This is a Bible study teaching for “Rejected” on Luke 4:16-30 from the “Explore the Bible” series from Lifeway.

I’ve been teaching third grade Sunday school up until last year and some online Bible studies for the last year and a half. And one of the things that I always tried to do with my Sunday school class was provide context, because that is what I like when I am studying or researching anything: who wrote it, who were they speaking to, what was going on at the time, and what did the writer think about it.

Since I’ve been used to teaching 8-year-olds, some of this might seem redundant to you, but we’re going to start by setting the stage.

About the Four Gospels

We have four books that give us an account of Jesus’s life: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is debate about dating and authorship, but what I’m sharing has significant scholarship and support behind it.

about the Gospel of Mark

Mark is believed to be the earliest gospel written. He was a traveling companion of Peter and so his account is the recollection of Peter. When I was in the apologetics program at Houston Baptist University, I took a class from Nabeel Qureshi who was working on his dissertation on the gospel of Mark at the time. He believed that it was written around 38 AD, that is a minority opinion, but regardless, it was the first.

John wrote the book of revelation on the island of Patmos

The last gospel to be written was the gospel of John. John was exiled on the island of Patmos where he received his vision and wrote Revelation.

map of ephesus

After the Roman emperor that exiled him died, he left Patmos and went to Ephesus where he wrote his gospel, and this is believed to be around 95 AD.

So between the writing of Mark and John, there are 50-60 years, this spanned the expansion of the church from primarily Jewish believers to spreading through the Gentile world. At the beginning of the church, when Paul’s letters and then Mark were written, there were people who witnessed not only the events that took place, but there were many who saw Jesus after the resurrection. Mark is telling the story, announcing the Good News.

map of the spread of Christianity

By the time John was written almost 60 years later, the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the believers were dispersed and were being persecuted, and there was a severe rift between believers in Christ and the Jews who had rejected Jesus. John refuted docetism and Judaism in his Gospel.

information on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke

So what about Matthew and Luke? Both gospels basically use Mark as a base and added their own material, but they use it very differently and they have different audiences. Matthew was the disciple who was a tax collector, his message was primarily written to ethnic Jews, explaining how Jesus was the promised Messiah. His gospel is thematic.

Luke is different. He is believed to be the Gentile doctor who was a companion of Paul. He begins his gospel by saying that there are “many accounts” of Jesus’s life, but he has investigated them all and presents his account “in order.” His gospel is not just for the Jews, but for the Gentile churches as well and it is chronological.

Luke is an excellent historian and he provides many specific details that paint a clearer picture of the Second Temple period in the first century than almost any other ancient document. Larry Hurtado, who was a New Testament scholar actually taught Luke’s Gospel and Acts (Luke’s history of the church) at Hebrew University in Jerusalem because of these details.

Gospel accounts of the showdown at the synagogue

This passage that we’re reading today is actually found in all four gospels (Matthew 4:12-17; Mark 1:14-15; and John 4:43-45), but it is Luke that gives the most detail. I’m not going to read those other passages now, but I recommend reading them side by side sometimes, because it’s really interesting how the passages are presented.

a church built at what is believed to be the location of the synagogue where Jesus preached

The Showdown at the Synagogue

In the beginning of chapter four, Luke gives an account of Jesus’s wilderness tempation, and afterwards Luke writes in verse 14:

Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. He taught regularly in their synogogues and was praised by everyone.

He was praised by everyone, there was buzz about him. Then he goes home to Nazareth:

16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
19     and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”

22 Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

As I was preparing for this, what stood out to me about this passage for the first time was that he “went as usual” to the synagogue to read the Scriptures.

The people of Nazareth knew him. He had probably read Scriptures in the synagogue hundreds of times before this,

According to the commentary in the NET translation

In normative Judaism of the period, the OT scripture was read and discussed in the synagogue by the men who were present. First came the law, then the prophets, [which this passage of Isaiah would have been] then someone was asked to speak on the texts. Normally, one stood up to read out of respect for the scriptures, and then sat down.

So everything was normal, going according to plan until Jesus … preaching with the power of the Holy Spirit … said with authority that the prophecy was fulfilled before their eyes.

He said, “I am it, I am the one you are looking for.”

What would your response have been?

