EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/10/2026
11:07 PM
My
Worship Time Focus: Introduction
to “Jesus Returns to Nazareth”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
4:14-30
Message of the verses: “14 And Jesus returned to Galilee
in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the
surrounding region. 15 And He began teaching
in their synagogues and was praised by all.
16 And He came to Nazareth, where
He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on
the Sabbath, and stood up to read. 17 And the scroll
of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found
the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
19 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
20 And He rolled up the scroll,
gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all the
people in the synagogue were intently directed at Him. 21 Now
He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in
your [e]hearing.” 22 And
all the people were [f]speaking well of Him, and admiring the [g]gracious words which were coming from
His [h]lips; and yet they were
saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” 23 And He said to
them, “No doubt you will [i]quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal
yourself! All the miracles that we heard were done in
Capernaum, do here in Your hometown as well.’” 24 But
He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his
hometown. 25 But I say to you in truth, there were many
widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three
years and six months, when a [j]severe famine came over all the land; 26 and yet Elijah
was sent to none of them, but only to [k]Zarephath, in the land of Sidon,
to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many with
leprosy in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was [l]cleansed, but only Naaman
the Syrian.” 28 And all the people in the
synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; 29 and
they got up and drove Him out of the city, and brought Him to the [m]crest of the hill on which their city had
been built, so that they could throw Him down from the cliff. 30 But
He passed through their midst and went on His way.”
I will now quote from John MacArthur’s introduction on
the verses from above.
“Through the first thirty years of
His life, Jesus had lived in obscurity in Nazareth. The only recorded incident from those silent
years is His visit to Jerusalem and dialogue with the teachers in the temple
when He was twelve. Apart from that,
nothing is known about His childhood years except for the general statement
that He ‘kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men’
(2:52). The next recorded event in Jesus’
life was His appearance at the Jordan River to be baptized by John the
Baptist. After His baptism Jesus, at the
direction of the Holy Spirit, spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted
by Satan.
“All that happened in His life up to
this point in Luke’s gospel—the testimony of Gabriel, the angels who appeared
to the shepherds, Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna, John the
Baptist, Jesus’ affirmation at age twelve that He was the Son of God, and His public
attestation by the Father and the Holy Spirit at His baptism—had established
His messianic credentials. The time had
now come for Jesus to step onto the stage of His full public ministry.
“This introductory scene in Luke’s
account of Jesus’ public ministry takes place in His hometown of Nazareth. It may be divided into three sections: the
setting, the message, and the reaction.”
5/10/2026
11:18 PM
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