Hometown Hatred (Luke 4:23-30) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 33)

Transcript

JRNT 84
05/11/25
Hometown Hatred
Luke 4:23-30
Jesse Randolph


Well, this morning as Aaron mentioned, we're in the Gospel of Luke. We're not only in the Gospel of Luke; we're in the middle of a series in the Gospel of Luke. And we're not only in this series in the Gospel of Luke; we're in a specific chapter in the Gospel of Luke. And not only in a specific chapter in the Gospel of Luke, but a specific scene in the middle of that chapter in Luke, where Jesus had just been announced or self-announced to His people Israel that He was their promised Messiah and Savior as He made this first public appearance in a synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. Last Sunday morning the sermon title was Hometown Honor, and there we worked through Luke 4:14-22, and we saw how Jesus arrives back in the district of Galilee, which was home for Him, and He arrived specifically in His hometown of Nazareth. He was warmly received initially. We saw this came after His baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, this came after His being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, we saw this came after His year or so of ministry that's recorded in John 2-5, that He comes back to His hometown of Nazareth, and He's invited to speak in this local synagogue. This would have been the same synagogue that He would have attended and been a part of as a child. As was the custom at the time, He stood up to read the Scripture and as was the custom at the time, he sat down to explain the Scripture. Then He made this profound statement that the Scripture He had just read, which was part of Isaiah 61 and part of Isaiah 58, was all pointing to Him. He was the Anointed One, He was the promised Messiah, He was the One, if you look at Luke 4:18-19, who had come to “preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, proclaim recovery of sight to the blind, and set free those who are oppressed.” Each of those statements was pointing to the salvation that Jesus ultimately as Messiah would bring. Well, we saw last time that after He gave that explanation of that text from that seated position, that those in the synagogue who were there to hear Him were amazed. They were marveling. And that leads to that question at the end of Luke 4:22, “Is this not Joseph's son?”

Well, things really take a turn in the passage we'll be in this morning. It's the same scene in the same synagogue, in the same town, Nazareth. But what we're going to see is right in front of Jesus's very eyes on this occasion, our Lord's own countrymen turned on Him. And they did so in this lightning quick dramatic way. Our text for today is Luke 4:23-30. If you're not there already, I'd invite you to turn there with me. Luke 4:23-30, God's Word reads, “And He said to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown as well. And He said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. And yet 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 Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. And they stood up and drove Him out of the city and led Him to the edge of the hill on which their city had been built in order to throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went on His way.”

The title of this morning's sermon is Hometown Hatred. Not your conventional Mother's Day message, but if you've noticed, I'm wearing a pink tie, so that makes it all okay. But I do think this is one of those messages, no matter the day of the year, that it's one of those messages that we all need to hear, whether mothers or fathers or married people or single people or young or old, and I trust you'll see why as we work our way through this. Now in terms of how we'll work through this text this morning, the outline is as follows. Verse 23, we'll see The Exposure; verses 24-27, we'll see The Examples; verses 28-29, we'll see The Ejection; and verse 30, The Escape. The Exposure, The Examples, The Ejection, and The Escape.

Let's pick it up with The Exposure in verse 23. “And He said to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in Your hometown as well.” As I mentioned last Sunday, and I've already mentioned this morning, there is going to be sort of a naturally awkward hand off between last week's sermon and this week's because we are plopping right down into this single segment, in this single scene, and I've divided it into two sermons. We'll see the wisdom of that later, or not. But hopefully we can handle this hand off without fumbling. So, when Luke begins here in verse 23 and it says, “And He said to them,” Luke is referring to what Jesus said after He heard the question at the end of verse 22 when they were saying, “Is this not Joseph's son?”


Let's go back to that scene just for a moment and revisit that. The crowd in Nazareth is stunned over what Jesus has read and shared with them when He came to their synagogue. “They were amazed,” verse 22 says, they were “marveling at the gracious words which were coming forth from His lips.” But they were not only amazed, but they were also perplexed. They're perplexed with the reality that this wasn't some stranger that they'd never seen before. No. They knew who this was. This was the Jesus they had seen grow right up in their midst in their small little village, in that small community. And now here He was, no longer a child, all grown up. And not only all grown up, but He's speaking in their synagogue. And not only is He speaking in their synagogue, but He's speaking in their synagogue in this delightful and dazzling way that is producing this soothing sound for their ears. And not only that, but adding to their sense of perplexity, it's starting to sink in for them ever so slowly that Jesus hadn't given them some sort of sweet little sugar stick sermon. No. He read this Scripture to them about Israel's coming Messiah. Then He had just stated that He was the fulfillment of that Scripture, Isaiah 61:1-2, and Isaiah 58:6. He had just stated that as Messiah He had come for the spiritually poor, the spiritually enslaved, the spiritually blind, and the spiritually oppressed. It's sinking in for them that as He's doing so and referencing those Scriptures, He is talking to them, meaning He's referring to them, His fellow Jews in Nazareth, as the poor. He's referring to them as the enslaved. He's referring to them as the blind. He's referring to them as the oppressed. And that was starting to do something in them. This was starting to stir them up and provoke them and irk them and get under their skin, which all good preaching should do, and Jesus was the preacher of preachers.

