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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and 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 proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell Me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ Truly I tell you,” He continued, “no prophet is accepted in His hometown.”

“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove Him out of the town, and took Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw Him off the cliff. But He walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Then He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee.

Luke 4:16-31a

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Sometimes it’s easy to be accepted in life. All you need to do is find a group of like-minded people and then intermingle, being careful that everything you say matches up with their beliefs, attitudes, and opinions. You’ll be assured to be a welcome member of such a group as long as you don’t say the wrong thing but if you choose to ruffle feathers and go against the grain, even if what you are saying is the truth, you can risk being rejected, even by those who you may think would be your closest allies.

Now, this isn’t just some modern day sociological norm. For as we look back at the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus Himself experiencing first acceptance and approval, followed by an abrupt rejection which nearly turned fatal. Look again at these verses here:

He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and 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 proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell Me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ Truly I tell you,” He continued, “no prophet is accepted in His hometown.”

“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove Him out of the town, and took Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw Him off the cliff. But He walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Then He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee. Luke 4:16-31a

We have followed Jesus on quite a journey which started in the south of Israel in Jerusalem and the Judean countryside and progressed north through Samaria before He arrived in His home region of Galilee where He could visit His hometown of Nazareth.

We know Jesus grew up in Nazareth under the watchful eyes of His parents, Joseph and Mary. And as we read in today’s scripture passage, the men in the synagogue where Jesus preached was well aware of whose son He was, remarking during His teaching:

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

Speaking about the teaching Jesus was doing, we read where He was in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the place you would customarily find any faithful Jew who was obedient in adhering to God’s commands. Handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus unrolled it and went right to the words He wished to speak, words that foretold His coming:

“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 prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Isaiah 61:1-2

The eyes of all at the Sabbath worship were fixed on Jesus as He read the words of the prophet, words that proclaimed a coming time of hope for the people of Israel, a time where the Lord’s favor would come upon them as good news was proclaimed to the poor and the imprisoned, to the blind and oppressed.

What teaching would He bring the people of His hometown on such a forward looking prophecy?

The message was simple.

The wait was over as the prophecy was being fulfilled right before their very eyes. Jesus said so Himself as He stated:

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

What an amazing proclamation, especially in light of how the people inside the synagogue remembered Jesus who had grown up an ordinary son of a carpenter, went away from home, and now had returned to tell everyone that He was the Messiah who had been predicted to come.

It had to be the ultimate feel good moment, right?

Everyone in Nazareth could say that the Christ grew up in their midst, that they knew the promised One of God.

Indeed, it was a real moment to cherish, one that would have generated a lifetime of acceptance, had Jesus just left things as they were.

But He didn’t do that, did He?

You see, Jesus wasn’t interested in living in an environment of political correctness, saying whatever He needed to say to win over the favor of others. Rather, Jesus was going to speak the truth in order to bring people to repentance and salvation, even if it meant telling others what they didn’t want to hear, even those in His own hometown.

For the adoring words of the Nazareth faithful had had barely left their lips before Jesus began to prophesy for Himself, saying:

“Surely you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell Me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in His hometown.”

Note here that Jesus knew the hearts of the Nazarene people before they even spoke a word. He knew that it wouldn’t be enough for Him to tell them that He was the Christ and they would believe, although it should have been more than enough for Him to be accepted. Instead, His hometown people would demand to see evidence that Jesus was the Messiah, the One sent from God to aid them. They would demand that He show them signs and wonders so that there would be concrete reason for them to believe in Him.

And so, knowing their hearts, Jesus decided to give them something else to ponder, something else that would be central to the new covenant He was bringing them from God the Father, a new covenant that would turn their spiritual ways of thinking upside down. The newly proclaimed Messiah said this to His people:

“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.”

What was Jesus getting at here? Why did what He said lead the Nazareth Jews into such a murderous rage?

We need to examine His statements in the context of Old Testament scripture to find the answers.

First, He mentions widows who were in dire need in Elijah’s time.

Now Elijah was perhaps the most beloved and respected of all the Jewish prophets, so much so that many Jews believed he would be resurrected to announce the Messiah’s coming. To bring him into a negative light would have raised the ire of any devout Jew. And yet, Jesus went there, not with words that could not be supported, but rather words that were reinforced by the scriptures.

Go to 1 Kings, Chapter 17 and you will find the account of where Elijah was sent by God from Israel and away from Jewish widows who were in need, to a woman who lived in “Zarephath in the region of Sidon”, an area that was considered Gentile. Now we know that the Gentiles were despised by the Jews and seen as unclean. To even mention God favoring a Gentile over a Jew would be considered blasphemous at best but that’s what Jesus did and He did so speaking in truth, even if He knew it wasn’t what the Nazarenes wanted to hear.

These words about Elijah would have been enough to elevate the ire of the Jews in His hometown but Jesus wasn’t finished. For He next brought up the prophet who took proceeded Elijah, Elisha:

“And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

  

Used in a similar context as the first example, Jesus mentions here that although there were many Jews in need of healing from leprosy, God send Elisha to heal and cleanse a Gentile leper before them, a Syrian man by the name of Naaman (2 Kings 5).  

Two separate examples of God favoring Gentiles over the Jews, using beloved prophets, both examples easily validated by the scriptures. But it was all too much for the Nazareth faithful to take. They possessed so much hatred for the Gentiles that they were unwilling to even consider God having love and favor for them, just as He had for His chosen people.

This same resentment is what would eventually get Jesus killed as He brought His ministry of salvation to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. But at least for that day in Nazareth, Jesus would emerge unscathed as the Jewish mob rejected Him and His message before driving Him out of town to a brow of a hill with the intent of pushing Him off the cliff, a scene which the scriptures say He just walked away from and “went on His way” to another town in Galilee, the town of Capernaum.

Through the documented accounts of God using two of the most esteemed messengers to minister and care for those who the Jews shunned, Jesus was trying to let the Nazarenes know that He was sent for the same purpose, that there would be no one eliminated by the work the Father sent Him to do.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

And there is no set parameters on who’s in the “whoever” category as no one will find themselves rejected by God is they place their belief, faith, trust, and hope in Jesus, His Son - the promised Messiah, the Lamb of God who was slain to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29), the Only One who can bring someone to God the Father (John 14:6).

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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