John Boyles 7-20-25

My name is John Boyles. My wife Lauren and I have been members here since the fall of 2016. And it's my honor to be with you this morning. I'm honored by Shane inviting me to preach while he's on study break. And I'd like to ask that you pray with me as we get started.

Our God, may the meditations of our hearts and the words of my mouth be pleasing in your sight today, in the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Many of you were here and welcomed my son guy, who is 5 years old. And because I have a 5 year old, I have brought a show and tell for you this morning. This is Beach Ken.

You may see the resemblance, although my wife says my hair is grayer now, but perhaps it's the sunglasses on the head, because this is not the typical Beach Ken that you would find on a rack at Walmart or Target. But instead, this is a Beach Ken that was given to me when I was living in Atlanta. And the reason why Beachkin was given to me. There's a number of things on here that are part of this, but I'm going to focus on one today, is that I got the nickname Beach Ken when I lived in New England. I was from Florida.

I perhaps popularized, or maybe it never took off, but the move of dressing like this and wearing flip flops, I didn't do it today. I've grown, I think I've matured. But I was called Beach Ken. And I also had this previous life as a politician. And you might wonder, why does being a politician have anything to do with being Beach Ken?

It was a different time. This was in the mid-2000s, and my mother thought that it was quite funny that everywhere we went I knew people and this had continued. It was kind of being a politician in the mid 2000s and I was friends with everyone. So my mother took this idea of me as Beach Ken and she said, you know, it's kind of like you walk around and you have a sign on your chest that says, cool, Wanna hang. And so Beach Ken has a sign on his chest that says wanna hang?

And this was very much my image of myself. I didn't think of myself as someone who was controversial. I didn't think of myself as someone who had anyone who really didn't like me. I was very likable and I was friends with everyone. And so it was quite surprising to me during that time when I was a politician that someone who had been my friend, his name was Tommy and he had wanted me to pursue this Political career.

He wanted me to run for office, and so I was doing it. And then I ended up on the other side of the race from the person that Tommy ended up supporting. And that was odd to me, but I thought, you know, we can still be friends. And I was friends with lots of people who were on the other side and were supporting my opponent in the race. But then one day I showed up at some event and Tommy was there and he looked at me and he said, oh, you're my nemesis, not just like the other side nemesis.

And it was in that moment that this world that I lived in of being everybody's friend, of being alphable, it all kind of came crashing down because I came face to face with the reality that I was someone's enemy. I was their nemesis. That's not how I thought of myself. Now. I tell this story because this time in my life, this time of politics, it makes me.

I always think of it when I read this passage or hear this passage in Luke 4 for two reasons. We're going to start with the first one. One, I like to imagine this scene in Nazareth as Jesus launching his campaign for Messiah, right? It's. It's got all the right markers.

He's gone. He's triumphed over his personal demon in the wilderness, right? He and Satan had their time together and now he's ready. He's coming to his hometown where of course people will support him. He's been kind of testing the waters around you.

Read that in verse 14 and 15 before this little episode starts. And things are going well. So it's time for the big launch of the campaign. Jesus comes home, the place that he knows where he can get support. And imagine the scene with me.

It's time for the synagogue service. And there's been some arrangement on the back end. Jesus has worked with the synagogue official and he's going to be the one who's reading the text of scripture that day. So there's been some rumors, people have heard some things about this Jesus guy. Around the region of Galilee, people have heard that he's been doing some things, that he's kind of got some compelling thoughts.

And so the synagogue service begins and people start to see that there's someone there that they don't quite recognize. Some of them think that guy kind of looks familiar. A few people are in the know. And then it comes time for the reading of scripture. And again, carefully choreographed moment, Jesus gets the scroll from the prophet Isaiah and he is.

It's handed to him and he carefully unfurls it. And he begins to read. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the captives and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Silence.

What's going to happen next?

He carefully rolls it up. He sits down, draws out that silence for another moment. And then he says, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. It couldn't have gone better. The political launch of Jesus Campaign for Messiah is perfect.

Everybody's excited, they're marveling. Everyone is saying that Jesus, he's the one. He's gonna do what God has promised. He's the one who's going to bring the favor of God that we've all been waiting for. And then someone says, isn't that Joseph's son?

And I like to imagine in this moment, he doesn't have one yet, I don't think. But I like to imagine that Jesus campaign manager starts to see the moment for what it is. This could quickly go off the rails. So Jesus campaign manager is trying to grab him and pull him out of the synagogue. Let's go on.

But instead, Jesus can't quite leave well enough alone. And this campaign launch goes completely off the rails. Jesus says, surely you want me to start and bring all of the wonderful benefits to you. You're my hometown crowd. Surely you want everything again, Jesus campaign manager is like, come on, come on, we gotta get out of here.

