Luke 4:14 ¶ And Jesus
returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of
him through all the region round about. 15
And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought
up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and
stood up for to read. 17 And there was
delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the
book, he found the place where it was written, 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised, 19
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat
down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21 And he began to say unto them, This
day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. 22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the
gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this
Joseph’s son? 23 And he said unto them,
Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we
have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. 24 And he said, Verily I say unto you, No
prophet is accepted in his own country. 25
But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of
Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great
famine was throughout all the land; 26
But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. 27 And many lepers were in Israel in the time of
Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.
28 And all they in the synagogue, when
they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29 And rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they
might cast him down headlong. 30 But he
passing through the midst of them went his way,
Jesus, the very image
of the invisible God, filled with the mind of God, returns to Galilee and is
known as being a very powerful teacher.
Matthew 7:28 And it came to
pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his
doctrine: 29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the
scribes.
In Nazareth, in a
synagogue, He reads from Isaiah 61.
Isaiah 61:1 ¶ The Spirit of
the Lord GOD is upon me;
because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that
are bound; 2 To proclaim the
acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort
all that mourn;
This is a very
important passage for those Christians who believe, as I do, that the entire
Bible was given by inspiration of God, which, as I have explained before, is
wisdom and understanding from the Holy Ghost, the very mind of God.
Jesus stops reading
after to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord. In that comma following lies the two thousand years of church
history. Jesus did not come at that time to enact judgment on the world but to
save those who were willing. This gives you a key to interpreting prophecies of
both His first and second arrivals, which can be separated by something as
small as a comma in the text with thousands of years in between.
Notice also how by the
use of word substitution the Holy Spirit defines words. By comparing the two
passages, one in Isaiah and one in Luke we see synonyms like preach and proclaim, deliverance and
liberty, gospel and good tidings, poor and meek. Experiment with that interpretation method and you will learn
some amazing stuff throughout the Bible in quotes made in the New Testament
from Greek with the Old Testament translated from Hebrew under the guiding hand
of the Spirit of God and Christ.
He announced that the
Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing. He quoted a proverb well-known in the
Greek culture of the time and referred to hundreds of years before Christ. It
appears that He is using the saying to say, if I can do great works abroad, why
not do them here at home as in if a doctor can heal others why can’t he heal
himself? Then, Christ explains because that His own people will not accept Him.
We might say, “familiarity
breeds contempt,” and understand that it is hard for your own relatives or
neighbors who watched you grow up and know you or think they do to accept some
great wisdom you put forth. But Christ apparently did not reveal Himself in His
early years but to His family by the suggestion of this passage. They were now
accustomed to Him reading from the Scriptures, perhaps expounding on them, but
He warned them they would not accept Him as the Messiah. There seems to be a
lot of culturally understood communication here that we have to think about in
relating it to our own times.
What made them furious
was the suggestion that if they weren’t willing or able to hear Him and believe
the Gentiles would, a prophecy of the coming Church Age.
Verse 25 refers to 1Kings
17 with Zarephath and Zidon as the Hebrew to English translations of Sarepta
and Sidon. Verse 27 refers to events in 2Kings 5. This serves as sort of a
warning. If you will not receive the truth of God the Gentiles will.
Matthew 8:11 And I say unto
you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast
out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
They then tried to kill
Him but, of course, they could not as this was not His time, the time prepared
for His sacrifice of Himself for His people’s and the world’s sins.
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