So now for those in attendance at this synagogue in the first century in Nazareth, it wasn't so much, wouldn't you know? Isn't this cute? This is little Jesus from back in the day. More so, it's wait, this is Jesus, like that Jesus, our Jesus. He's one of us. Who does He think He is? Why is He talking to us this way? Well, Jesus knew what they were thinking, not because He was some sort of mystical soothsayer, not because He was some trustworthy reader of tea leaves. He knew what they were saying because He is God—fully human, fully divine, truly human, truly divine. While we know there were times in His perfect humanity that He was acting dependently on the Holy Spirit, there was not one moment during our Lord's life on earth where He ceased to be God or where He ceased to be functioning as God. We're told from Hebrews 1:3 that Jesus upholds the universe by “the word of His power.” The reason that this spinning ball of dirt hasn't exploded into a trillion fragments is that Jesus upholds the universe by the Word of His power. The reason our universe hasn't folded and collapsed overnight into black nothingness is that Jesus upholds the universe by the Word of His power. The reason that there are clouds in the sky today, the reason that we have skin covering our bones is that Jesus upholds all things by the Word of His power. The reason there's a wave crashing in Thailand right now and a dust devil forming in Oklahoma right now, is that Jesus is causing it to happen. He upholds all things by the Word of His power. The reason the vocal cords in my larynx are vibrating, and for most of you, the cochlea in your ears is functioning to hear what I'm saying, is because Jesus is upholding all of it right now by the Word of His power. As God, He is all powerful. He's not only all powerful though, but He’s also all seeing. And He's all seeing and He's all knowing. We see that all over the Scriptures. In John 2:24 we're told that Jesus “knew all men” and “He knew Himself what was in man.” In John 1 we're told that He saw Nathaniel before ever meeting him. In John 4 He told the woman at the well that He knew that she had five husbands. In Matthew 9:4 we're told that “Jesus, knowing their thoughts said, why are you thinking evil in your hearts?” Jesus, in other words, sees everything and He knows everything. That will either be a comforting thought for you this morning as you walk in obedience to Him, knowing that He's got the whole world, including your life in His hands. Or that's going to be a terrifying and convicting thought as you consider those patterns of unrepentant sin that you continue to engage in, thinking that no one is watching, thinking that no one sees, thinking that because it's behind a closed door, behind a screen, no one knows what you're doing, when in reality the testimony of Scripture is the exact opposite. Hebrews 4:13says, “There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account to give.” He sees it all. He knows it all.

Back to our text, Luke 4:23, those in the synagogue are asking that question among themselves, that's verse 22, I should say, “Is this not Joseph's son?” He knows that question is being asked. Note in that question where they are already going, the crowd is, from a state of amazement to a state of perplexity to a state of annoyance. They are already going in this scene from a state of what a great speaker He is, to is He saying what I think he is, to who does He think He is. That's the tenor, the tone of the room right here. Jesus being omniscient, being all knowing, all seeing knows that that's what's happening here. He knows their question, He knows their hearts, He sees, He knows it all. He knew that something in this moment was already brewing in the back row of the synagogue. It's always the back row. I'm always looking at the back rows around here. You never know what's happening in the back row of a synagogue in ancient Israel or the church today. But He knew that some sort of controversy, some sort of dissension was brewing.

“And He said to them,” verse 23, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in Your hometown as well.” Now what is this proverb that Jesus was quoting? Which proverb apparently known to Jesus contained the words “physician, heal yourself.” Some have pointed to an ancient Greek proverb from an old poet and playwright named Euripides. He lived about three centuries before Jesus. He once said, “A physician for others, but himself teeming with sores.” Some have pointed to an ancient Jewish expression which says, “physician heal your own lameness.” Either is possible. We're not totally sure. But though the source is uncertain, the meaning in this context is absolutely clear as Jesus is reading the minds of this crowd. The people of Nazareth would have heard this parable; they would have used this parable because He's really quoting them and what's going on in their minds right here. They would have used this parable to say to Jesus that if Jesus, You as the great physician are going to heal, Your healing has to start right here in Nazareth. That would have been the mindset here for this gathering of people. They were there to see Him do the miraculous. And they wanted Him to do the miraculous there in His hometown. The sentiment was, You've been doing all these miracles for other people in other places, it's time for You to do something for us at home. And sure You quoted some Scripture to us, and You pointed us to Isaiah 61, and that's great. But could You do something that we could see? Something powerful, something miraculous?