But instead, Jesus keeps going. And he says, truly, I tell you, in the time of Elijah, there were many widows in Israel. And yet Elijah did not go to a single one of them. Rather, he went to a widow in Sidon. And surely in the time of Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but Elisha was sent not to any of them.

Instead, Elisha cleansed Naaman the Syrian.

The next part is just so odd, because it's not odd that they got angry. That's where we'll be focused. What's odd is what happens after that. Because of course, they were mad. Jesus had just told them that he could give them all the benefits of God's reign, but that it wasn't just for them, it was also for outsiders.

And they become so angry that they take him to the top of a hill so that they can throw him off the top of the hill and then stone him. And here's the part that's so odd. He just walks right through the crowd. And leaves. Jesus campaign manager is like, why couldn't you just have done that 10 minutes ago, man?

Everything would have been fine. This would have been the greatest campaign launch ever. I want us to focus today, though, on why these people are so mad. It's not that Jesus is saying that they in Israel will not receive any of the benefits of the Year of the Lord, because of course, Jesus will go on, as we learn in the Gospel of Luke, to spend a lot of time at the next 10 chapters or so in the region of Galilee, healing people, teaching, doing works of power. He's doing lots for this hometown crowd.

The problem is that he dared to tell them that it wasn't for them alone, and he dared to tell them more than that. If you want to know the stories in this moment in the life of Elijah and the most moment in the life of Elisha, they're told in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 5. One of the things that's happening, though, in this period is that there's a neighboring nation called Aram, some might call it Syria, as it comes to be known later, and Aram is the enemy of Israel at this time. They're going back and forth in warfare. Aram, in fact, kills the king of Israel during the time of Elijah, which may or may not have been a bad thing because his name was Ahab and he was married to Jezebel and, you know, her name kind of still rings through history.

They were not the best king and queen in Israel's history. And the story in First Kings 17 about this widow is that Elijah has told Ahab, king of Israel, who's brought all sorts of foreign gods and all sorts of idols into the kingdom of Israel and into their worship. And Elijah said, guess what? God said it's not going to rain for a long time. And when it doesn't rain, then people starve, people die, and they overthrow kings.

Right? So not the greatest moment in Israel's history. And this is the moment when Elijah is taken out of Israel and provides sustenance and nourishment for a widow outside of Israel. So the people are not happy about being reminded of this. But I really think that the thing that takes it over the edge, that leads them to drive him up to the ridge of the hill.

When he talks about Naaman.

The story about Naaman starts off by talking about how the Arameans in the chapter before made war against Israel, they'd already killed Ahab. So now we have a succession crisis in the kingdom of Israel. Again, the beginning of 2 Kings tells these stories. But then the whole way that Naaman even learns about Elisha is that he leads a raid on Israel and he brings back not only goods but also people. Naaman was this great general in the Aramean kingdom.

In fact, he was probably the cause of a lot of suffering in Israel. He was at least the cause of specific suffering in this moment, because Naaman led this raid and he brings back captives.

In order to keep our service this morning family friendly, I won't get into details about what happens in ancient warfare with captives, but it's a young Israeli servant girl who finds out that Naaman has leprosy. She would have been taken from her home, forcibly removed in this raid, and enslaved in his household. I don't know what's going through her mind when she decides to say this to Naaman, but she says, really to Naaman's wife, why doesn't my lord go and see the prophet in Israel? He would surely be able to heal Naaman's leprosy.

Naaman says, sounds good. He tells his king, the king of Aram, hey, send me to Israel. So the king of Aram packs up Elisha, or packs up Naaman, with a nice letter and a few gifts, sends him to the king of Israel with a letter that says, here's my servant. Naaman cleanses leprosy. That doesn't go over super well.

The king of Israel tears his clothes. The king of Aram is trying to bait me out into a war. Remember, this is the military opponent of Israel at the time.

Elisha hears, he sends to the king and says, send Naaman to me. Naaman the general. Naaman, the leader of Aram's armies. Naaman, the person who has been killing Israel, been the cause of their suffering, been the one who is their enemy. Naaman goes.

And Elisha doesn't even deign to come out of his house. He just sends a little message out and says, go wash in the Jordan seven times. And Naaman, as a good general, says, he's not even going to come out. He's not going to do anything, Wave his hands, make a big show of cleansing my leprosy. And again we find a servant who says to Naaman, my lord, if he told you to do some simple thing, would you not just do the simple thing?

Why not just go and do this thing? Naaman goes, he washes in the dirty waters of the Jordan. That's his other problem with this, is that Jordan is dirty and he has much cleaner rivers he could have washed in at home. And his leprosy is cleansed. And so Elisha heals and re empowers the leader of the armies of Israel's enemies.

