Jesus Comes to Nazareth: An Exposition of Luke 4:14-30
In the previous passage, we saw that after His baptism by John, He was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of Judaea. There he had fasted for forty days. At the end of this period, while he was as humanly weak as was possible, He was tempted three times by Satan. Unlike the Children of Israel who had succumbed to temptation in the wilderness, Jesus resisted Satan and rebuked Him. The Devil then departed looking for an even better opportunity to tempt Him. We will see that it would be at the Garden that Jesus, in a moment of even greater weakness facing the horrible death on the cross would be tempted again to save Himself.
In-between these two events was the vast bulk of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He would teach and heal the people. He would cast out demons. This He would do by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus could have performed these miracles and wonders in His own authority as the Son of God. But at the Temptation, He refused to use His own power. Instead, He relied on the power of the Holy Spirit. In this way, He became the example of the Christian believer. We cannot stop Satan in our own authority, but the Holy Spirit is able to deliver us from him. If Jesus expects His church to minister in the power of the Spirit, then He, as our example, chose to rely on the same power. Acts 1:8 talks about the Gospel of Luke as being what “Jesus began to do and to teach,” Acts is the continuation of the ministry of Jesus. Acts ends at chapter 28, but as someone has said, we are in the 29th chapter of Acts.
Verse 14 sets up Jesus’s return to Nazareth where he had been raised. His mother came from there. Joseph moved there when he married Mary. Other than a short stay in Bethlehem and another one in Egypt, Jesus had lived most of his thirty years there. The text states that Jesus came back to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. Why did He not just return to Nazareth first? I think that at some point in Jesus’s life, the family had moved to Capernaum. There is some evidence in this from the Gospel accounts. If I were trying to harmonize the four gospels, His return to Galilee probably took Him through Samaria first. This would make sense of Jesus’s becoming exhausted at the well there if His body had been so depleted by the extended fast in the wilderness. But this is only speculation.
Jesus began to publicly teach in the synagogues around Galilee in the power of the Spirit. The people were amazed at the authority of His teaching. Luke does not mention His performing miracles, but this is explained by the fact that Jesus considered His teaching more important than the miracles. The miracles were signs which reinforced the authority of His preaching. The signs and wonders were to be mentioned later, but what it says that the fame of His teaching spread throughout the region. The people glorified Him. The word in Greek is the verb form of “doxa” from which we get terms like “orthodox.” It is different than today when someone doxes someone on the internet. Internet trolls do the exact opposite of giving good credit to someone. It is used to publicly humiliate people. It is strange how the meaning of words get twisted.
The fame of Jesus’s ministry in His adopted home in Galilee was quite different from the one He was to receive in His home town of Nazareth. There He would get “doxed.” The account starts innocuously enough. It just says that He returned to Nazareth where He had been raised. It then says that it was His customary habit to go to synagogue on the Sabbath. We have earlier learned in Luke that Jesus’s family made a custom of going to Passover in Jerusalem. Jesus in every way kept the Law, and this is demonstrated here.
Any male of age could request to read and expound the Scripture in the synagogue. The Scripture was read while the reader stood. Then he would sit down and explain the Scripture. As Dr. Van Der Laan mentions, one stands up in the synagogue for the Word of God and sits down for his own explanation of God’s Word. So when Jesus stands to read, this would have not been unusual. But it is implied that there is also something which makes Jesus’s request unusual. His fame has spread around he region. We can only surmise that the report of what Jesus was doing had gotten to Nazareth. So there would have been more than ordinary interest among the congregation like people attend today for a famous person.
Jesus asked for the scroll of Isaiah, one of the longest books of the Old Testament. As Isaiah 61 is near the end of the book, it would have taken Jesus quite some time t get to the passage. He could have simply quoted it verbatim without having to unroll the scroll from one end and scroll it up on the other roller. However, there is something about actually reading it from the scroll. I wonder what the people were thinking during the time that Jesus laboriously scrolled to the verse.
Jesus finally gets to Isaiah 61:1-2 and reads the text. He returns the scroll, and then He sits down to explain it. The text says that all the eyes of the listeners were fixed upon Him. So far, all He had done was to read the text. The Jews at least formally reverenced the Scripture, unfortunately more than in many of our churches today where the reading of the Scriptures is a ritual to go through, in which many of the listener’s attention is diverted by other things such as where they are going to do lunch after church. And the preaching finishes the job of putting the congregation into a deep spiritual sleep if not actual slumber. Part of the problem is that far too many churches do not internally reverence the Word, and see preaching as something to endure as good Christians. Maybe it is because preaching lacks the authority is deserves. Even the preachers bore themselves and substitute some joke or cute idea for the powerful proclamation of the Gospel.
The fame of Jesus made the listeners at Nazareth all the more eager to hear what Jesus was about to say. He had read that the “Spirit of the LORD is upon me.” Who is the “me” of Isaiah? Was it Isaiah himself? Or was He speaking about someone else? The purpose of this “anointing” was to preach the good news to the poor. Notice that proclamation comes first, then proclaiming liberty to the captives and causing the blind to see and setting the oppressed at liberty. Luke brings out the idea of actual captivity and economic poverty, although spiritual bondage and blindness is not to be dismissed. But the LORD is the one who creates and sustains by speaking the Word. The proclamation of the Word is then primary.