Look at the second part of verse 23. Remember, it's kind of hard to keep our minds straight here, but this is Jesus exposing the thoughts of the people here, reading the minds of the people here and what was going on in their minds. He's aware that this is what they're thinking of Him in that very moment. And He says, speaking for them, “Whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in Your hometown as well.” Now what was Jesus referring to there? What event took place at Capernaum that this crowd in Nazareth apparently knew about? Well, this actually goes back to that side trail I took us on last Sunday to the Gospel of John. As I mentioned last Sunday, John and his Gospel captures a year of Jesus's ministry, which Luke does not account for, doesn't write about. It's that year between Jesus's temptation in the wilderness and the beginning of His public ministry at Galilee. You'll recall that though Jesus's focus during that year primarily focused on Judea—the turning up of the tables in the temple in Jerusalem, the encounter with Nicodemus, etc. Jesus did occasionally pop over into Galilee. That's what He did, for instance, at the wedding at Cana. Well Capernaum was one of those cities in Galilee that Jesus visited during His Judean ministry. John 2:12, this is the account of the miraculous turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana, and that whole scene unfolds in John 2:1-11. But look at John 2:12 which says, “After this,” meaning after the wedding at Cana incident, “He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples, and they stayed there a few days.” Now if you turn to John 4, go with me over to John 4:46, we'll see an even more fleshed out description of some ministry that Jesus did at Capernaum during this period of His Judean ministry. John 4:46, this is the healing of the official's son. It says, “Then He came again to Cana of Galilee, where He had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was asking Him to come down and heal His son, for he was about to die. So Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe. The royal official said to Him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go, your son lives. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. And while he was still going down, his slaves met him saying that his son was alive. So, he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So, the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, Your son lives and he himself believed and his whole household. This is again a second sign that Jesus did when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.”

This story is set at Cana. And remember, Cana and Capernaum are both in the district of Galilee. Jesus is at Cana. While He's at Cana, He gets word that somebody in Capernaum, the son of this official, is sick. This man wants Jesus to go all the way back to Capernaum, that's about 25 miles away, to physically heal his son in person. Jesus doesn't do that. He doesn't go on the full physical journey. But from Cana He heals the son over in Capernaum. Now, though Jesus didn't ever set foot in Capernaum for this healing, that no doubt was a miracle that He performed in Capernaum, albeit His feet were still in Cana at the time. You see the impact that this miracle had on this man and his family in verse 53. It says, “he himself believed and his whole household.” Now setting this in context, that's an amazing truth right there, the impact that miracle had on the faith of that man and his household. And putting this in the context of Jesus's Judean ministry, we know that scene happened a year before the scene we're looking at in Luke chapter 4.

You can go back to Luke chapter 4 because, apparently, a year later now, the people of Nazareth have heard about this healing event in Capernaum a year prior. And what the hometown crowd, the Nazarenes, are now saying to Jesus in Luke 4:23 is whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown as well. In other words, they're measuring themselves against the people in Capernaum and what the people in Capernaum got to experience. Capernaum got to see something miraculous, Jesus, and all we got was the Word of God. It reminds me of those shirts that say, you know, so and so went to Disneyland and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. That's kind of the heart behind what they're saying here. But the point is, do you see how quickly this group of religious service attenders in Nazareth had turned? They had heard God's Word; they had heard God's Word read to them. They had heard Jesus say that He was the fulfillment of the portion of the Word of God that He had read to them and explained to them, but they didn't believe Him. They didn't believe in His claims to be the Messiah. They didn't find the fault in themselves for not believing because whoever does that? No, they were laying the fault for their unbelief at His feet. He hadn't given them, they were thinking, enough evidence, the cure was not in His hands. No, the cure was in His hands. It wasn't in their hands. He had to give them more to work with, more visual evidence, something more tangible to prove to them that He was the Messiah. Show us something, Jesus. Prove Yourself, not by preaching. Who wants that? We want power, we want something that we can see with our eyes that will show that You are the Messiah.

Well, the Lord knew what they were getting at. He knew that His popularity among them was short lived and shallow. He knew that they liked the polish of His sermon, but they didn't like the message of the sermon. And there's a difference between those two. He knew that they were there to witness some sort of miraculous manifestation, to take in some spectacular show. It reminds me what Paul says to the Corinthians in I Corinthians 1:22 later, that Jews seek signs. That's what's happening here. They're seeking signs and wonders when in front of them they have the Messiah who is working through the Word with them and demonstrating to them that He is the Messiah. He knew here that there was no true trust on their part, there was no true belief on their part, there was no true faith on their part, and so He called them out on it here in verse 23. He launched a full assault on their facade of external religiosity. He confronted their skepticism and their doubt. He exposed their unbelief.

