Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about Him spread quickly through the whole region. He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When He came to the village ofNazareth, His boyhood home, He went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the LORD’s favour has come. “
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at Him intently. Then He began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” Everyone spoke well of Him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from His lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
Then He said, “You will undoubtedly quote Me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in Your hometown like those You did in Capernaum.’ But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in His own hometown. “Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”
When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed Him and forced Him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push Him over the cliff, but He passed right through the crowd and went on His way.
Luke 4:14-30
I have copied the parallel segments below for you so you can compare them and you find almost word for word correspondence between Matthew and Mark in the segments below. However when you look at the same segment in Luke it appears to be the same story but heavily rewritten. It is so heavily rewritten that some think it is a different event or a different account. I personally think it is the same event. The reason I think that is Luke’s order of pericopes from the end of the Temptations all follow in the sequence set by Matthew and Mark with the exception of this story which Matthew and Mark put in a different place. Not only that but the sequence in terms of the geographic order and juxtaposition of places is logical and sequential. If that is not the case the Luke has borrowed it from Matthew and Mark, reformatted it and put it in a different place. All the big pieces of it are the same, it is the details which are different.
Notice the elements below the word for word matches in Matthew and Luke, the sense of which are present in Luke but in other words. Take time now to look over Luke’s portion in the light of the other readings and take note of how Luke fills out this segment of the Rejection of Jesus in Nazareth. Noting the additions give us a good sense of where the emphasis is being placed by Luke. I will leave you to do this for today and we will look at Luke’s version tomorrow. Have fun.
Too often we change jobs, friends + spouses instead of ourselves!
Rick Godwin
When you only deal with what everyone else is doing wrong you will never deal with your own issues.
Joyce Meyer
Stop losing your joy over other people’s bad choices.
Joyce Meyer
You will lose your opportunity to grow if you continue to blame others for your own mistakes.
Jeffrey Rachmat
Let your failures refine you, not define you.
Max Lucado