Jesus Reads the Scroll in the Nazareth SynagogueBible World
4:21Luke 4:21
And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
On the Sabbath in the Nazareth synagogue after reading from Isaiah He declared that the prophecy was fulfilled at that very moment in the hearing of those before Him. In doing so He claimed to be the Anointed Messiah and Redeemer, come to preach good news to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, free captives, give sight to the blind and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. That deliverance was spiritual freedom from evil and darkness by truth and restoration of body and soul, not the earthly rule and overthrow of Rome the people expected. His hearers were at first moved with wonder and joy at His gracious words, then stumbled over His humble life as Joseph's son, hardened in pride and unbelief, and in wrath thrust Him from the city to cast Him from the hill, but He passed through them and went on to others who would listen. He exposed them as prisoners in need of deliverance and warned that God had turned to believing Gentiles like the widow of Sarepta and Naaman the Syrian when Israel rejected light, and all who fully follow Him still enter that same work while those who reject His delegated messengers today repeat the peril of Nazareth.
Synagogue Setting and Declaration
The declaration was made on the Sabbath in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He stood up to read from the roll of Isaiah and then began to address those present. The reading was from Isaiah concerning the Spirit-anointed work of preaching to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming deliverance to captives, giving sight to the blind, setting at liberty the bruised, opening the prison to the bound, and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. That reading provided the text He then announced as fulfilled before the congregation listening that day.
By saying the scripture was fulfilled that day in their ears, He declared that the prophecy He had just read was coming to pass at that very moment as they listened, in their presence and hearing. The scripture concerned the work of the Messiah, so the announcement identified His ministry with that promised mission and claimed for Himself the office of the Promised One. His words briefly convinced the people and filled them with peace, grace and hope as they considered His claim.
He stood before them as a living expositor and interpreter of the prophecies concerning Himself, explaining the Messiah as reliever of the oppressed, liberator of captives, healer of the afflicted, restorer of sight to the blind, and revealer of the light of truth. He spoke with divine authority and in an impressive manner whose wonderful import thrilled the hearers with a power they had never felt before. For a time the tide of divine influence broke every barrier down and the Spirit broke down their prejudice, so that like Moses beholding the Invisible their hearts were moved and they recognized the graciousness of His words.
Messiah's Mission Fulfilled
With those words He claimed for Himself the glory of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Promised One and Redeemer awaited by the prophets, anointed by the Spirit of the Lord. He presented Himself as the living expositor and interpreter of Isaiah's prophecy, declaring that what He had just read was fulfilled in Him that day as His hearers listened. His declaration identified His work and claimed the messianic office for Himself, and it was understood by the congregation as such a claim.
The fulfilled work is to preach good news and the gospel to the poor and meek, comfort the sorrowing, heal the brokenhearted, the sick, the afflicted and the bruised, proclaim deliverance and liberty to captives, recover sight to the blind, set at liberty the oppressed, open the prison to the bound, proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and reveal the light of truth. He stood before the people as a living display of that prophecy, giving them opportunity to accept Him as Israel's promised Deliverer. His gracious words announced that His healing and saving mission was present among them.
That mission saves both body and soul, healing bodily infirmity and the sin of the soul. It restores and uplifts, brings peace and happiness, represents the Father, restores the moral image of God in man, and shows divine power by raising the dead and restoring the sick and suffering to health, as the tree of life in the world. He is not only consolation but restorer and reprover, and Saviour of the body as truly as of the soul.
The promised deliverance is spiritual deliverance from the power of evil and from darkness by the light of truth, with close searching inspection of deeds. It is not the earthly political kingdom, military victory and deliverance, overthrow of Roman rule, or temporal reign of a glorious king that the people expected and desired. Outward religious ceremony and exactness cannot shield from that scrutiny, for the declaration confronts the hearers with their own bondage and need and implies their deeds can be examined.