We say we believe in a God that loves us and the truth of the resurrection … but let’s be honest. A lot of times it’s the Christian that gets offended with the suggestion that they can expect God to be good to them. Healed, blessed and favored? We say we’ve accepted the gift of salvation for eternity that will start for us someday … But a lot of Christians are closed to any other gift God might want to give them.

We are used to going on as we always gone and doing what we’ve always done … are we really any different than these religious Jews of Nazareth?

So what were the Jews expecting?

replica of the Second Temple in Jerusalem

Second Temple Judaism

Before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, Judaism was based on the Levitical laws, the sacrificial system focused on blood atonement, and the hope was in the coming of the Messiah. There was a lot of debate about who the Messiah would be and you can see some of that speculation in the apocryphal books written during the 400 years of silence.

Some, like the Essenes, saw him as a “Teacher of Righteousness.” Some saw him as a divine figure and equated him with the Angel of the Presence. If anyone tries to tell you that the Jews didn’t have any concept of a divine Messiah or Second person of the Trinity, don’t believe them, that’s just not true.

I have a review of a book called “The Two Powers in Heaven” written by an Orthodox Jewish scholar named Alan Segal that shows otherwise. He thought it was heresy, but he proves that what Christians believed about Jesus as God come as man was not all that far out of the pool of Jewish thought at the time.

But during that time, Isaiah was a very big deal … Isaiah and Daniel were two of the most respected books during that time.

example of a schedule of torah portion readings

Today, they carefully skip around the book of Isaiah and only read 21 verses from the first chapter in Daniel in their annual schedule of readings.

But as Luke said in the chapter before

Everyone was expecting the Messiah to come soon, and they were eager to know whether John might be the Messiah. Luke 3:15

Daniel's timeline to the coming of the Messiah

And they were expecting for him because Daniel’s visions gave a very specific timeline. According to Daniel’s prophecy, their Messiah was coming on the scene … and so they were looking for him.

This passage of Isaiah is proclaiming the vindication of the God of Israel.

Chapter 61 ends with this verse:

Isaiah 61:11

The Sovereign Lord will show his justice to the nations of the world.

Everyone will praise him!

His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring,

with plants springing up everywhere.

Isaiah proclaims that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is sovereign and that all the nations of the world will acknowledge him. All the nations.

These are the words of a prophet from a backwater country that has been subjugated by first the Babylonians and then the Assyrians. And then after Isaiah came the Greeks and then the Romans.

The Jews and their nation were never a world power. They were a small, difficult people that were passed from one conquering empire to the next. The Jews were this little group, but Isaiah prophesied that all the nations of the world would honor them for the glory of HIS name.

And then Jesus comes back to his hometown, which doesn’t have that great of a reputation and he says, “This is it, I’m the one you’ve been waiting for.

This is also from the NET Commentary

The essence of Jesus’s messianic work is expressed in the phrase to set free. This line from Isaiah 58 says that Jesus will do what the nation had failed to do, it makes the proclamation messianic, not merely prophetic, because Jesus doesn’t just proclaim the message—he brings the deliverance.

And what is their response? They must have looked skeptical because …

23 Then he said, “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.’ 24 But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.

25 “Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land.

26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. 27 And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”

28 When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. 29 Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, 30 but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.

Are they excited? No. They want to kill him, they want to push him off a cliff.

If you read this same account in the other gospels, they are all very brief. They basically just say, “everyone was amazed at him.” But Luke goes into detail. He paints the picture of the scenario and explains what led up to the Jews, his own townspeople, wanting to kill him.

If Luke’s gospel was being read in Gentile churches, I think Luke was answering questions these nonJewish believers might have had?

Why did the Jews reject Jesus?

Why didn’t they recognize him?

Why do they still not believe?

Luke explains that “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” And highlights two foreigners who received the blessing of God in the Old Testament. Elijah blessed the widow who lived in the land of Sidon and Elisha healed Naaman the Syrian.

When Jesus said those words to the citizens of the town of Nazareth, he was showing them that it wasn’t just the Jewish people God was concerned with. God extends his blessing to any who are open to receive him.

The widow of Sidon, Naaman the Syrian, and the Gentile believers had willing and humble hearts. The Jews of Nazareth who rejected Jesus were offended at this young man that they thought they knew.

John 1:9-13 NASB

9 This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.


This Bible lesson was originally taught by Carla Alvarez on January 24, 2021 in the Kingdom Citizen Bible study Class at the Second Baptist North campus in Kingwood, Texas.