place fulfillment of the laws we have broken. His example isn’t intended only to confront, or even inspire us. It is the good news the Lord’s expectations of you and me have been met in him.

Third, we have the promise that Jesus is still in the custom of showing up where his people have gathered to worship. This did not stop with his earthly ministry. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” he promised the disciples a little later.

Our gathering on Sundays isn’t just about educating ourselves. Many weeks we may not learn anything new, either. But it is always a time for us to spend with the one who loved us all the way to cross and tomb. He is here, truly here, with his love and blessing. That, too, is good news.

John 2: 9-11 “Then he (the master of the banquet) called the bridegroom aside and said, ‘Everyone brings out the choice wine first and the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.’ This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.”

I can relate to people who have experienced the same things I do, and who aren’t too high and mighty to walk a mile in my shoes. I appreciate a friend who cares enough to go out of his way to help when things aren’t going right. Those are kindnesses. They help win my trust. They aren’t necessarily the reasons for trusting someone with our eternal destiny.

Obviously, there was more to Jesus’ help than this. Turning water into wine is a miracle. It was a generous miracle with so much wine. It was wine of a miraculous excellence. Most wine gets better with age. This wine surpassed them all the at ripe old age of less than a minute.

But Jesus’ feat was more than mere miracle. John calls it the first of his “miraculous signs.” Sometimes miracles are identified in the Bible with a word that calls attention to their wonder, the supernatural element of the event. You can’t figure out how this was done. There is mystery here, something out of the ordinary. Sometimes the gospel writers call them acts of power, reminding us that Jesus has within him the ability to do what no one else can.

A sign points to something beyond itself. It delivers a message. It says, “Don’t just look at me. Look at this. Look at him. I am telling you something about Jesus of great importance.”

The message of the sign was this: “He thus revealed his glory.” Jesus was no ordinary man, not even an extra special man. Understand a miracle like this, and understand that you are looking at your God.

Perhaps a sick person’s immune system can naturally kick into gear, and the disease disappears in an incredibly short period of time. But plain H2O does not evolve sugars, acids, alcohol and pigments and naturally transform itself into wine. You could set out jar after jar of water for thousands or millions of years, and it would never happen once. God must intervene with his creative powers. In performing the miracle, Jesus was giving us a glimpse of his true identity.

There was just one way for those who followed him to react: “His disciples put their faith in him.” So should we.

John 2:3-9 “When the wine was gone, Jesus mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine.’ ‘Dear woman,’ why do you involve me?’ Jesus replied. My time has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Nearby stood six stone jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water,’ so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’ They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.”

We treat weddings like they are a big deal. We plan them for months, or even years. We spend tens of thousands of dollars to put one on. The cost of the average wedding today, minus the honeymoon, is over $25,000.

With all that investment, we want it to go just right. As a pastor, I have often reminded the bride and the groom before the wedding that something is likely to go wrong on their big day. It’s okay. Their guests will still enjoy themselves, and they will still be married when it is all over.

My sister’s wedding reception was interrupted by tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. They took out the power. We finished the evening by candlelight, and there could be no DJ or dance. But she is still happily married twenty years later.

So far as I know, no glitch in a ceremony or reception has ever been responsible for mass starvation, or turned some disease into a global epidemic, or caused the outbreak of a deadly war. This, too, shall pass.

Running out of wine at the wedding Jesus attended in Cana was not the end of the world. The bride and groom might have felt some embarrassment, but if they finished the feast serving water, no one would have been hurt. They would still be married at the end of the day.

The relatively minor nature of their problem did not stop Jesus, however, from addressing their need. He came into our world and shared our lives to take care of much bigger problems than this. Sin has taken the life of every human who ever lived. Those who die in their sins, apart from God’s grace and forgiveness, will be banished to hell forever. Billions of souls need salvation. Jesus came to address this need by trading his life for ours at the cross, paying our entire debt, rising from the dead, and giving salvation as a free gift of God’s grace. That was a big deal.

But that’s not where his interest in us ends. He cares about even the little things. Without making a scene, he quietly created about a hundred and twenty gallons of wine so that this young man and young woman’s big day could continue with no embarrassment. The gift was so big that it may have stocked their wine cellar for some time to come. This little gesture of love didn’t save the world. It just saved their day. It shows us a Savior who is interested in addressing all kinds of needs.

