Unwelcome at Home (Luke 4:21-30)
My first-ever job in full-time church work was with the Main Street church in Pikeville, Kentucky. Pikeville was only a couple hours from where I was raised, and it’s actually the city in which I was born, so it was a perfect place to start paid ministry.
I went there as a single guy, but by the end of my first three months, I was spending a lot of time with a lady at that church, and we were married a few months later. The moment Tammy and I said, “I do,” everything changed. No longer was I solely their youth minister, but I was Bob and Ann’s son-in-law and related to several members of that church by marriage. And my effectiveness in the pulpit and as the youth minister quickly evaporated.
I became one of them; I was a home boy, and respect was hard to come by. There was absolutely nothing conscious on anyone’s part, and not a soul was cruel to us—I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But it was time for Tammy and me to move somewhere else, and we did.
I imagine that most all of you have been in comparable situations. How many of you gave a suggestion to a parent and it was rejected out of hand because you made it? Did any of you ever go and make a suggestion to one of the elders and it was rejected simply because you made it—maybe because of your family or because you made a whole lot of suggestions? How many of you had trouble in school because the teachers knew your parents or your elder siblings, and it just made life hard? When you were growing up, did any of you think, “If I could just get out of this town, I could really start my own life?”
Jesus faced such a crisis in the synagogue at Nazareth. Last week, we explored how the Lord quoted Isaiah on that Sabbath day to say that his kingdom had arrived to heal the broken. Well, the folks inside the synagogue didn’t appreciate Jesus’s words, and they rejected him and tried to kill him. This passage plays a pivotal role in both the Gospel of Luke and the beloved physician’s second work, Acts. This text demonstrates: “Because the Jews rejected Jesus, his message went to the Gentiles..”
Scripture (Luke 4:21-30)
verses 21-22:
The immediacy of the prophecy’s fulfillment bothered the folks in the synagogue. Jesus didn’t say that the prophecy would be fulfilled in the future when the Messiah came; he said that the scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing. He even used the word “today.” As the people looked at Jesus, they didn’t see the Messiah or his kingdom.
The people spoke well of Jesus and marveled at his gracious speech, but they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” These folks had seen Jesus grow up, they knew his parents, and they just couldn’t believe that the Kid they had watched grow all those years could really be the Messiah.
verses 23-24:
The proverb Jesus quoted is well attested in classical Greek and medical texts.
“No prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” The Jews had a long history of not receiving prophets in their hometowns. For example, Jeremiah was rejected in his hometown (cf. Jer 1:1; 11:18-23).
verses 25-27:
Please notice very carefully what Jesus did in these verses. Yes, he mentioned ministry to the poor (widows) and the marginalized (lepers), but he mentioned a Gentile widow and a Gentile leper. In fact, the Jewish people of Jesus’s day particularly hated the areas of Sidon and Syria. Jesus’s message was unmistakable—just as the Jews in the days of Elijah and Elisha rejected their message and those prophets then served Gentiles, Jesus himself would serve Gentiles.
verses 28-29:
A mob couldn’t legally put someone to death in Jewish Palestine, and they were doing this on the Sabbath—you know how angry the people would get when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The people were so enraged that they lost any thought of reason, and tried to take Jesus and throw him off a cliff, the first step in stoning him.
verse 30:
Somehow Jesus simply passed through their midst, for his time had not yet come. It’s very possible that something miraculous took place here, but the text simply doesn’t give us enough information.
Application
“Because the Jews rejected Jesus, his message went to the Gentiles..” Elijah and Elisha served Gentiles. Jesus’s message would, likewise, go to the Gentiles. The Lord foreshadowed his international message at the end of Luke’s Gospel when he told his disciples: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Lk 24:46-47). In Acts, Luke detailed how the Gospel message began in Jerusalem, went to the Gentile Cornelius, and then to Rome.
You and I, of course, are beneficiaries of the Jewish rejection of Jesus’s message. You and I, because we are Gentiles, have been able to hear and obey Jesus’s message because the Jews, the first to receive it, rejected it. We could talk this morning about how grateful we should be to hear and obey Jesus’s message, but there’s a warning in this passage, and I want you to hear that warning loudly and clearly: “You must not reject Jesus’s message.”
How can you keep from rejecting Jesus’s message?
First: You must Learn.
You must Learn exactly who Jesus is. The people in the synagogue on that Sabbath made a critical error; they simply would not believe that the One sitting before them was the Messiah.
You, of course, know that Jesus is the Messiah. You could have stood with Peter in Caesarea Philippi when he said to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). However, you must Learn that Jesus is the Christ without a single doubt in your heart.
The people sitting in front of Jesus had a simple way to Learn he is the Christ: The teaching coming straight from his mouth. If you want to Learn that Jesus is the Christ, listen to the teaching which came straight from him through the Holy Spirit to the holy apostles. Spend time in the words of Jesus so that you may Learn that he is the Christ.
Second: You must Listen.
You must Listen to what Jesus said; in other words, you must obey Jesus. When the apostles were with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, a voice came from heaven and declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt 17:5). Jesus put it like this: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Lk 6:46).
Why would you call Jesus Lord and not do what he tells you? No, not everything he taught is easy or pleasant, but every word is divine truth.
How well do you Listen to Jesus? Do you obey him when you find a teaching easy, or do you obey even when his teaching is difficult? Do you obey Jesus’s teaching when you’re by yourself, when you’re with your friends, and when you’re with your family? Do you obey Jesus consistently. . . Have you surrendered your entire life to him and obey him with your all? How much are you obeying Jesus this morning?
This sermon was originally preached by Dr. Justin Imel, Sr., at Church of Christ Deer Park in Deer Park, Texas.