This is why it's not good news to the people gathered in this synagogue. When Jesus says, surely there were many lepers in Israel, but Elisha was sent to Naaman to bring God's good healing. They can hear the words. You're saying that you're also for the Romans, that you're going to bring God's benefits to the Romans, the cause of our oppression, our enemies. That's blasphemy.

This is why it goes so poorly for Jesus in this moment.

And I would suggest that it maybe makes it a little hard for us in this moment. Because the thing about God and the thing about salvation and the thing about God's promises is that God doesn't change on this. This text, on the one hand, is reminding us that God's salvation is for our enemies. It's for the people that we don't like, for the people who might wrong us or otherwise do wrong. And this, I think, is particularly challenging in our time because again, I could have been deluded in the mid 2000s.

I was in many ways, but it was a gentler time in a lot of ways. It was a different period, a different culture, and now we live in a time where there's so much pressure to put everything in terms of enemies. The students are gone for the summer, so I can speak more freely about the students because I am a professor at acu. So let me speak about my experience in this. For example, there are all sorts of articles, essays, interviews, tips going around right now, as there have been for a few years, about how to handle generative AI in the classroom.

They all share one thing in common, though. At their foundation, they all have this kind of move to make it me as the instructor versus the students. These articles. They don't imagine the students who will enter my classroom in August to be in eager to learn, students who just want to do their best on everything, who can't wait for each day when they will hear from their instructor all of the things that are so valuable. They're not even neutral about the students.

What they want to assume about the students is that the students are coming. And what they want to do more than anything is find every single shortcut they can. They will do anything to not do the things that the instructor wants them to do or asks them to do. They'll do anything to avoid reading, they'll do anything to avoid writing. And of course, with generative AI, they'll just take whatever you throw at them and put it in the computer and then copy that, and they won't learn a thing.

In other words, they're little demons, right? That's who they are. And as the instructor, I will constantly be fighting the demonic in my crusade of learning.

Think of it. I mean, it's too easy. I've done enough around politics today. It would be too easy, though, to talk about it in terms of our politics, to talk about it in terms of our policy discussions in our country, in Abilene, in our state, in Texas. But what I want to suggest to you is that it is so easy on the one hand, because everything in our culture right now wants to filter it through the lens of politics.

Everything about everything is now. Well, that is because that person is with the other party. So that everything is put in terms of us versus them. They are our enemies and God cannot be for them. That's the first thing it does to us.

It forms our imaginations into. There's only two camps, us and them. The second thing that it does to us, though, is that then we can't really see us. We're stuck and we're blinded. There are moments of resistance to this tendency that I would be remiss to not point out.

Robert mentioned some of them, like the work with the Mission of Mercy this weekend, the work that our student ministry has done with Camp Barnabas, the fact that we have teams that are in Brazil and Thailand right now working with our ministry partners. Hyland. I love the ways that we resist this culture.

Let's not become so focused on those things that we miss the ways that the culture is still forming us into these tendencies of us versus them.

How is it good news for us that Jesus says, don't be mistaken, it's the outsider widow. It's the outsider leper. It's the enemy general that God's salvation is for.

On the one hand, it's really good news because not very many of us are not outsiders to Israel. It's good news that God's salvation expands beyond the boundaries of the descendants of Abraham, because not many of us claim that pedigree. It's also good news because again, at this time period, when this widow and Naaman the Syrian were both being visited by the power of God, Israel was kind of living into being an enemy of God. That's the whole Ahab and Jezebel situation. So it's good news because we, even as we are in Christ, we also can find ourselves on the wrong side, and God's mercy still extends to us.

But I think that the biggest reason why this is good news to us and good news for us today is because it's too easy, I think, for us as Christians to imagine ourselves the way that I imagined myself back in the mid-2000s. We're everybody's friend, right? We're here. We serve the poor. We serve the needy.

We're here. We are friendly, we are loving, we are kind.

But the truth is, this text is good news for us because even in the midst of living into all of the fruits of the Spirit, we can still find ourselves as someone else's enemy, just as I found myself someone else's enemy.

And when we're someone else's enemy, we need someone to break down that barrier of us versus them the way that Jesus broke down the barrier of us versus them. We need someone to look to us, to love us, to be able to think differently, to be challenged, to imagine that we can be an us and not just a them. To imagine that it can be good news that the salvation of God is for us and not just for them.

And that if we can remember, it can inspire us to also think in the ways that the salvation of God is not just for us, but it's also for them.

Hyland this week, May God remind us and assure us of God's love, of our salvation, of our belonging in God's people, and may this remembrance transform us into people who welcome those who might call us enemy and those whom we might be tempted to call enemy into God's salvation. Go in peace.