The Today I'm Today on Truth for Life, we are beginning our Encore 2024 series. These are some of the most requested messages from the past year or so, and we're beginning with a message titled

who is Jesus? Many people enjoy the traditions and festivities of Christmas

while remaining indifferent to Jesus.

How is that possible?

Alister Begg teaches today from Luke Chapter 4

to give us a deeper understanding of Christ's first advent.

Now the custom in the synagogue at that time was that if a visitor came who was of some note

then the individual should be afforded the privilege of reading from the

scriptures and also making comment on them.

And so it is that as Jesus returns to Nazareth,

which was his hometown in terms of where he'd grown up,

he is given the opportunity of reading from the Bible.

And he takes the scroll in verse 17 and he unrolls it

to the place where it is written concerning the one who is to come the prophecy regarding the Messiah, the one for whom the people were waiting.

And reading this portion of scripture, he then in verse 20 we're told, rolls back up the scroll, gives it to the attendant, and he sits down.

Now it's not in the way that we do it here where somebody would come up, read and sit down,

but when they read they sat down and every eye fastened on him

because they stood to read and they sat to teach.

And so they now anticipated that Jesus was going to teach on the strength of what he had just read.

And he preached a sermon for them, the headline of it is all that Luke has recorded for us in verse 21, and he began

by saying to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

In simple, clear, unmistakable terms, Jesus identifies himself as the fulfillment of the prophecy.

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