Welcome Turned to Rejection
At first the declaration thrilled its hearers with a power they had never felt before, the tide of divine influence breaking down every barrier as like Moses they beheld the Invisible. Their hearts were moved by the Holy Spirit and stirred by the Spirit of the Lord as He spoke, and they bore Him witness with wonder at His gracious words, with joy and strong interest, with peace and grace and hope. For a brief moment they were convinced He was the Messiah, the Promised One the prophets had awaited, and their Redeemer addressing them. They responded with fervent amens and praises to the Lord.
Then they stumbled over Him as Joseph's son, the carpenter's son who had worked with Joseph. They had watched Him toil and grow from childhood to youth to manhood among His brothers and sisters, living unostentatiously and familiarly among them from youth and early manhood, and they were reluctant to acknowledge admirable development in one they knew so intimately. Though His life was spotless they refused to believe He was the Promised One, and the Holy Spirit's testimony to the truth of His claim as the Anointed One was resisted because familiarity with His family became a reason for resistance. The offense deepened because He said nothing of using miracle power for their advantage, and they demanded miracles as had been done in Capernaum.
Opening the door to doubt, their hearts hardened and conviction gave way to unbelief and open rejection. Pride and prejudice blinded them, a willful blindness that closed eyes and ears and darkened understanding against conviction, and they forgot that God had been working in their hearts. They rejected plain truth and evidence and the plain, humble explanation that gave opportunity to receive Christ and blessing, resisting the light God sent when it did not suit their ideas even though Scripture provided evidence. Satan worked with intense energy to fasten them in unbelief, and admitting doubt drove away the Spirit and left them open to his suggestions, so that blind eyes were not opened and bound souls were not set free that day.
Unbelief turned to anger and then to wrath and rage. They thrust Him from the synagogue and out of the city to cast Him headlong down from the hill and over the precipice, illustrating that a prophet may be dishonored among those who have known Him since childhood. The congregation drove Him out, pushed Him about and pushed Him hither and thither, quarreling among themselves over how to silence His voice entirely. They would have killed Him to silence reproof and to stand against Jesus coming through His Word and servants.
His mission was not finished, so heavenly angels preserved Him and divine power and divine agencies saved Him from their purpose. He passed through them and disappeared from their sight to a place they did not know and where they did not know where He went. He made no stay in Nazareth but left to continue to Galilee and elsewhere to preach to ears that would listen and hearts that would receive. Their rejection of the Spirit's influence began the course that led to Calvary.
Reproof Evidence and Wider Rejection
The declaration confronted the Israelite hearers as children of Abraham with their own bondage and need, presenting them as prisoners needing deliverance and as in darkness needing truth, and it implied their deeds could be examined with close searching inspection. That scrutiny could not be evaded by outward ceremonial exactness, and it offended their pride, aroused their fears, and made them shrink from clear searching eyes. His promised work was spiritual deliverance from the power of evil and from darkness by the light of truth, to relieve the oppressed, free captives, heal the afflicted and brokenhearted, restore sight, and bring truth, altogether different from the political deliverance from the Romans they desired.
He warned that God had turned from His chosen people when unbelief and rebellion made them reject light, and had shown favor to Gentiles and to people in heathen lands who lived up to the light they had received. In Elijah's famine Elijah was sent to none of Israel's widows except the widow of Sarepta in Sidon, and in Elisha's time none of Israel's lepers was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian, who were counted more righteous than backslidden Israel. When He showed them they were no more favored by heaven than the Gentiles, they were filled with wrath, dragged Him from the synagogue and thrust Him out of the city to cast Him down headlong from the hill, showing the faithful messenger has no safety among rejecters.
The Old Testament had stated every detail of His ministry, and His repeated announcement that it was fulfilled that day in their hearing gave plain evidence of Messiahship. Honest searching of the Scriptures and testing of theories and expectations by God's Word would have recognized that evidence. The Nazareth rejection belongs to a life of persecution and insult stretching from being driven from Bethlehem to being condemned without cause at Jerusalem, closing three years of self-denying public labor of disinterested benevolence, purity, suffering and devotion, as long as the world could endure the presence of its Redeemer. Though ever touched by human woe, He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and speech to the dumb, fed the hungry, comforted the sorrowful, walked on the heaving waves and by a word stilled the storm, cast out devils who in departing confessed Him the Son of God, raised the dead and broke the slumbers of the dead, and held thousands entranced by wisdom, yet He could not reach hearts blinded by prejudice and hatred who resolutely rejected the light.