And then as we turn to the next part of this account, we see that Jesus continued to make this case against His countrymen to show that they were acting in unbelief. And He does so by pointing to some Old Testament parallels or examples. And that's our second point this morning, The Examples. We've looked at The Exposure, now it's The Examples.

Look at verse 24, it says, “And He said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.” Now that word “truly” is the Hebrew word amen. It's the word that we're used to seeing at the end of a sentence or using at the end of our prayers, but Jesus places that word at the front of His sentence to really underscore and highlight that they needed to tune in. They needed to awaken with their sleepy eyes and their sleepy ears to tune in to what it was He was about to say. Look at what He says, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.” Now back in verse 23, which we just worked through, Jesus was quoting a proverb, an established maxim—physician heal yourself. Here in verse 24, though, Jesus isn't referencing a proverb, He's rather offering His own statement of truth, His own statement of wisdom, His own statement of fact as He declares, “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.” Now that's a statement, you know, we don't usually hear that referenced too much unless we're referencing this statement because we have 2,000 years of history after this. But if there's a modern parallel to what Jesus is saying here, there's a modern maxim that we sometimes hear or sometimes use, which is “familiarity breeds contempt.” That's kind of the modern-day equivalent of what He is saying here. The basic idea is that the more that we are exposed to the ideas or experiences of other people, the less we are gripped by them, the less they seem to impact us. If any of you have ever had a teenager, you know what that means. You've seen the eye roll at a parent in those teenage years. Familiarity breeds contempt. If any of you have been in a marriage context where a husband might dismiss a wife and her concerns for she's just nagging when she actually has real concerns that she wants to surface and raise and to make an appeal to her husband. Familiarity breeds contempt. The sad statistics today are that pastorates last between three and four years. That's it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Well, Jesus's statement to the synagogue that no prophet is welcome in his hometown is not only a practically true statement of wisdom, like familiarity breeds contempt, but by Jesus's day, this was already a biblically supported concept even if it wasn't articulated in those exact words before.

Like, we think of the words of Chronicles. II Chronicles 36:15, speaking of the Old Testament prophets, says, “And Yahweh, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by the hand of His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His habitation. But they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets.” No prophet is welcome in his hometown. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or we think of the example of, we go down a long list of Old Testament prophets who experienced that. Just think of Jeremiah as one example, one expression of the truth of that maxim. Jeremiah was ignored by his own people, Judah. He was mocked by his own people. He was despised by his own people. He was lied to and lied about by his own people. He was beaten. He was put in stocks. He was put in a cistern full of mud with the hope that he would drown and die. All of that happened in Judah, his homeland. The prophet is not welcome in his hometown. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or we think of the words of Hebrews 11, New Testament book, speaking of Old Testament prophets. In the Hall of Faith, we have the amazing examples of faith. But then toward the end, in verses like 33-38, there are those statements of all the things the Old Testament prophets went through, some of which went through these things in their hometown. For instance, some “experienced mocking and flogging, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, mistreated, wandering in desolate places and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.” A Prophet is not welcome in his hometown. Familiarity breeds contempt. Well back to Luke's Gospel where Jesus's words to those gathered in the synagogue around Him are recorded here in verse 24, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.” Those words reflect the reality that Jesus was very aware of humanity and reality and truth and the testimony of Scripture, that familiarity does indeed breed contempt and no prophet is indeed welcome in his hometown.

Speaking of prophets, we'll move on to the next part of the scene here in verses 25-27, where Jesus, through mentioning these two Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha, continues to state His case to the people there in front of Him, His own people, the people of Nazareth, that they were not only missing the point of who He was and what He came to do, but in doing so, they were actually bearing resemblance to the Israel of old, an Israel that God actually turned His attention away from in different accounts as He began extending mercy and grace to more faithful Gentile recipients. Look at these next few verses, verses 25-27 which say, “But I say to you in truth.” Again, this is all part of one narrative here. “But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came all over the land. And yet 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 Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” So, there are two mentions here of these two Israelite prophets, Elijah and Elisha. We really need to drill down on these accounts here because you see what follows next is that all the people, verse 28, in this synagogue were filled with rage about Jesus merely mentioning these two. We really have to do some work, some Scriptural sleuthing to figure out what is it that's going on here that made these people so upset to learn about Elijah and Elisha or be reminded of Elijah and Elisha. Well, both these prophets, Elijah and Elisha, were prophets to the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC, well over 800 years before the birth of Christ. Both were prophets in a time where the kingdom of Israel was divided between north and south. This was a very dark time in Israel's history. This was this period of rejection of the God of Israel, false worship, false wicked practices, wicked kings and queens. Well, as Jesus is speaking to those in attendance in this synagogue in Nazareth, He's bringing up the dark days here of Israel's past as He mentions these two prophets, Elijah and his successor, Elisha. Note here, He highlights these interactions that these two prophets had with these two seemingly random individuals, a widow from the town of Zarephath in Sidon, and in Elisha's case, a man named Naaman, who was from Syria. But why? Why did, of all the Old Testament literature that was there to choose from, why did Jesus go there? Why did Jesus go 850 years back to these two particular prophets, and there are two specific interactions with these two individuals? What spiritual principle was He trying to extract, and what point was He trying to land there in that synagogue? Well, to answer that question, we need to do some time traveling back to the books of I and II Kings.

