Luke 4:14-30

¹⁴The Holy Spirit made Jesus very powerful, and he went back to Galilee country. The people that saw him kept telling other people about him, and they told other people, so that soon everyone there heard the news about him.

¹⁵He went to the Jewish meeting houses ever week and taught people about God. They were all happy with him.

¹⁶Then Jesus came to his own community, called Nazareth. That was the town he grew up in. He went to the Jewish meeting house there on Saturday, like he always did, and he stood up to read to the people from God’s book.

¹⁷A helper there gave him the part Isaiah wrote. Isaiah told God’s messages, long ago. Jesus opened the book to the right place and read these words.

¹⁸“God’s spirit came into me. He picked me to tell good news to poor people. He sent me to tell prisoners, ‘You will go free.’ And he sent me to tell blind people, ‘You will see.’ And he sent me to people that are in big trouble, to take their trouble away.

¹⁹He sent me to tell everybody, ‘This is the time now for God to be good to you.’”

²⁰Then Jesus closed the book, gave it back to the helper there, and sat down. Everybody kept looking straight at Jesus.

²¹And he started to teach them, he said, “You just heard me read that message that Isaiah wrote, a long time ago. Well, those things are happening right now, while you are listening to me, today.”

²²All those people started talking together. They said good things about Jesus, and they said, “Wow. He talked real good. But we know this man, he is Joseph’s son.”

²³So Jesus said, “I know what you are going to say next. You are going to use the picture talk that some people use. They say, ‘Doctor, make yourself better, to show us you know how to do it.’ And you mob will say to me, ‘Show us you know how to do powerful things. Do them here, in you own home town, like you did in Capernaum.’

²⁴Listen, this is true. If God picks a man to tell his messages, the people of his own home town don’t want him. They reckon they know him, so they will not listen to him.

²⁵Think about these 2 stories in God’s book. Remember the story about God’s man called Elijah. Our people, the Israel nation, did bad things at that time, so God punished them. He blocked the rain. No rain fell for more than 3 years, and no food plants grew in the gardens, so everybody was short of food, and they were very hungry. But God looked after Elijah, and sent him to another place called Zarephath, in Sidon country. God got a widow there to look after Elijah, and God gave that widow enough food for herself, and her son, and Elijah too. Listen, there were a lot of widows in Israel at that time, but God did not save a widow that belonged to Israel, he saved a widow that belonged to Sidon country, not one of us Israel people.

²⁷And remember the story about God’s man called Elisha, that lived a long time ago. At that time there was a man called Naaman, that belonged to Syria country. He had a bad skin sickness. But Elisha used God’s power to make him better. Listen, there were a lot of people in Israel that had a bad skin sickness at that time, but God made a Syrian man better, not one of us Israel people.”

²⁸Those people in the meeting house heard Jesus say these things and they got real angry.

²⁹They got up and pushed him out of the town. That town is on a big hill, and that mob chased Jesus up that hill. They were going to throw him off the top of the cliff there, to kill him.

³⁰But Jesus turned around and walked through the middle of that mob, and went away.