That announcement at Nazareth as the Anointed One was later brought back to the rulers' minds as they planned His death, together with His questioning the doctors at age twelve, the miracle just done, and the Old Testament Scriptures in their true meaning. Together they bore witness He was none other than the Son of God, and under the impress of the Holy Spirit left the rulers alarmed, perplexed and troubled with conviction they were fighting against God. They rejected Him because their minds were fixed on earthly power and national elevation and narrowed by prejudice and bigotry, so they despised the humble Nazarene and refused His rule. Accepting His teaching would have exposed character deficiencies, demanded thorough repentance, changed practices, enlarged thoughts, required relinquishing cherished hopes, sacrificing human honor to be honored of heaven, and going contrary to the great teachers and thinkers of the time. Because they did not know the time of their visitation, He wept over their impenitence, their house was left desolate and the proud city laid in ruins, when calamity could have been averted.
His work was kept to a small circle in Palestine to keep the door open to the Jewish nation, because the heathen nations were not prepared for His work and turning to the Gentile world would have closed His access to the Jews. The Jews did not receive Him though truth was plain on His tongue and though, without instruction from the national teachers, He showed perfect knowledge of the Jewish system as represented in the Scriptures.
Present Duty and Warning
The declaration that the Scripture is fulfilled in the hearing of the people lays the same work on all who fully follow Christ, for they enter it as laborers together with Him to restore the moral image of God in man. The work He claimed as His own is to preach good tidings to the meek and poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, open the prison to those who are bound, recover sight to the blind, set at liberty the bruised, and preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Those whom God calls do this same kind of work that He did.
That fulfilled preaching of the gospel to the poor rebukes prizing color or caste and rejecting the Christianity Christ accepts. The same price was paid for the salvation of people of every color, so to slight a brother for his color is to slight Jesus and to misrepresent Him. Such slighting shows selfishness, tradition, and prejudice polluting the soul.
The same danger of rejecting truth exists today because the Lord speaks through His delegated messengers, and closing the heart against them is closing the heart against Jesus. To reject the message Christ sends is to reject Christ in the person of His messengers, valuing own opinions and judgment above the light God provides. Those who do so remain in bondage to Satan while supposing to preserve dignity, freedom, and the right to think and act, to believe or doubt. Those who in controversy have taken the course of the men of Nazareth may be given a second opportunity by the divine Messenger after excitement and confusion are over. They must beware lest they harden their hearts in prejudice and pride into final rejection of the message that would work for salvation, for people today are less excusable than the Jews, having before them the example of the rejection of Christ and His apostles and having been warned not to fall after the same example of unbelief.
The rejection at Nazareth teaches teachers that lessons in God's Word apply to their own conduct and work. Studying and understanding the Word benefits their eternal lives and the students they educate, while neglecting lessons of eternal importance leaves them unprepared to teach others. Admitting doubt drives away the Spirit and leaves a person open to Satan's suggestions. People can be touched by God's Word under the Spirit's influence and recognize gracious words, then turn against its messenger through prejudice, pride, and stubbornness when it does not suit their ideas and exposes their spiritual condition. Each person must choose either to stand for or against Jesus, who comes today through His Word and His servants, and willful blindness that closes eyes and ears darkens understanding against conviction by manifestations of the Spirit of God, so that it is dangerous to call the work of the Spirit of God the work of Satan.
His example teaches seeking opportunities for personal work, drawing people to study Scripture, and patiently teaching those who do not understand the truth. He is not only a source of consolation but also a restorer and a reprover. He is the Saviour of the body as truly as He is the Saviour of the soul. Some heard His gracious words under divine influence yet later let doubt turn to unbelief, showing that people can resist God-sent light even when Scripture gives evidence and can receive the announcement of the Anointed One unfavorably.