Turn back with me to I Kings 17 where we're given first the account of Elijah and his interaction with the widow of Zarephath. And as you're turning there, it might take you a few minutes, I'm going to give you some context. Zarephath was a town in ancient Phoenicia, which is modern day Lebanon. And that area is north of the northernmost point of the Northern Kingdom. At this point in Israel's history, in I Kings 17, Israel was ruled by a wicked king named Ahab and his wicked wife named Jezebel. This couple was cruel, this couple was corrupt. They led the people of Israel into this false worship of this false god named Baal, who is a storm god. He was the god that people would wrongly ascribe worship to in order to get the rain to fall to water the earth. Well, to punish Israel for worshiping this false storm god or this false weather god, the actual God, Yahweh, the God revealed in Scripture, caused a drought to come over the land. It was during this drought that God sent His prophet Elijah to confront wicked King Ahab over the idolatrous practices in Israel. It was also, as we're going to see during this drought, with the Israelite people bordering on starvation, that God sends Elijah to help a Gentile widow in the town of Zarephath, which was in the land of Sidon. Sidon, by the way, happened to be where Ahab's wicked wife Jezebel was from, which is kind of a neat, interesting twist.

So you should have found I Kings 17 by now. The account begins in verse 7, but because we have time, I'm going to start us in verse 1 just to get some context here. I Kings 17:1 says, “Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, As Yahweh, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by My word. Then the word of Yahweh came to him saying, go away from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the Brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And it will be that you will drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to sustain you there. So, he went and did according to the word of Yahweh, for he went and lived by the Brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And the ravens were bringing him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook.” And here's where the meat of the account kicks in. “Now it happened,” verse 7, “after a while that the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land. Then the word of Yahweh came to him saying, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and remain there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you. So, he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, Please get me a little water in a jar that I may drink. So she went to get it, and he called to her and said, Please get me a piece of bread in your hand. But she said, As Yahweh your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar. And behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son that we may eat it and die.” Do you catch that, by the way? This is a text about a mother and a son. This is a Mother's Day sermon. Perfect. Saved by the text. Reading on. “Then Elijah said to her, do not fear. Go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, the bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty until the day that Yahweh sends rain on the face of the earth. So, she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted, nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of Yahweh, which He spoke by the hand of Elijah.”

Now here's another key part of the story in verse 17. “Now it happened after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick, and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. So, she said to Elijah, What do I have to do with you, oh man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and put my son to death. And he said to her, Give me your son. Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living and laid him on his own bed. Then he called to Yahweh and said, Oh Yahweh my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am sojourning by causing her son to die? Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and called to Yahweh and said, Oh Yahweh, my God, I pray you let this child's life return to him. And Yahweh heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him, and he became alive. Then Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, See, your son is alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, Now I know this, that you are a man of God and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is truth.” And to summarize all of what I just read to you, this scene is portraying a prophet of Israel interacting with a pagan woman who in a time of great need and by the means of this prophet of Israel, Elijah, receives the word of God, obeys the Word of God, and trusts the Word of God. Look at those last words in verse 24. “Now I know this, that you are a man of God and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is truth.”

Now focusing our attention back to our text for this morning in Luke 4, as Jesus pointed to that text for His hometown crowd in Nazareth, to that story of Elijah and the pagan widow of Zarephath, you can almost already hear the grumbling and the murmuring that would have been happening in this synagogue. You can almost start to hear the nudging and the whispering that was happening in the back row. Again, it's always the back row. The idea, the sense was that this hometown boy, this young man who they'd all seen grow up, was He really telling these faithful synagogue attenders, these religious people, that they didn't even have the faith of a Gentile widow who came from the land of wicked Jezebel? Was that what He was getting at? Is that the point that He was driving at? Answer, yes. That's exactly what He was driving at. That's exactly what He was starting to signal to them. That's exactly what He was starting to say to them. He was calling them out for their lack of faith, and they were insulted. And they were starting to get incensed. They were starting to get a little hot under the collar. Well, you'd think that's when Jesus would back off. Right? Wrong. He doubles down.