That is not to suggest he gives us anything we ask for, like some of the TV preachers claim. It does assure us that Jesus cares about even the small details of our lives, and he addresses our needs in the way he knows will serve us best.

John 2:1 “On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.”

Eventually, our heroes let us down. As a boy, I idolized all kinds of sports heroes. As a young man, I developed a number of political heroes. Through my life, I have respected several religious or spiritual heroes. I could give you specific examples, but it probably isn’t good for me to criticize some individual’s life in front of you.

But you know what I mean. You have experienced the same kinds of disappointments in people you respected. One man enjoys the public image of a devoted family man, a model of virtue, a great example of selflessness, faith, and wholesome values. Then the scandal breaks. His illicit affairs are exposed. His addictions hit the news. His exploitive treatment of other people becomes common knowledge.

So we become cynical. We put up our guard. We withhold our trust. Then we discover the Great Exception. He shows himself at a wedding at Cana in John 2. Yet does his behavior there make us pause and wonder?

One thing that endears Jesus to people is the way that he shares their lives. Sometimes we get a lopsided view of what that means. It is clear that, when Jesus lived here, he didn’t take any special privileges. He didn’t enjoy any unusual advantages. Until he started teaching, he earned his living by working with his own hands as a carpenter. His clothing was unremarkable. He didn’t dress in rags, but he didn’t dress like the rich, either. Some people have said that he was homeless, but we shouldn’t picture the chronically homeless who live outdoors today. He had no permanent home to claim for himself. Most often he stayed in the homes of one of the many people who followed him, or some unnamed villager in Samaria, Galilee, or Judea. He experienced hunger, pain, overwork, grief, and exhaustion.

Some get the idea that Jesus’ relatively simple life means that it is wrong for us who follow him to enjoy life or have nice things. Christians should adopt poverty and avoid fun. If we find ourselves thinking this way, it is an idea for which to repent. It mischaracterizes Christianity. It gives the Christian faith a bad name. Jesus tells us to carry our crosses when they come. And he promises they will come. But he doesn’t say we are supposed to go looking for them or make it our goal to live life as one never-ending burden. The point of Christianity is not to feel sad or miserable. Those may be unavoidable experiences from living in the broken and sinful world. Jesus felt them, too.

But look at him in John 2: not just invited, he and his disciples decided to attend the wedding. This was not the church ceremony for the bride and groom. No one would question Jesus attending one of those. This was like our wedding receptions: the feast, the dancing, the party. They even had drinking there. Jesus himself even brought a large portion of the wine. Jesus drinking? Jesus bringing the wine? How could that be? I thought that he was supposed to be a Christian!

Here he gives us a more complete picture of what it means to live like a Christian, a more balanced view of the way he shared our lives. Jesus was neither encouraging nor condoning drunkenness. But he clearly blesses the idea of enjoying ourselves with the things God gives us. He later attended parties at the home of his disciple Matthew, a Pharisee named Simon, and others who invited him over. He even developed a reputation for enjoying life this way. “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man (that’s Jesus) came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (Luke 7:33-34).

This is the point: Jesus shared our sadness and our joy. He experienced our heartaches and tragedies and our celebrations. He sometimes went without, but he also used and enjoyed the good things of life when they were available. Yes, he was against harmful excess, selfish hoarding, and getting out of control. But he embraced pleasure as a good gift of God, and he encourages us to do the same. There is no virtue in being a sour-faced Christian.

Sometimes people say they want their pastor or Christian leader to be “relatable,” someone who understands them and gets their lives. Jesus was relatable, because he shared the whole spectrum of our lives. We need not question him for enjoying good things when he could. We can enjoy them, too.

Luke 3:22 “A voice come from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”

None of this was news to Jesus. It is not as though he doubted any of it. We see him as the 12 year-old boy in the Temple telling Mary and Joseph he had to be in his Father’s house. He knew he was God’s Son, and that in a special way.

Jesus understood that God loves him. Was God’s love not the special emphasis of all his preaching and teaching? He didn’t come to give great advice, or new rules. “The law came through Moses,” John writes in introducing Jesus to us. “Grace (that’s God’s undeserved love) and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Think of the way he dealt with the woman caught in adultery. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you,” he told the disciples in the upper room hours before his death. The most famous passage in the Bible, “God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son,” is Jesus talking about love. God’s love for him, or for us for that matter, was not a new revelation for him.