On the Sabbath in the Nazareth synagogue after reading from Isaiah He declared that the prophecy was fulfilled at that very moment in the hearing of those before Him. In doing so He claimed to be the Anointed Messiah and Redeemer, come to preach good news to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, free captives, give sight to the blind and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. That deliverance was spiritual freedom from evil and darkness by truth and restoration of body and soul, not the earthly rule and overthrow of Rome the people expected. His hearers were at first moved with wonder and joy at His gracious words, then stumbled over His humble life as Joseph's son, hardened in pride and unbelief, and in wrath thrust Him from the city to cast Him from the hill, but He passed through them and went on to others who would listen. He exposed them as prisoners in need of deliverance and warned that God had turned to believing Gentiles like the widow of Sarepta and Naaman the Syrian when Israel rejected light, and all who fully follow Him still enter that same work while those who reject His delegated messengers today repeat the peril of Nazareth.
Synagogue Setting and Declaration
The declaration was made on the Sabbath in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He stood up to read from the roll of Isaiah and then began to address those present. The reading was from Isaiah concerning the Spirit-anointed work of preaching to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming deliverance to captives, giving sight to the blind, setting at liberty the bruised, opening the prison to the bound, and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. That reading provided the text He then announced as fulfilled before the congregation listening that day.
By saying the scripture was fulfilled that day in their ears, He declared that the prophecy He had just read was coming to pass at that very moment as they listened, in their presence and hearing. The scripture concerned the work of the Messiah, so the announcement identified His ministry with that promised mission and claimed for Himself the office of the Promised One. His words briefly convinced the people and filled them with peace, grace and hope as they considered His claim.
He stood before them as a living expositor and interpreter of the prophecies concerning Himself, explaining the Messiah as reliever of the oppressed, liberator of captives, healer of the afflicted, restorer of sight to the blind, and revealer of the light of truth. He spoke with divine authority and in an impressive manner whose wonderful import thrilled the hearers with a power they had never felt before. For a time the tide of divine influence broke every barrier down and the Spirit broke down their prejudice, so that like Moses beholding the Invisible their hearts were moved and they recognized the graciousness of His words.
Messiah's Mission Fulfilled
With those words He claimed for Himself the glory of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Promised One and Redeemer awaited by the prophets, anointed by the Spirit of the Lord. He presented Himself as the living expositor and interpreter of Isaiah's prophecy, declaring that what He had just read was fulfilled in Him that day as His hearers listened. His declaration identified His work and claimed the messianic office for Himself, and it was understood by the congregation as such a claim.
The fulfilled work is to preach good news and the gospel to the poor and meek, comfort the sorrowing, heal the brokenhearted, the sick, the afflicted and the bruised, proclaim deliverance and liberty to captives, recover sight to the blind, set at liberty the oppressed, open the prison to the bound, proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and reveal the light of truth. He stood before the people as a living display of that prophecy, giving them opportunity to accept Him as Israel's promised Deliverer. His gracious words announced that His healing and saving mission was present among them.
That mission saves both body and soul, healing bodily infirmity and the sin of the soul. It restores and uplifts, brings peace and happiness, represents the Father, restores the moral image of God in man, and shows divine power by raising the dead and restoring the sick and suffering to health, as the tree of life in the world. He is not only consolation but restorer and reprover, and Saviour of the body as truly as of the soul.
The promised deliverance is spiritual deliverance from the power of evil and from darkness by the light of truth, with close searching inspection of deeds. It is not the earthly political kingdom, military victory and deliverance, overthrow of Roman rule, or temporal reign of a glorious king that the people expected and desired. Outward religious ceremony and exactness cannot shield from that scrutiny, for the declaration confronts the hearers with their own bondage and need and implies their deeds can be examined.
