A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on September 22, 2024.
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and 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 the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away (Luke 4:14–30).[1]
Teaching in synagogues throughout Galilee, Jesus eventually worked his way to his hometown of Nazareth. I would imagine it was a kind of homecoming, but Luke’s point of focus is not reuniting with family and friends but teaching in the synagogue. Regardless of his Galilean fanfare, we may assume that he wasn’t invited as the guest of honor but the returned-home, native son.
There is a perspective of familiarity that leads us to regard someone we know differently that someone we don’t. An outsider recruited in, for example, is esteemed more highly than the hometown boy who never left, or as Jesus put it, “no prophet is acceptable in his hometown” (24). But familiarity can also breed contempt, as one commentator notes, “sometimes the people who are closest to us have the hardest time letting us grow into the people God is calling us to become. They knew us way back when, so they think they know us already, even if they know more about who we were than who we are.”[2] Or, as J.C. Ryle succinctly summarizes, “How apt men are to despise the highest privileges when they are familiar with them.”[3] My point is: I think it is fair to assume that there were preconceived notions about Jesus before “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him” (17). Perhaps they were perplexed by his popularity, why a man of seemingly no regard could be so highly regarded elsewhere. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they ask (24).
Regardless, when he read from the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, stopping abruptly at “the year of the Lord’s favor” (19), all eyes in the synagogue “were fixed on him” (20). The reading was brief, with a hard stop, the connotation unmistakably messianic. When preaching to the home crowd, it’s always best to pick something safe. He didn’t. All eyes were fixed on Jesus, because they could not fathom what he would say.
At first they received his teaching, marveling at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (22). But then he had the audacity to say this: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (21). Think about it: This Scripture, whose fulfillment had been anticipated by Israel for 700 years, is fulfilled on this day by this person? Expositing the Scriptures is one thing; claiming to be the fulfillment of centuries old prophecy far different. And so, those who first marveled at his teaching prepare to put Joseph’s son in his place, eventually attempting to put him to death.
Of course, we know that he was the legally adopted son of Joseph and the virgin-born son of Mary but also the “beloved Son” of God the Father, with whom he is “well pleased” (Luke 3:22) and also the anointed one of Israel ministering in the power of the Spirit and proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor” (19). But to those present, he was nothing more than the boy next door. In their minds, Israel’s Messiah would come with an unmistakable Davidic lineage, not the rumored illegitimate son of a carpenter’s wife; the Messiah would come as a conquering king not as an unremarkable local from a poor family, and certainly not from Nazareth. Nathaniel summed it up nicely when he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Even Nazareth agreed.
In their skepticism of Jesus personally, they need to see something more. If he is to make such an outlandish claim, then he’d better back it up with proof, like his wedding miracle in Capernaum, when he turned water into wine: They are Jews after all, those whom Paul says characteristically “demand signs” (1 Cor. 1:22). But before they can make such a demand, knowing the intentions of their hearts, Jesus captures their sentiment succinctly with a proverb, “Physician, heal yourself” (23), as if to say, “If you would be something for us, show yourself first.” Proof must precede belief.
There is of course nothing wrong with a healthy skepticism, unless that skepticism will not listen to the Word of God. And so, Jesus doesn’t give them what they want to see but instead tells them what they need to hear. Their familiarity deafened them to the Word of God and blinded them to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Messiah had come to Nazareth, and they missed him.
When Faith Precedes Proof
In our pragmatic age, one might wonder why Jesus did not try to persuade them further. Why not work just one miracle and win them all? If salvation comes through faith, why not resort to playing to the home crowd? Doesn’t the end justify the means? It may make sense in the mind of man, but God says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). In fact, God’s ways are so contrary to the way of the world that they may seem counterintuitive, such as when the Lord said to the apostle Paul, “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9b). From our perspective, strength wins and weakness loses, but God taught Paul that he works powerfully through our weakness. It seems counterintuitive, and so does the gospel.
We might think that in order to be forgiven of our sins we must merit God’s forgiveness. We might think in order to be reconciled to God we must earn his favor. But seemingly counterintuitive, the gospel teaches us that we are forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God through faith, not of our own doing but the gift of God, not of our works, and certainly nothing for us to boast about.[4] We can’t boast about it, because it is all of God (Thank God!). This the Nazarenes need to hear, if they would listen.
