After the opening few months of Jesus ministry
things were going well, we would say. Word
was getting out (4:14). He was glorified
by everyone who heard Him (4:15). And
now, the famous One was in Nazareth.
Nazareth was Jesus’ home town. He grew up there, working with Joseph in the
carpentry shop. But now He had left
home. His neighbors and friends were
hearing stories of His teaching and His miraculous works being performed in the
area around the Sea of Galilee. And now
He was in their own synagogue and they were quite impressed. But therein was the problem, of course.
Our heroes are seldom
people we have known in the ordinary course of life. They are people we know from afar, and all we
hear and know about them is what we have heard.
We don’t know what they eat for breakfast or what they do in their spare
time or whether you could ever be their friend.
They are to us larger than life.
So the people were amazed, not just because of
His gracious words, but because they knew Him: Is this not Joseph’s son?
This would be a stumbling block for many people over the course of Jesus’
ministry. How could the Messiah be one
of ours? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
This is common, of course. Jesus acknowledged it in 4:23. More than that, Jesus made a case out of
it. He rightly pointed out that this
inability to acknowledge God’s work and God’s servants had been a national
problem from way back. He illustrates it
from the ministries of Elijah (1 Ki. 17:9) and Elisha (2 Ki. 5:1-14). Note please: Jesus is saying the nation
rejected God. God had to send Elijah
outside the nation because there was no widow available within the nation to do
what He wanted done. God could not find a
willing leper in Israel to be healed and so to show His power He had to bring
one from the outside.
This is Jesus’ way. It has to be.
He did not come to amass a large, popular following. He came to free sinners from their
enslavement to sin. He came from heaven,
anointed and sent by God. So He
confronted the people of His own hometown, who liked His words until He started
to mettle in their lives.
It made them mad. Did we not say that to be filled is to be controlled? Jesus, filled
with the Spirit, withstood temptation.
People, filled with wrath, tried to kill their former friend and
neighbor. The time and place for death
would come eventually but now and a cliff outside Nazareth were not it.
Many of us grew up with Christ, so to
speak. We are in danger of taking Him
for granted so that He is no longer the unique, one and only Son of God/Son of
Man. Acknowledge it. Repent of it.
Turn to Him in truth.
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