Welcome Turned to Rejection
At first the declaration thrilled its hearers with a power they had never felt before, the tide of divine influence breaking down every barrier as like Moses they beheld the Invisible. Their hearts were moved by the Holy Spirit and stirred by the Spirit of the Lord as He spoke, and they bore Him witness with wonder at His gracious words, with joy and strong interest, with peace and grace and hope. For a brief moment they were convinced He was the Messiah, the Promised One the prophets had awaited, and their Redeemer addressing them. They responded with fervent amens and praises to the Lord.
Then they stumbled over Him as Joseph's son, the carpenter's son who had worked with Joseph. They had watched Him toil and grow from childhood to youth to manhood among His brothers and sisters, living unostentatiously and familiarly among them from youth and early manhood, and they were reluctant to acknowledge admirable development in one they knew so intimately. Though His life was spotless they refused to believe He was the Promised One, and the Holy Spirit's testimony to the truth of His claim as the Anointed One was resisted because familiarity with His family became a reason for resistance. The offense deepened because He said nothing of using miracle power for their advantage, and they demanded miracles as had been done in Capernaum.
Opening the door to doubt, their hearts hardened and conviction gave way to unbelief and open rejection. Pride and prejudice blinded them, a willful blindness that closed eyes and ears and darkened understanding against conviction, and they forgot that God had been working in their hearts. They rejected plain truth and evidence and the plain, humble explanation that gave opportunity to receive Christ and blessing, resisting the light God sent when it did not suit their ideas even though Scripture provided evidence. Satan worked with intense energy to fasten them in unbelief, and admitting doubt drove away the Spirit and left them open to his suggestions, so that blind eyes were not opened and bound souls were not set free that day.
Unbelief turned to anger and then to wrath and rage. They thrust Him from the synagogue and out of the city to cast Him headlong down from the hill and over the precipice, illustrating that a prophet may be dishonored among those who have known Him since childhood. The congregation drove Him out, pushed Him about and pushed Him hither and thither, quarreling among themselves over how to silence His voice entirely. They would have killed Him to silence reproof and to stand against Jesus coming through His Word and servants.
His mission was not finished, so heavenly angels preserved Him and divine power and divine agencies saved Him from their purpose. He passed through them and disappeared from their sight to a place they did not know and where they did not know where He went. He made no stay in Nazareth but left to continue to Galilee and elsewhere to preach to ears that would listen and hearts that would receive. Their rejection of the Spirit's influence began the course that led to Calvary.
Reproof Evidence and Wider Rejection
The declaration confronted the Israelite hearers as children of Abraham with their own bondage and need, presenting them as prisoners needing deliverance and as in darkness needing truth, and it implied their deeds could be examined with close searching inspection. That scrutiny could not be evaded by outward ceremonial exactness, and it offended their pride, aroused their fears, and made them shrink from clear searching eyes. His promised work was spiritual deliverance from the power of evil and from darkness by the light of truth, to relieve the oppressed, free captives, heal the afflicted and brokenhearted, restore sight, and bring truth, altogether different from the political deliverance from the Romans they desired.
He warned that God had turned from His chosen people when unbelief and rebellion made them reject light, and had shown favor to Gentiles and to people in heathen lands who lived up to the light they had received. In Elijah's famine Elijah was sent to none of Israel's widows except the widow of Sarepta in Sidon, and in Elisha's time none of Israel's lepers was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian, who were counted more righteous than backslidden Israel. When He showed them they were no more favored by heaven than the Gentiles, they were filled with wrath, dragged Him from the synagogue and thrust Him out of the city to cast Him down headlong from the hill, showing the faithful messenger has no safety among rejecters.
The Old Testament had stated every detail of His ministry, and His repeated announcement that it was fulfilled that day in their hearing gave plain evidence of Messiahship. Honest searching of the Scriptures and testing of theories and expectations by God's Word would have recognized that evidence. The Nazareth rejection belongs to a life of persecution and insult stretching from being driven from Bethlehem to being condemned without cause at Jerusalem, closing three years of self-denying public labor of disinterested benevolence, purity, suffering and devotion, as long as the world could endure the presence of its Redeemer. Though ever touched by human woe, He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and speech to the dumb, fed the hungry, comforted the sorrowful, walked on the heaving waves and by a word stilled the storm, cast out devils who in departing confessed Him the Son of God, raised the dead and broke the slumbers of the dead, and held thousands entranced by wisdom, yet He could not reach hearts blinded by prejudice and hatred who resolutely rejected the light.