Jesus understood his whole life and work pleased his Father. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life,” he said when he described himself as the Good Shepherd.

Jesus knew all this. But he came to be baptized and to hear it anyway. He came to hear his Father claim him as his own. Is that hard to understand? Don’t we all want someone who claims us? When we are children, don’t we want a mom or dad who will proudly say, “That’s my boy!” or “That’s my girl!” when we are running around on the soccer field, or acting in the school play?

When we find a love interest, and we start to meet their friends or family, doesn’t it make your heart swell when they can’t wait to show you off to the next person, and they are quick to claim, “This is my boyfriend,” or “This is my girlfriend” and later “This is my husband” or “This is my wife”? Wouldn’t it be disappointing, even heartbreaking, if they were trying hide the fact, or seemed embarrassed to be associated with you?

For someone to say, not just to us, but for everyone else to hear, “You are mine. I love you. You make me happy in every way” may be the highest compliment, the ultimate expression of affection, the greatest thing we can hear from someone who cares about us, and someone we care about in return.

That’s what Jesus was getting from his Father when he was baptized. He was claimed by God. Now here’s the reason you should care: that is what you are getting from the Father at Jesus’ baptism and your own. Remember, Jesus is your substitute in life and in death. By faith God has made you a little Christ. If he says this about Jesus, it applies to you as well. Hear him say it now, “You are my son, or daughter, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.”

And at your own baptism, your heavenly Father was laying his own claim on you. In those waters he put his name on you, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He was saying, “You belong to me now. I have called you by name. You are mine.” Maybe that’s not news to you. I hope it’s not news. But for these few moments, I hope that you can simply bask in the comfort of knowing you are claimed by God.

Luke 3:22 “As he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.”

There were no human dignitaries at Jesus’ baptism, unless you count John the Baptist. There were no prestigious representatives from the Temple, and none of his family so far as we know.

There were, however, a couple of prestigious guests of the highest order. They weren’t “special guests” in the sense that their presence was somehow unusual at a baptism. The truth is, they attend every baptism, including yours and mine. At this one, they simply made their presence known with an unusually public display.

First, we see the Holy Spirit. “Heaven was opened,” Luke tells us, not as though the bird had to be let out of a cage. He is reminding us, rather, that what separates heaven from earth is not some great physical distance, as though heaven is to be found on some distant planet on the far side of the universe. Heaven is always near us, but closed off, on the other side of an other-worldly visual barrier between God’s home and ours. When it suits him, he opens the door and comes through in a way we can see, as he does here.

The Holy Spirit came to anoint Jesus for his saving work. It is not as though this was their first contact, or the beginning of the Spirit’s presence in his life. You never have true faith in God without God’s Spirit being involved. Every believing child of God is a temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul writes the Corinthians, and that would be especially true of God’s one and only Son.

In Jesus’ case, the Spirit’s anointing did two things. It officially marked the beginning of his saving ministry, like the inauguration of a president or the swearing in of a public official. In the book of Acts the Apostle Peter explained on a mission visit to a man named Cornelius, “You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached–how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power…” It is after this anointing that Jesus makes himself a public figure, and pursues the work of saving us from sin for all to see.

Our own baptisms may or may not be our first interaction with the Holy Spirit. But they likewise mark a beginning. We don’t become little saviors, but we are active members of his team and participants in his mission. At our baptisms the Holy Spirit may not be visible, but he is clearly marking us for his side in the battle for human hearts.

The other reason the Spirit came to Jesus at his baptism was power. Peter mentioned it in the words I quoted from Acts. All the gospel writers tell us it was the Spirit who led him from here to his showdown with the devil in the wilderness. After that, Luke says, Jesus returned to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit” to begin his ministry.

So Jesus, though he was already the powerful Son of God, did not go to work alone. God’s Spirit was also working in and through him all the way. And not a single baptized child of God lives or works alone since. We serve in the power of the Spirit, who comes to our baptisms and stays for our entire life of faith.

Luke 3:21 “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized, too.”

