Luke 4:14-30
Good morning, RTB’ers! Sorry for that delay. A hard, windy night slows things down in the morning here in the country.
Verse 23b is confusing. Jesus is suggesting that the synagogue crowd was thinking, “…What we have heard You did at Capernaum, do here in Your hometown as well.” We have no record here in Luke’s gospel of what He had done in Capernaum. In verse 14 we have the Spirit directing Jesus away from His wilderness experience and back to his home area in Galilee. But there is nothing said in Luke about what Jesus might have done in Judea or Galilee before returning to his hometown of Nazareth (v. 16), except that He was preaching in Galilean synagogues (v. 15). John’s gospel records a number of incidents soon after Jesus’ baptism – His calling His disciples, the wedding at Cana, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well. We simply have to go along with Luke’s verse 15 comment, “And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all.” Then the next verse has Him back in Nazareth. So there must have been a good deal of time lapse between verse 13 and verse 16.
Computer problems remain, especially with Chrome, which I use extensively in posting these comments. So if this note sends, I’m going to leave it with you to work through this Nazareth synagogue experience yourselves. Another good discussion item for the 14th!
Blessings!
When I read Fred’s post today, I was surprised that he said we had no record of what miracles Jesus had done before coming back to his hometown. But he’s right—if you only read the gospel of Luke, he has been teaching in their synagogues, but it mentions no healings or miracles yet.
My study Bible notes, however, point out this was probably a year after He had started his ministry and of course, since they were all expecting Him to do “the things He had done in Capernaum,” He must have had quite a reputation by that time.
(Spoiler alert: in the next sections we see Him back in Capernaum driving out demons and healing everybody.)
I’m always intrigued by Jesus’ words in this passage because He basically insults the crowd by telling stories of God’s blessings to foreigners instead of Israelites. Having just said (basically) “I’m the Messiah” Who was supposed to be sent to rescue the people of Israel (in their minds), He widens the vision. But they only see an arrogant hometown boy…
Thanks for your comment, Carol. That explains why the hometown people got so upset with Jesus. That has always puzzled me.
Interesting comments Carol. You’ve got me thinking. When somebody we’ve grown up around becomes well known we may not know them how others who are meeting them now perceive them. They knew Jesus, Joseph’s and Mary’s son. One of the many children of the area. Since His ministry had not begun, they knew him as a child who grew up with other children doing childish things: playing, laughing, running, being a kid. Since Jesus was without sin, then we know He wasn’t evil towards others. So they saw Him as a good Kid from the area but nothing special because as He said to Mary, it wasn’t time yet for it to be revealed to others. That comforts me, because that shows how approachable Jesus is to us. He’s the part of God that is our Brother.
In many of our RTB years we have been working through The Chronological Study Bible (Thomas Nelson publishers). Therein the entire Bible is presented in chronological order, in the order that the events occurred (as compiled by a team of authors and editors). In the Chronological Bible that we’ve been using, between Luke 4:13 and Luke 4:14 the editors have seven verses from Mark’s gospel (Mark 1:14-20); eleven verses from Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 4:12-22); and almost four chapters from John’s gospel (John 1:35-4:45). So yes, although Luke does not include any of Jesus’ activities in Capernaum prior to His return to Nazareth, He has already been quite active, ministering in Judea, Samaria and Galilee.
Thank you all for commenting on this one! I was always confused at the seemingly sudden change of opinion of the people in the synagogue. At first, they “spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words coming from His mouth,” (v.22) but after Jesus tells them that Elijah was not welcomed in Israel, they became angry and tried to kill him! What does Elijah have to do with anything? What changed their minds so drastically?
Luckily, I work in an office full of Bible-readers! Sharon helped me understand that the people were probably confused about this Jesus whom they had always known, who is suddenly claiming to be the Messiah. Then, Jesus calls them out by saying, “You are doubting me just like the Israelites doubted Elijah.” What a humility check!