That announcement at Nazareth as the Anointed One was later brought back to the rulers' minds as they planned His death, together with His questioning the doctors at age twelve, the miracle just done, and the Old Testament Scriptures in their true meaning. Together they bore witness He was none other than the Son of God, and under the impress of the Holy Spirit left the rulers alarmed, perplexed and troubled with conviction they were fighting against God. They rejected Him because their minds were fixed on earthly power and national elevation and narrowed by prejudice and bigotry, so they despised the humble Nazarene and refused His rule. Accepting His teaching would have exposed character deficiencies, demanded thorough repentance, changed practices, enlarged thoughts, required relinquishing cherished hopes, sacrificing human honor to be honored of heaven, and going contrary to the great teachers and thinkers of the time. Because they did not know the time of their visitation, He wept over their impenitence, their house was left desolate and the proud city laid in ruins, when calamity could have been averted.
His work was kept to a small circle in Palestine to keep the door open to the Jewish nation, because the heathen nations were not prepared for His work and turning to the Gentile world would have closed His access to the Jews. The Jews did not receive Him though truth was plain on His tongue and though, without instruction from the national teachers, He showed perfect knowledge of the Jewish system as represented in the Scriptures.
Present Duty and Warning
The declaration that the Scripture is fulfilled in the hearing of the people lays the same work on all who fully follow Christ, for they enter it as laborers together with Him to restore the moral image of God in man. The work He claimed as His own is to preach good tidings to the meek and poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, open the prison to those who are bound, recover sight to the blind, set at liberty the bruised, and preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Those whom God calls do this same kind of work that He did.
That fulfilled preaching of the gospel to the poor rebukes prizing color or caste and rejecting the Christianity Christ accepts. The same price was paid for the salvation of people of every color, so to slight a brother for his color is to slight Jesus and to misrepresent Him. Such slighting shows selfishness, tradition, and prejudice polluting the soul.
The same danger of rejecting truth exists today because the Lord speaks through His delegated messengers, and closing the heart against them is closing the heart against Jesus. To reject the message Christ sends is to reject Christ in the person of His messengers, valuing own opinions and judgment above the light God provides. Those who do so remain in bondage to Satan while supposing to preserve dignity, freedom, and the right to think and act, to believe or doubt. Those who in controversy have taken the course of the men of Nazareth may be given a second opportunity by the divine Messenger after excitement and confusion are over. They must beware lest they harden their hearts in prejudice and pride into final rejection of the message that would work for salvation, for people today are less excusable than the Jews, having before them the example of the rejection of Christ and His apostles and having been warned not to fall after the same example of unbelief.
The rejection at Nazareth teaches teachers that lessons in God's Word apply to their own conduct and work. Studying and understanding the Word benefits their eternal lives and the students they educate, while neglecting lessons of eternal importance leaves them unprepared to teach others. Admitting doubt drives away the Spirit and leaves a person open to Satan's suggestions. People can be touched by God's Word under the Spirit's influence and recognize gracious words, then turn against its messenger through prejudice, pride, and stubbornness when it does not suit their ideas and exposes their spiritual condition. Each person must choose either to stand for or against Jesus, who comes today through His Word and His servants, and willful blindness that closes eyes and ears darkens understanding against conviction by manifestations of the Spirit of God, so that it is dangerous to call the work of the Spirit of God the work of Satan.
His example teaches seeking opportunities for personal work, drawing people to study Scripture, and patiently teaching those who do not understand the truth. He is not only a source of consolation but also a restorer and a reprover. He is the Saviour of the body as truly as He is the Saviour of the soul. Some heard His gracious words under divine influence yet later let doubt turn to unbelief, showing that people can resist God-sent light even when Scripture gives evidence and can receive the announcement of the Anointed One unfavorably.