To explain this, Jesus gives two examples from the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. The first example takes place in the days of the great famine during the reign of wicked King Ahab. As God cares especially for the widow and orphan, there were many in Israel to whom he could send Elijah, but instead he sent him out of Israel to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. When Elijah arrived, he found the woman gathering sticks to prepare a fire to bake her last loaf of bread for her and her son, a humble meal to enjoy before they would starve to death. But Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son” (1 Kgs. 17:13). It may sound like Elijah simply wanted to eat the poor woman’s last morsel, but actually God had spoken to Elijah telling him the widow’s jar of flour and jug of oil would not go empty but would continue until the famine ended. Elijah gave no proof but the Word, and it was enough. The woman, acting on faith, did as Elijah told her, and so it happened: “The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah” (1 Kgs. 17:14-16).
The second example Jesus gives is of a leper, a mighty military man named Naaman, again not of Israel but Syria. Desiring to be healed of his leprosy, through a number of unique circumstances, Naaman found his way to the door of the prophet Elisha. But Elisha did not appear to him, sending only a brief message, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean” (2 Kgs. 5:10). The message was offensive to Naaman as was the Jordan river. In his mind, a miracle should be worked with the prophet present, calling upon the Lord, waving his hand over the disease, and instantly it would be gone. He refused to obey, because the delivery did not meet his expectation. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed in Naaman’s servants, convincing the enraged Naaman to obey the prophetic word. And so he did, and Scripture says, “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kgs. 5:11-14).
We think seeing is believing, but as Jesus said to doubting Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). The widow of Zarephath and Naaman of Syria were not Jews, they did not have the heritage of Abraham, Moses, or David, and yet when confronted with only the Word of God, they believed. Similarly, in Nazareth Jesus the living Word of God not only taught but revealed to them the ultimate fulfillment of Scripture: Jesus of Nazareth. It is actually one of the rare occasions when Jesus was overtly forthright about his identity. But they would not, they could not believe. They wanted more. They wanted the always full jar of flour and jug of oil first, and once the bread was baked, then they would believe. They wanted the leprosy healed and after seeing and touching the flesh like a child’s, then they would believe. They wanted the Capernaum water turned to wine, and after they imbibed, only then they might drink from the fountain of faith.
But Jesus’ two examples went deeper, challenging not only their unbelief but the reason for it. Both of Jesus’ examples were about God’s grace shown to Gentiles, a foreshadowing of Christ’s Great Commission. While there were starving widows in Israel, God sent Elijah to one in Sidon. While there were lepers galore in Israel, it was Naaman of Syria who was healed. In the mind of the children of Israel, the year of God’s favor was for Israel alone. How dare he throw God’s kindness to Gentles in their face! How dare he emphasize their simple faith! They became enraged, with murder in their hearts, revealing the source of their unbelief: pride.
When Pride Blinds Faith
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis describes pride as “the essential vice, the utmost evil … the complete anti-God state of mind.”[5] So sinister is its presence in the Christian, Lewis says, that the devil is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride … Pride is spiritual cancer. … the devil loves ‘curing’ a small fault by giving you a great one.”[6] Helpfully, Lewis proposes a self-examination. He says, “Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.”[7] This is why Jesus’ two examples captured the sentiment of the Nazarenes’ hearts, incensing their baser instincts and inciting them to mob violence. They were children of Israel, not Gentiles, the chosen ones, the people of promise, possessing God’s law and land. What they didn’t need was “Joseph’s son” to save them, or so they thought.
This is how insidious pride is: It not only keeps us from seeing Christ for who he is, but it also convinces us that we don’t need what we can’t see. It is of course most wicked in the church, where it seemingly thrives like a spectator sport. The competition pits your holiness against your brother or sister, a game of comparison, in which fault is always found in everyone but you. This should serve as a warning to us all, especially those of us who feel the need to set the record straight by criticizing others. More often than not, all your problems with the church is not the church but you, so take a cue from C.S. Lewis, who reminds us all, “If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.”[8]
When Faith Precedes Favor
The irony of Nazareth is that the embodied favor of God stood in their presence, but they would not receive him. He who was conceived, anointed, and empowered by the Spirit of the Lord, proclaimed the good news of his coming explicitly, revealing his identity. But the good news of Jesus Christ is not for the proud but the poor, not for the free but the slave, not for the guide but the blind, not for the self-liberated but the oppressed. In order to enjoy the favor of the kingdom of God, we must first see that we are impoverished sinners, slaves to sin, blind guides, and oppressed by the world, the flesh, and the devil. By God’s grace, we must see our pride for what it is. We must always and consistently see that we need a savior. And when we do, we find that he is everything.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 183.
[3] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 120.
[5] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins , 2001), 121.