He not only brings in Elijah's encounter with the widow of Zarephath, but he also next brings in Elisha's encounter with Naaman the Syrian. Turn with me over to II Kings 5, and as you're turning there, I'll give you some background again. This is that scene where the pagan commander of the armies of Syria, also known as Aram during this time, which was a fierce adversary of Israel in these days, he had the audacity to take his chariot into Israel and ask Elisha, this prophet of the God of Israel, to heal him of his leprosy. And leprosy, it was thought during this time, was a condition that was a sign of one's sin and the right judgment they were facing. II Kings 5:1 says, “Now Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man with his master and highly respected because by him Yahweh had given salvation to Aram. The man was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Arameans had gone out in marauding bands and had taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel, and she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said to her mistress, I wish that my master was before the prophet who is in Samaria.” That's a reference to Elisha. “Then he would cure him of his leprosy. Then Naaman went in and told his master saying, Thus and thus spoke the girl who was from the land of Israel. Then the king of Aram said, Go now and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So, he went and took in his hand 10 talents of silver and 6,000 shekels of gold and 10 changes of clothes. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel saying, So now as this letter comes to you, behold, I have sent Naaman, my servant to you that you may cure him of his leprosy. Now it happened that when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God to put to death and to make alive that this man is sending word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? But now know and see how he is seeking a quarrel against me. Now it happened when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent word to the king saying, Why have you torn your clothes? Now let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and his chariots and stood at the doorway of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, Go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored to you and you will be clean. But Naaman was furious and went away and said, Behold, I said to myself, he will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? So, he turned and went away in his wrath.” In other words, he was not happy with the welcome he had received from the prophet. “Then his servants approached and spoke to him and said, My father, had the prophet spoken with you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then when he says to you wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”

I won't do a full exposition of this passage. I actually preached this passage a couple of years ago; you can find it on the website. But just a couple of things to note. Remember that back in the case of Elijah and his interaction with the widow of Zarephath, you had a prophet of Israel interacting with a Gentile woman who in her time of great need, through the means of that prophet received the Word of God and obeyed the Word of God. Now you have Jesus quoting this account, or at least referencing this account of Elisha and Naaman. Again, you have a prophet of Israel interacting with a Gentile man in this context, who in his time of great need, in his case it was to be cured of leprosy, received the Word of God through the prophet. Then through that prophet he obeyed the Word of God. Verse 14, “he did according to the word of the man of God.” And the result was he was cleansed.

So back to the Gospel of Luke. Hopefully you're following along, hopefully you're tracking. There is a method to madness, I promise. Back to the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus mentions these names, the widow at Zarephath, Naaman the Syrian to this group that's gathered here in this synagogue in Nazareth, those who were there would have been reminded by just hearing the names of Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath, how in the original context of those accounts in what we know as I Kings and II Kings, they were highlighting how those two Gentiles demonstrated some form of faith which starkly contrasted with the faithlessness that was in Israel at that time. And for those who are in the synagogue hearing Jesus mention those two figures from 850 years ago, that reminder would have stung. They would have started to get what he was saying. The point was being landed, the message was being received. But Jesus takes it up a notch, He turned the screws on them a bit more.

Let's now look back at verses 25-27 to get a final look at this passage here to understand exactly what Jesus is going after. He says, “But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elisha, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. And yet, 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 Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” As I stress certain words there, note what Jesus is stressing in this context. Note what really drew the ire of those who are in the synagogue on this specific day. It wasn't only the mention of the woman of Zarephath, it wasn't only the mention of Naaman. What Jesus was really highlighting and emphasizing by mentioning those two names was the favor that God showed those Gentiles when He had other options. God could have picked any widow to bless in the days of Elijah. Right? I mean, that's exactly what it says in verse 25, “There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah.” And yet, verse 26, “Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon,” emphasis here, homeland of Jezebel, “to a woman who was a widow.” In a similar vein, God could have picked any leper to cleanse in Elisha's day. That's exactly what it says. Verse 27, “There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian,” meaning God had plenty of opportunities in the days of Elijah and Elisha to bless Israel. But because Israel proved over and over to be faithless, the point that's being made here is that God in different seasons has chosen to bypass His own people, though they are the apple of His eye, and instead choose to bless certain Gentiles, even Gentiles from nations who are direct adversaries of His people.

So the message that He is communicating to this crowd in this synagogue on this day in first century Nazareth, though they just a few moments ago were speaking well of Him and marveling at the gracious words which were coming forth from His lips, was that if they were to continue to reject Him, if they were to reject the message that He had just proclaimed to them of being that One who had been the Anointed One, that One that came to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, if they were to reject His claim to be their Messiah, a time would come, as happened in the days of Elijah and Elisha, that God would turn away from them for a season and turn to the Gentiles and offer salvation to them instead. History, in other words, was in danger of repeating itself.