Jesus didn’t get this day all to himself. The ceremony didn’t take place in the temple witnessed by priests and rabbis. The family hadn’t come from out of town to see. There were no cards or gifts or celebrations afterward.

He stood in line with a sorry assortment of farmers and fishermen, shady merchants and smelly shepherds, greedy tax collectors and intimidating soldiers, hard-drinking men and loose-living women and whomever else John the Baptist had convinced to repent. He stood there with the rest of them, and when his turn came, Jesus was baptized in a dirty little creek called the Jordan River. “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized, too,” just like all the sinners around him. He was baptized with us all.

But why? He had no sins for which to repent. He had no old life that needed to die, no new life he needed to embrace. A tangible, visible statement of God’s cleansing grace and forgiveness seems wasted on the only perfect person who ever lived. He had the pure heart and soul, the clean life that those who understand aspire to receive. Do you take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and wash them again before you put them away? Would you bring new furniture home from the store, and have it cleaned before it has ever been used?

Jesus came to be one of us. He came to stand with us all. Yes, he had no sins, not even one. But his life played out as though he did. He knew deep hunger, nearly starvation during his forty days in the wilderness. He felt the sting of rejection, the bullying and shaming of the Pharisees, the betrayal and abandonment of his closest friends. He suffered grief and loss. His father Joseph died sometime during his teens or twenties. The death of his friend Lazarus brought him to tears. This isn’t a life for the sinless Son of God. These are the burdens human sinners bear. These are the wages of our sins, no particular sin necessarily, but the consequences we brought on ourselves for spoiling God’s perfect creation.

Jesus could have stood above it all. He didn’t. He lived the life the sinners lived–not sharing their sins, but sharing all the misery and unpleasantness that was common for a Jewish peasant living in relative poverty 2000 years ago, and then some.

In another sense, he did share our sins, though, didn’t he. He didn’t commit his own. He carried the responsibility for ours. He did more than become one of us. He became us. Our sins made him dirty. Our lives soiled his own.

How could he not, then, stand with those sinners along the banks of the Jordan river waiting to be baptized? Why would he not desire this sign, this statement, this seal and promise of God’s cleansing grace, considering the burden he carried?

Jesus went to worship every Sabbath, not just to keep an old, musty rule. His heart, too, was refreshed and uplifted by the words of God’s love that were read, sung, and prayed there.

Jesus stood along the banks of the Jordan with a motley assortment of sinners, and in the waters of his baptism God poured out his grace on him. Jesus made himself one of us, and so he was baptized, too.

Acts 13:47-48 “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.”

The basis on which God saves anyone from death and hell is relatively easy to understand. A trade, an exchange of sorts, took place at Jesus’ cross. There he satisfied God’s justice for the sins of the whole world. The debt of all people was paid. The penalty for the whole of humanity was served and erased. Forgiveness was secured for the entire population.

The fate of any particular individual is a little trickier to understand. Some believe God’s grace, receive it, and are saved. Some reject God’s grace and are lost. We see both happen in this brief story from Acts. The bothersome question has been, “Why some, not others?” Does responsibility for both faith and unbelief belong to God? Are they both the sole choice of man?

The Lord does not feel obligated to follow normal human logic here. Of course, when has he ever felt a need to limit himself to our understanding? Precisely because he is God, his mind, his ways, his understanding get to be bigger than ours. When someone doesn’t believe the gospel, the fault lies entirely with them. “Since you reject it,” Paul says.

When people believe the gospel, it is their own faith to be sure. It is working in their hearts, not someone else’s. But they can’t claim any credit for it: “…all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” The Lord makes sure of their faith in ways that go beyond our investigation.

The upshot isn’t to provide us with an intellectual understanding of the process. Who can say they really understand it? It is rather to leave us with the comfort and confidence that our salvation from first to last, from forgiveness to faith, lies entirely in God’s hands. We are saved by grace, a gift, all the way.

And that is important to remember for our life and witness in the part of the world we call home. “All who are appointed for eternal life will believe.” God has made you and me a light, and our responsibility begins and ends with doing what lights do: they shine. What impact that will have on the darkness, where they will light new lights of faith, we can leave to the Lord who has had this all sorted out from the very start.

Lights don’t shine by command. You don’t talk them into it. They shine because of what they are. It’s what lights do. God has made you a light. Let it shine, and let him worry about the rest.