I sat spellbound as I listened to him preach. The sense that the Holy Spirit was present, touching hearts in the congregation as He used this guest speaker to electrify the audience, was very tangible as I sat there. At one point in his message he shared a testimony about what he used to do and a friend who was with him doing the same things, when he was living a double life of sin. Then he shared how Jesus completely transformed his life and proceeded to make his appeal. As people where responding to Jesus and coming forward for prayer, the speaker stopped, looked down the isle to the back door and saw his friend, he used to bad things with, weeping out of deep emotion. Overwhelmed with joy and full of tears, the speaker called his friend’s name, as if to say, “Is that you”? In response his friend literally ran down the isle, embraced the preacher as the too of them wept. Then the speaker explained to the stunned congregation that that was the friend he was talking about earlier in his message. This was one of the many powerful experiences I’ve had growing up when a dynamic guest preacher came into town. So you can imagine how surprised I was at how God works when this same guest preacher became my senior pastor when I first started pastoring. Yet I was even more surprised and even shocked when he planned a week long revival meeting at our church and few members showed up. This is someone who when they preached outside of his own church would pack out churches with standing room only. One night during the revival we spoke about the attendance and he told me that “no prophet is accepted in his own home country.” Luke 4:24 NLT. He was quoting a statement made by another dynamic Preacher who was electrifying synagogues in a circuit all around Galilee.
The Guest Speaker
Jesus was a regular and popular guest speaker in the synagogues of Galilee.
As we enter His story in Luke chapter 4, we discover that Jesus was a frequent guest Speaker. Full of the Holy Spirit and power, Jesus regularly preached and taught the Good News of the Kingdom in synagogues, which were buildings where the worship gatherings were held, much like our church buildings today. Word about Jesus’ powerful preaching and teaching spread everywhere in Galilee and everyone who heard Him speak praised Him. If you were living in Galilee, you would have loved to hear Jesus preach as the guest Speaker for your Sabbath morning service. Can you hear the crowds saying, “Preach it Jesus!”? So when Jesus decides to go to His home town of Nazareth and worship in the synagogue, as He usually did on Sabbaths, and the attendant invited Him to read the Scriptures, you just expect everyone to be sitting on the edge of their seat with smiles on their faces, just waiting to hear Jesus expound on the Scriptures. I mean everywhere else He went in Galilee He was packing out synagogues and being honored by the people who heard His Kingdom teaching, so surely in the town where He grew up, among His family and friends, in this synagogue where He would worship every Sabbath with those who knew Him best, He would be received with grateful enthusiasm.
Yet tragically, Jesus was rejected by His own people from His hometown where He grew up. And this begs the question why? Nazareth was in the same region of Galilee where all the other people who heard Him preach in their synagogues received Him with gladness and grateful praise. So, why did Jesus’ own people reject Him and could professed Christians be doing the same thing today? Well, let’s go back to the scene where Jesus is invited to read from the Scriptures, in Luke 4:17, and as the story unfolds, let’s see if we can find the answer together…
“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 favor 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.”
I can just see the smile on Jesus’ face when the scroll of Isaiah was handed to Him, because while every Old Testament book, and the entire Bible for that matter, points to Jesus, the book of Isaiah is one of the most explicit in revealing who the Messiah would be. He couldn’t have asked for a better set up from the Holy Spirit. Oh, you want Me to read from the book of Isaiah, do you? Oh, sure, I know just the passage to read from. It was the custom for any visiting Jew, especially a Rabbi, to be invited to read from the Scriptures and even provide some commentary that expounds on the text, so Jesus is not going to pass up this opportunity. He reads from Isaiah 61:1-2, which was clear in the minds of everyone who heard Him as referring to the Messiah. The problem is they had a very narrow, one-sided view of the Messiah that mainly emphasized the Scriptures depicting this king as crushing their enemies, thus elevating them to nationalistic greatness. So though they did understand this Scripture to be referring to the Messiah, it brought out a different emphasis. I mean the drama in this passage is just hanging in the air, as Jesus closes the book and then sits down, which to them meant He was about to explain the passage, and you could almost hear “a pin drop.” Every eye is now fixed on Jesus. Can you see Him? In awe, they must be wondering, “Is He saying what I think He’s saying?”, because we already know what’s coming. You see, Jesus is rejected by His own people, because of their…
Narrow Interpretation of Scripture.
It’s kind of like what we do with people we see, but don’t fully know. At first glance our minds may be triggered with a particular narrative about them that may have been shaped by how our parents raised us, the dominate culture or a past experience, that leads us to think we know what their all about. For example, there are places where if someone with my skin decides to go for a jog in the neighborhood, God forbid with a hoodie on, they run the risk of not only being rejected, but possibly killed. Why? Because someone with a tragically narrow view has already assessed in their imagination what a male human being with my skin tone is all about and it can’t be anything good. They are blinded to the possibility of a fuller picture. They’re not thinking this man is my neighbor, a husband, a father, has two masters degrees, pastors in a diverse congregation, loves people and loves to laugh. And the is the same thing we do with Scripture. We approach it with a very narrow view that only affirms our own biases and assumptions, instead of just allowing it to paint the fuller picture for us. This is the same kind of narrow thinking that led to Jesus being reject by His own.
After Jesus sits down, with every eye looking at Him intently, He then drops a bomb shell on them by saying, “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” The implication is unmistakable. Jesus had just announced that He was the Messiah spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. As a matter of fact, the text He read, was Isaiah quoting the Messiah who was giving His own job description. He was to be anointed by the Holy Spirit, which is what Messiah means and already in this chapter, Jesus is referred to as being full of the Holy Spirit three times, especially since His baptism and anointing at the Jordan River. He is described as preaching the Good News to the poor, which is what Jesus had been doing all around Galilee. But then there’s this talk of captives being released, the blind seeing, the oppressed being set free and that the time of the Lord’s favor had come, which is a direct reference to the year of Jubilee when all the slaves of Israel where to be set free to return to there inheritance. This passage emphasized that the anointed ministry of the Messiah is one of justice to those in need, those in need of healing, to oppressed peoples, to those in the prison system. This is His Kingdom work! Wait a minute, why isn’t He talking about crushing the Romans and making Israel great? Because He knew that’s the stuff they wanted to hear due to their narrow view of Scripture, especially when it came to the Messiah, to the neglect of His greater work that was being fulfilled in real time!
And family, this is the problem that many Christians are having right now. They are interpreting Scripture through the lens of their own experience, culture and the most disturbing, through left and right politics, as if Jesus fits neatly into the fallen box of one’s political party! Jesus and His Kingdom are neither right, left or center! The problem is we try to make God fit into our story instead of seeing how we fit into His story! And this is the danger of what I spoke about a few months ago, with having a “soundbite religion.” We like to get soundbites of Scripture that suits our preferences; a verse here and a verse there strung together to fit our own ideologies. Listen to me, it’s not going to work, especially in these last days. We need to get the whole story of Jesus by reading all of Scripture to get the fuller picture. I recommend reading/listening, meditating and journaling through a Chronological reading plan. I also encourage you to do it in a group with your friends, gathering weekly to discuss the insights you all journaled. This a great way to launch a brand new Grow Group this fall. It will change your life!
So initially it seemed like the people of Jesus’ hometown were taking it well and then a sudden shift in their attitude happened, as we’ll now see in verse 22…
CJ Cousins
Follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Pastor, Author and lover of people.
Enter the Story
…that daily leads you to Jesus.