Whatever might have been in the minds of the congregation received a shocking answer. Jesus made the implicit identification that the Prophet Isaiah was speaking about Jesus. This very day the Scripture is fulfilled. It was fulfilled in their ears. God is speaking, and people need to hear. Isaiah had also said that many would see and not perceive and hear but not understand. This prophet would be fulfilled this day also. The initial response seemed to be quite positive in that the congregation was bearing witness to Him and were being amazed by His teaching. Luke has a habit of giving an abridged account of the teaching, so there was probably some lapse in time between these initial words and what happens next.
The words were indeed gracious and powerful. But at some point some showed their doubt by saying: “Is this not Joseph’s son? Later on Jesus would be doxed as the son of Mary which was an allusion to being illegitimate. However at this point, the level of skepticism had not risen to this point. But Jesus is aware that there was more to the question than wondering about how Joseph’s son could be saying this. Jospeph appears to have come from another village, so he would have been held at some distance socially. He wasn’t of any particular social rank. The also thought the “anointed one” (Messiah or Christ) was to come from Bethlehem. This question isn’t raised in this gospel but is in John.
Jesus reminds them of a common proverb that circulated in that day: “Physician, heal thyself.” They wanted Jesus to do more than talk. They wanted action. They wanted Him to do miracles like the ones they had heard about in Capernaum. The People of God are ones who should be centered on the Word of God. Jesus demonstrates this in the wilderness by quoting Scripture at the devil. He did not turn stones into bread to feed himself. He would not throw Himself down from the Temple and assume of the care of the angels. His very safe descent from the pinnacle of the Temple would have been seen by some as a sign of the Messiah at Jerusalem. It is the Word of God that is of ultimate importance. Jesus would not relent for doing miracles for miracles’ sake. He healed and drove out demons out of compassion. People today are just as fixated on action and are impatient of hearing words alone. If these were the words of men, they would be justified in their beliefs. But these were the very words of the Son of God, As God, Jesus could have stood during His explanation of Isaiah’s words as the very words He spoke were God’s own words. But being human as well as divine, He sat to explain them. The people were dull of hearing what Jesus said and could not understand that these words were the very words of God.
Jesus responds by saying that no prophet is accepted in his own country, which is also a well known proverb. Jesus had come to his own people to proclaim the “acceptable year of the LORD.” But He was rejected by the very ones who should have rejoiced at these words. There is another proverb said in our time: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Mark shows by using a different verb to bring out the idea that Jesus’s words were more than “not accepted.” They despised Jesus and His words. They were despising the Word of God. What happens at Nazareth is emblematic of His later rejection by the Jewish nation as well as rejection by the majority of the Gentiles as well. This indeed is a great tragedy and demonstrates the utter depravity of mankind. I used to think it hard to believe that the Jewish people should have so violently rejected their own Messiah. But as I see the multiplication of evil throughout the world today, I have had to emerge from the American bubble and the veneer of “Christian civilization” to reality. Rejection has a long sordid history which goes well beyond the Jewish nation. History is full of the horrors of the perversion of Christianity and the persecution of Christians by people who call themselves “Christian.” But Jesus clearly tells us that what happened to Him must, of necessity, happen to His followers as well.
Jesus goes on to say that the rejection of Yahweh had a long history in Israel as well. They did not accept Elijah who had to flee for sustenance to be fed by unclean ravens in the desert and then by a Gentile widow in Sidon. The Israelites tried to put Elijah to death, and they would try to put Jesus to death as well. But Jesus would escape until the proper time. The Father would sustain Him. It is interesting that God used women to sustain the ministry of Jesus and His disciples. Luke 8 mentions several of them. There was Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus cast out seven devils, Susannah, and Joanna. History was repeating itself.
Jesus infuriates the congregation by saying by mentioning that even though there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha, only the Gentile Syrian was healed. He was healed because Naaman believed the word of a Jewish slave girl that the God of Israel could heal him. In other words, faith in the God of Israel healed him, whereas lack of faith in Israel kept the same from happening there. In another account, it says that Jesus could not heal many in Nazareth because of their unbelief. In other words, history was again repeating itself.
The people at Nazareth were enraged. Instead of repenting, they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff and then stone Him if He survived the fall. But this was not the time or the place that Jesus would die. He would die on the Father’s terms and not by the will of the people. The people of Israel would indeed have Jesus crucified by the Roman, but ultimately this was only to serve as the means by which the will of the Father would be carried out. He would die as an atonement for the sin of the world as the sacrificial “Lamb of God.” His death would be for the reconciliation of all who believe on Him, whether Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, captive or free, blind or sighted. God sends His church in the continuation of what Jesus began to do and to teach. We are to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD for as long as this age continues. If we preach the Good News like Jesus did, we should believe that many would repent and believe. We should also expect many to reject and want to kill us as well. Let us be faithful in our proclamation of the Word of God. Let s be led by the Spirit of the LORD and not the spirit of the world. Let us be bold and loving. We preach the truth not for the purpose of rejection and being despised, but rather that people might repent and be saved. You are going to get doxed. You will be shamed. But God has taken our shame from us. the shame we bear is of His cross. But we are accepted by Him. We are His honorable brethren. Jesus is no longer shamed but is in the glory of the Father where He remains until He returns. That is all that matters. God help us in this mission. Amen.
