On Sabbath morning when Jesus entered the congregation he was most likely invited to read to the congregation. He chose a passage of Scripture from the book of Isaiah and proceeded to read chapter 61, verses 1 and 2 which say “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn” 

The passage was a messianic prophecy, one that the entire congregation was familiar with and clung to with fond hope. They read it to mean that the Messiah would come upon them, breathing vengeance against their oppressors and would work miracles among them to set them free from the tyranny of Rome. 

Jesus chose to shatter that false perception in one fell swoop when he calmly declared “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” While they hoped for physical liberation from a known and despised enemy, Jesus was proposing spiritual liberation from a far wilier foe. While they were hoping for temporal prosperity, Jesus was offering them spiritual wealth for their souls.

The silence that settled over the congregation was deafening. Not only had Jesus obliterated their fondest hopes but He had also pointed to Himself as the Messiah. At first, the congregation at the Nazareth Synagogue didn’t know which was worse; that Jesus was telling them that their dreams were nothing more than fanciful delusions or that all their hopes were, in fact, centered around him. 

When they managed to find their voices to speak, the first word’s that came out of their mouths were “Who is this man? Is he not Joseph, the carpenter’s son?” Some of this whispering was about the lowly rank of his father but some of it was also casting aspersion on his mother. They had heard the whispers surrounding his birth; the claims of a virgin conceiving him. How could a man of suspect parentage possibly speak any sense? They spoke as though his parental lineage disqualified him from not only being the Messiah but also of speaking to them as he had done. For surely, they surmised, a carpenter’s son couldn’t possibly have the kind of spiritual insights that this man was pretending to have? A man whose birth was shadowed by scandal couldn’t possibly be posturing to be the messiah?  

Perhaps it was easier to dismiss what he was saying based solely on his circumstances and parentage than to stop to consider it for even a moment. Either way the Bible says they were offended. Offended that he, a carpenter’s son, a son of Joseph whom they all knew, a son of this city, whom they had all watched grow up would dare to preach to them, correct them and worse still claim to be the Messiah. 

It was at this point that Jesus sadly told them that a prophet is without honor in his own country. The examples he gave them were not delivered in scathing tones of condemnation but they were received as though he had. Jesus spoke about Elijah and how he had been rejected by the Jews while being sheltered by a heathen woman who was nothing more than a widow starving in the midst of a famine. 

Surely if God could use a heathen woman to shelter one of His greatest prophets, it could not be such a stretch to believe that He would send His son in the garb of a lowly carpenter from Galilee. 

Apparently it was. 

Enraged that He dared to expose them, the men of the Synagogue pressed around Jesus, grabbed him and dragged him out to a nearby hill. They planned to fling him over the edge so he could be dashed to pieces on the rocks below but by Divine intervention Jesus slipped away to safety without anyone realizing it.

Jesus’ work was not done and He was not about to meet his doom by being flung over a hill in Nazareth. What Jesus had to say wasn’t well received because it grated against the selfish aspirations of the people he spoke to. 

If he had put himself forward as a temporal Messiah, come to free them from the Romans. If he had performed a few miracles to prove His power, strapped on a sword and marched out to battle more than a few of the very men who tried to kill Him would have followed Him to their own deaths. But that wasn’t Jesus' message or His mission. 

The only blood he would consent to shed was His own and that would not be in the pursuit of conquest it would be on a Cross for the sins of the entire world. The picture that Jesus painted of what He had come to accomplish differs so widely from what the people of Israel hoped He would accomplish that the dissonance was unbearable. 

They had to kill Him. What He was saying was too irritating to bear. Truth is received in exactly the same way today as it was two thousand years ago. It isn’t popular because it doesn’t pander to human pride. It isn’t welcome for it lays the glory of humanity in the dust. And it provokes a response of intense hatred at times for it feels like nails grating against a chalkboard to those who want the opposite of what it offers. 

And yet, knowing the effects His preaching would have on the people, knowing it would lead him to the cross, Jesus preached it anyway, because he didn’t come to this world to be popular. He came here to reveal God to men and to offer them hope. He understood His mission. He wasn’t ashamed of it and He didn’t shy away from the hard choices it demanded. 

He came here to seek and to save that which was lost and He dug his heels in to accomplish it. If you are a follower of Jesus, you need to go and do likewise.