Luke 4:16-31: Jesus Knew He Would Be Rejected

Jesus' message was short: "today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." But this claim created a dilemma for those in the synangogue, people He had grown up with, as well as for every reader of Luke. Jesus was not teaching something about ethics or morality, He was not giving steps for following God's commandments, or for better living. He was claiming to be God's promise of salvation. Every person had to make a choice: Believe Him.....or not.

Either He is the Messiah, promised by God since the days of Adam and Eve....Or He is a blasphemer

The crowded synagogue was full of pensive neighbors who had seen Jesus grow up, who knew His family and his family's history. Many of them must have known Jesus as a boy, taught Him in synagogue, known His family's income bracket and their place in the social sphere. Luke tells us they were amazed and perplexed at the same time.

On the one hand, they realized He had spoken well, with gracious words. How did He grow up to be such a fine speaker, with such authority and power? With such wisdom and insight? They spoke well of him. They recognized His giftedness. But His family background, His humble beginnings...Isn't this Joseph's son? How could he be the promised one of God?

Jesus knew what they were thinking. Typically, in the gospels, when Jesus knows someone's thoughts His response holds a rebuke in it.

His admonition had three parts to it:
First, he repeated the proverb He knew they were thinking: They wanted him to prove it. They'd heard of all His powerful miracles, but ya know, reports can be exaggerated. Let's see it with our own eyes. Let's see what a carpenter of questionable origins can do.

But Jesus told them that even the evidence that miracles could offer wouldn't be enough to convince them. The fact is, they didn't, deep down, want to believe Jesus. They were predisposed to doubt Him. Miracles never convince the person who does not want to come to God. As one commentator put it: "People must be willing to hear the Word of God and receive it before they will see anything as God's work."

How about you? Have you been insisting to God that He must perform for you before you are willing to trust Him?

* What promise of God, or what instruction from God, have you been holding at arm's length because God's character is not enough for you to believe?

* In what area of your life might you now need to humble yourself before God and be willing to believe His word is true, even though you have not yet seen the fulfillment of it?

* What promise, or instruction, in Scripture, will you now simply agree to believe and live by, in confident faith, trusting in God's character, His love, wisdom and power alone, to make come true in your circumstances?

Jesus next quoted a well-known proverb that a prophet is not honored in his home. He knew that God's prophets had been repeatedly rejected in the Scriptures. This proverb was also a prophecy of Israel's rejection of the gospel that brought the Apostle Paul to tears many times

Finally, Jesus used examples from His people's two most famous prophets: Elijah and Elisha.

Jesus was making reference to a spiritually low water-mark In Israel's history, when rejection of God was at an all-time high and idolatry and unfaithfulness ran rampant. Because of this, God moved his works of mercy outside the nation into Gentile regions as acts of both warning and rebuke: The widow in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian.

Isaiah was the perfect text to read from to carry God's severe warning: If His own people would reject His mercy, then He would bring in the Gentiles, and no longer place His favor on His own people. For the rest of His ministry Jesus laid out this warning, and the apostles reaped the harvest of Gentile believers.

The people of Jesus' hometown did not receive this teaching well. They were furious with Him for
* Refusing to perform miracles as proof of His veracity
* Refusing to bring to them the bounty of healing and release that He had so freely given to other villages and towns
* Claiming to be the Messiah and expecting them to believe that Joseph the carpenter's son was anything more than that
* Rebuking their unspoken thoughts
* Prophesying of their disfavor with God
* Prophesying of the Gentiles' benefitting from God's mercy at the Jews' expense

The crowded synagogue became an angry, dangerous and violent mob that drove Jesus to the brink of death. This would be the first of many scenes when the gospel would be rejected and Jesus' life would be threatened.

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Luke 4:16-31: The Time of Fulfillment Has Come

Jesus did not end up staying in Cana for very long before He began His return to Nazareth. It might have even been within the week when He found Himself in His hometown on the Sabbath, preparing to worship at the synagogue where He had grown up.

A typical synagogue service began with the Shema, taken from Deuteronomy 6:4-9,

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Next would come a set of prayers, including the Tephillah and the Eighteen Benedictions. After this the chazzan, or minister, would approach the Ark (a special container in the manner of the ark in the temple) and bring out the scroll of the Law. All present would kiss the scroll, as it was unwrapped, before the hearing of God's word.

Seven men would then be selected to read from the Law and the Prophets. First a portion from the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) would be read, and then a section from the Prophets. After the reading of the scriptures someone would be invited to teach on the passages. The ancient Jews highly valued good preaching, so this was always considered an honor. Often the speaker linked the texts together through appeal to other passages. The service then closed with a benediction.

From His reading Jesus explained that "the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him," the meaning of which was deep for those reading Luke's gospel -- Jesus had been anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism as the Messiah. He then explained that Isaiah's prophecy was being fulfilled in Him, before their very eyes.

As one commentary put it, "For those looking to God for hope, Jesus was the answer. To respond to God, one must be open to him. For those in need of God, Jesus has a message of good news." Jesus' physical miracles were powerful demonstrations of the even more miraculous healing and restoration He was capable of performing in the spiritual realm.

Jesus had come to "proclaim the year of God's favor," a reference to the Jubilee. The background for this is the sabbath years, and the Jubilee that God wrote into the law for ancient Israel. Crop rotation was an unknown concept in ancient times, but when God instituted the Sabbath Year, He did it so that the land could benefit from resting, and the soil would be replenished.

People were not to work the fields or have organized harvests, but whatever the land produced naturally, anyone could come and get enough to have a meal from it. The idea was that every person living in Israel would be God's guest at His table, the poor, the sojourner, everybody.

Not only did the land rest, but so did the people and farm animals. The normal activities that go with farming and animal husbandry, besides just taking care of their animals' basic needs, were prohibited – animals were not to be worked and servants were not to be worked either.

During the Sabbath Year all debts were to be canceled, all Israelite slaves were to be freed. At the Feast of Tabernacles, when all the Israelites came in to Jerusalem to celebrate the final harvest and give thanks for God's provision in the desert, they would also have a Bible conference. The people would receive special instruction from the priests, teaching them God's word in an organized way and the whole rest of the year would be holy, dedicated to the Lord.

God would see to it that they would be provided for, that they would have enough in order to obey God. How seriously do you and I take God's instructions concerning rest and good stewardship? They had to trust God for that bumper crop every sixth year in order to take the Sabbath year.

The Jubilee was to occur every 7x7, or fifty, years. God intended the Year of Jubilee to be a blessing for everyone. All land was returned to the original owner as their holy inheritance from the Lord. Everyone was to eat at God’s table for a year and enjoy the work of God’s hands, to look around at what God had done for them and say "It is all good" with grateful hearts.

Jesus presented three important concepts:
(1) Jesus is anointed with the Holy Spirit

(2) He is the of fulfillment of two thousand plus years of prophecy concerning the Redeemer, the Messiah. He is "the prophet like Moses," for He is bringing in the new era of salvation

3) Jesus not only proclaims the good news, He embodies it: He is Messiah

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Blended Gospels: The First Rejection of Jesus of Nazareth

And [Jesus] 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. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

"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,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

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. And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

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?"

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."

And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 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, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.

"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."

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 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. But passing through their midst, he went away.

[Luke 4:16-30, ESV]

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