Luke 4:14-30--Jesus Begins His Ministry and Immediately Faces Rejection From Those Closest to Him12/17/2021
Luke 4:14-30 English Standard Version Jesus Begins His Ministry 14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. Jesus Rejected at Nazareth 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” 23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away. I put these two passages together not just because the first one is short, but I think it's important for us to see that Jesus was being obedient to everything He was to be and was obedient to everything He was to do, including spending 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and then being tempted by the devil, and shortly after starting His teaching ministry, He went home and was rejected by all those He grew up with and around when He revealed Himself for who He was. Those who should have best seen the fulfillment of these prophecies because they were closest in proximity to Him had the strongest rejection for Him, and Jesus was forced to leave family and friends behind for the sake of His ministry, never coming back to them again to teach them because of their rejection and their lack of faith. In fact, they were so angry with the message that He had for them that day, that they rose up and tried to drive Him off a cliff to kill Him and God miraculously protected Him (remember how Satan just asked Jesus to instigate something like this, yet here it is when Jesus didn't need to manipulate the Father at all).
So, that was a brief summary of the text, let's go back now and look a little closer and deeper. Jesus returns to Galilee after He had been in the region of Judea (the southern part of the Promised Land near Jerusalem) for His baptism and temptation. He is going around to the synagogues and those out in the country meaning he's going to the people that are religious (and hopefully some of these have a relationship with the LORD) and those who are irreligious that wouldn't set foot inside of a synagogue. To those that are in the synagogue, Jesus is reading and teaching the Scriptures to them from what we see. To those outside the synagogues, Jesus is still teaching them the Word of God, but is doing so mostly through sermons and parables that were the ways in which most of the common people would learn and be able to understand (most of the population at that time was unable to read the original texts of the Old Testament because they could not read Hebrew, and not everyone had their own copy of the Bible like today--the copies were kept in the synagogues for teaching and a few rich people had their own copies in their libraries). Notice how Luke indicates that everywhere that Jesus has been going in Galilee where He has been preaching and teaching (and definitely we know that some miracles happened early on in His ministry, though they were kept pretty quiet, but maybe some people had heard about them) that He was being glorified. It seems like Jesus knew that the people of Nazareth were jealous that Jesus would do all these things in other towns and wouldn't do the same things for them in their town. They wanted someone that would put them on the map and would give them signs and miracles to entertain them (this is typical for Jews, and they were told in the Old Testament to ask for a sign if they needed to test a prophet, but at some point they are responsible for making a choice to believe the Word of the LORD from the true prophet or to condemn and put to death the false prophet). Jesus shouldn't have had to do a lot of signs to convince those who He grew up with because His entire childhood should have been enough of a sign. So, Jesus comes home to Nazareth and is in the synagogue teaching them (a privileged position to be able to read the text and sit down and teach it), and He chooses a passage form the book of Isaiah 61:1-2a (they did not have chapter and verse numbers back then, but Jesus stops his quotation of the passage mid-sentence, and this is going to be important and probably led to some of the ire we see). Let me quote all of Isaiah 61:2-3 (the end of the sentence) here and see where Jesus stopped (intentionally), 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. Jesus only read the first line of what we call verse 2. But the people wanted to hear the rest that was God's promise that He would bring His vengeance and justice upon their enemies (the Roman empire) and that He would comfort all who mourn and that He would trade their ashes (a sign of mourning) in for a beautiful headdress and they would be anointed with the oil of gladness. They would be dressed in garments of praise instead of their faint spirit and they would be made strong and steadfast like an oak tree of righteousness that the LORD had planted--all this so that He would be glorified. A lot of that sounds like things that aren't going to happen until the last days when God defeats all of His enemies and makes everything right and there is a restored kingdom in the New Heaves and the the New Earth, but the Jews wanted that here and now, and they wanted it the way they wanted it to happen, with their days of suffering and mourning cut short. Jesus stops short of this part of the passage so as to say that part wasn't the reason for His coming this time. That is still yet to be fulfilled, but the part that He did read was fulfilled before them that day because He was the fulfillment of it and was standing before them. There is still much to be excited about though that Jesus did say was about His first coming, but we need to think of many of these things in a spiritual sense in His defeat of sin since we know that Jesus did not come to cause everyone who was physically blind to have perfect vision or to liberate every prisoner, but Jesus does identify Himself as the Messiah by reading these verses because He is pointing to how the Spirit of the Lord has come upon Him (we saw the symbol of that at His baptism, though we know He was already filled with the Spirit much earlier on when we saw Him teaching in the Temple and we saw John the Baptist leap in his mother's womb when Jesus was in Mary's womb and entered Elizabeth and Zachariah's house). The people were in awe at Jesus' gracious words that He was speaking, but He didn't leave it there. He immediately called them out for their lack of response in faith to what He had just said. He just told them that He was the Messiah and they are too busy focused on the fact that the passage talks about God's blessings being poured out on them and the greatest blessing ever to come from God was standing right in front of them. Some of the people then seemed to indicate that Jesus couldn't be the Messiah because He was born out of wedlock by saying, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" Jesus knew exactly what they were saying--trying to claim He was somehow born of men and not of God and that his parents conceived Him in sin. Jesus knows this is a smokescreen though because they don't want to believe. If they believed that He was the Messiah, then they would have listen to and obey Him (like all the other towns and cities were doing). They were already making excuses in their heads about how they didn't have to believe Him because He had not shown them any signs, but Jesus was already aware of that too (tell me that isn't a sign right there), and the people became angry that Jesus compared Himself to Elijah and Elisha, probably the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament if you ask the Jews, and used their ministries to say that His would be similar where the LORD would send Him to the Gentiles because the Jews would hear and not believe. We do see a bit of this in Christ's earthly ministry, and it is part of the reason He spent so much time in Galilee (which is called Galilee of the Gentiles) and in the Decapolis (a Gentile area on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee), but we also do see Jesus ministering to and praising the faith of a centurion, a Syrophoenician woman, and Samaritans (thinking specifically of the Samaritan leper here) who came to Him in faith when most of the Jews did not and simply kept asking for more and more signs. Jesus would minister to those who whom the Jews had rejected--the poor, destitute, disabled, unclean, outcasts, women, children, and even Gentiles. Very few of the rich, educated, religious men would come to faith in Jesus (a couple like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and eventually the men we know as Paul and Barnabas--neither of them born with those names, but those were there "born again" names). Imagine being Jesus here and going home knowing they want you to teach them like you had been teaching in the surrounding villages, but they don't recognize you when you make a pretty definitive statement of identity, and harden their hearts. They then get angry that you call them out for their unbelief and lack of repentance, and they try to kill you, and we don't see Jesus returning home any more after that (from what I remember), because they had no faith and were unwilling to believe it even if they did see it. Comments are closed.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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