Well, His message hit its target. It turns out that telling a group of Jews in the first century that they're spiritually worse than a Gentile widow from Jezebel's hometown is not a great preaching point. It turns out that telling a group of Jews in first century Nazareth that they're spiritually worse off than a Syrian leper is not a great way to win friends and influence people. No. What Jesus said here was upsetting, it was inflammatory. He had successfully cut through their superficial religiosity, He had exposed their hearts, and so now there's this explosion, this eruption of self-righteous rage. That's why we have verses 28-29 here, “And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. And they stood up and drove Him out of the city and led Him to the edge of the hill on which their city had been built in order to throw Him down the cliff.”

That brings us to our third point this morning, The Ejection. Jesus's message in which He had compared the Jews of His hometown in this unfavorable light to a Gentile woman, to a Gentile leper, when he'd preached this message in which He had suggested that God might, as He had in the past, turn the lights out on His chosen people for a season as He took His message of salvation to the Gentiles, that infuriated those who were in attendance at the synagogue on this day. This once admiring assembly who just moments earlier were commending Jesus for His oratorical abilities and skill, they've now become a murderous mob. They're now not only hearing Jesus, but they’re also understanding Jesus. They're understanding what it is He is saying to them, and their reaction is fury.

Verse 28, “They were filled with rage.” The thought that God might withhold His favor from His people, even if for a season, and extend it instead to filthy, unclean, undeserving Gentiles, dogs, they couldn't handle it. It filled them with wrath. And so, verse 28, “All the people,” in the context of a first century synagogue that means all the men, “stood up,” verse 29, “from where they had been seated and they drove Him out of the city.” They weren't just expelling Him. That's not all that's being signaled here. No. They sought to kill Him. “They drove him out of the city,” verse 29 says, “in order to throw Him down the cliff.” That's about as clearly as you can state their homicidal intentions. They sought to throw Him down the cliff to kill Him. They had had enough. They had already been told, last week we saw, that they were spiritually blind, spiritually enslaved, spiritually bankrupt, spiritually impoverished. Those alone were bitter pills to swallow. But now they're being told that they're worse off than a Gentile woman, they're worse off than a Gentile leper, and that is way too far. That's a line that's been crossed that you can't go back from. So, in a murderous rage, very reminiscent of what we see in Acts 7 with the stoning of Stephen, they ran Him out of the synagogue, they ran Him out of the city. You can picture them grabbing Him, pulling Him, pushing Him, shoving Him with the hope of leading Him off a cliff to die. Quite the turn. Quite the turn. When you think about it, if you go back up to verse 24, the Lord's words there where He says, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown,” they were actually fulfilled just a few verses later as they were driving Him out. Well, the story doesn't end there. We have one very short reference left that we need to work through briefly here. That's in verse 30 where it says, “But passing through their midst, He went on His way.”

Here's our fourth point, The Escape. Now we're not told of any words here that were recorded between Jesus and the Jews as they're expelling Him. We're not told whether there was any resistance from the Jews here in verse 30 as Jesus somehow passed through their midst. All we're told is what we have here, which is that Jesus passed through their midst. The sense here, the tone here is that there's something miraculous happening. The people of Nazareth, the senses couldn't have stopped Him if they wanted to. That's supported by what we see in other Gospels where Jesus has several of these escape-by-the-skin-of-His-teeth kind of moments, and you just know it's divine. John 7:30, for instance, tells us that “They were seeking to seize Him, yet no man laid his hand on Him because His hour had not yet come.” John 10:39 says, “They were seeking again to seize Him and He eluded their grasp.” Then here in Luke 4:30, “passing through their midst, He went on His way.” Basically, the idea is they had no power to stop Him, no ability to stop Him. He went on His way miraculously through the crowd, and there was no way to prevent it. That interesting detail here as we end on this note, that Nazareth is where Jesus was raised, Nazareth was where He had grown up, He was called a Nazarene. But as far as we know, from this point forward we have no record of Jesus going back to Nazareth. This appears to be the last time that He was ever in His hometown.

So that ends the two-part saga, The Hometown Honor our Lord was first shown, and then The Hometown Hatred He was shown. But I'm not done. What are some takeaway points we can take from this morning's text? What are some takeaway points that we can talk to mom about on 84th Street as we take her to lunch today? Well, I think there are a few.

Takeaway #1, I would say that just like many in our day do, the Jews of Jesus's day found the doctrine of God's sovereignty to be offensive. They loved to be told that they were lovely. They loved to be told that they were lovable, but they didn't love being told that God was displeased with them. And they didn't love being told that according to His perfect prerogative and sovereignty, He was going to, through His Messiah Jesus, extend His mercy and grace not only to Jews like them, but to Gentiles, to unclean, unworthy, unwashed Gentiles. They didn't like the fact that it wasn't their choice about who God would demonstrate His mercy toward. And that's true of our day today. People have a hard time with God choosing whom He extends mercy toward and who He extends grace toward. But the consistent testimony of Scripture is that God does the choosing, and He calls us to do the trusting and the obeying and the following. God doesn't run the world like a democracy. He doesn't give us a vote on the matter. He doesn't wait for us to choose Him, and He doesn't ask our opinion on who it is we think He should choose. No. He tells us in Romans 9:15, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” That is clear. That is straightforward. That is humbling. That makes us feel about this small, and that's the point. We should feel that small in light of the “Godness” of God.

Here's takeaway #2. Consider the rapid swing of emotion that we've seen from this crowd. In these two sermons, in this one text look at that drastic sway from one side to the other. When they heard the things they liked, when they heard the polished oratory, when they heard polished oratory that matched with their presuppositions about what they wanted God's Word to say, all was well and good. That's when they liked Jesus. But when Jesus started doing heart surgery on them and started placing their true motivations and their true desires under the microscope of God's very Word, the fangs came out and the foam started frothing around the mouth. What does that tell us today? It tells us that our own emotions and feelings are a dangerous compass to live by, that's what it tells us. So if your psychologist or the social media influencer you follow or the online pastor you listen to or the life coach you're talking to tells you that you just need to lean a bit more into your feelings or that you just need more self-care, or be better about nurturing your inner child, or just love yourself more, you need to cancel those appointments, cancel those online subscriptions, and run as far as you can from that advice. What you need, what I need, what we all need is the Word of God, which is the only trustworthy compass to live by. Sometimes the Word is going to hurt us. Hebrews 4:12 talks about how sharp it is, but that's good for us. It's a good hurt as it exposes motivations and thoughts that need to be purged.

Last one, takeaway #3, what this text really highlights for us this morning is that it is very, very possible for a person to be familiar with Jesus, and at the same time completely miss Jesus. Think about that. These were people who were Jesus's own countrymen there in Nazareth. They were familiar with Him, they knew Him, they had seen Him running around the neighborhood when He was young. They were initially supportive of Him, hanging on His every word. But when all is said and done, how does the account end? They are running Him out of town and trying to throw Him off a cliff, which shows that though they were familiar with Him, they really didn't know Him at all. They didn't know who He was and what it was He came to do. And that definitely does happen in our day, where Jesus in many different quarters is welcomed, He's embraced. At a minimum, He's tolerated even still today. There are many today who identify themselves in different ways with Jesus. They'll say that they know Him, but they actually don't know Him. They wear a cross, but they don't bear His cross. They'll talk all the time about how they're going to go to heaven one day, but the reality is Matthew 7 tells us that He will say to them one day, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” See; to have a right relationship with God a person must not only be familiar with Jesus. The synagogue attendees in Nazareth were familiar with Jesus. A person has to be a follower of Jesus. A person can only be a follower of Jesus if they have placed their hope, their belief, their trust fully in what He has done for them on His cross, taken on their sins on His shoulders, and if they believe that He is risen on their behalf, cementing His claim to be the Messiah and the Savior of the world.

So my question for you as we get ready to leave here is, have you put your faith in Jesus Christ? That's a different question than saying, are you familiar with Jesus Christ? It's a different question than saying, have you gone to church today? It's a different question than, do you go to church on major holidays like Mother's Day? The question is, have you put your faith in Jesus Christ? If you were to leave this parking lot, hang a right on 84th Street and get hit by a bus and immediately go into the presence of God, what would happen? Would you know for sure that you're going to enjoy the riches of glory in heaven with your Savior because you have trusted in His death and resurrection? Or instead, will you face the flames and the agony of a real and eternal hell because you were familiar with Jesus, but you never knew Him? My prayer for you this morning, whether you are a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, a daughter, young, old, churched, unchurched, black, white, rich, poor, it doesn't matter. My prayer for you is that if you do not know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, that today would be the day that you would submit all aspects of your life to what He did for you on that cross and by rising.

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this time in Your Word this morning. Thank You for the reminders from this scene from so long ago in Nazareth of a crowd of people who were familiar with Your Son, Jesus, but at the same time were so far from You and so far from true saving faith in Him. God, I pray that it would be a good reminder to us who have believed that we have a tendency at times to drift into familiarity and how we need to be reminded of how important it is to have true heart affections for You and to truly seek Your Word and live in accordance with it. God, I do pray for someone here that does not know You who has been deceived or blinded by Satan, that today would be the day that they would give their life to You, trust in Your death and resurrection and be saved. We give You all the glory for what You will do in our midst here the rest of this day and this week. In Christ's name, amen.