TODAY THIS SCRIPTURE IS FULFILLED
“And He began to say to them, Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21 NKJV).
Jesus had just been in the wilderness for forty days of
fasting. It was the Spirit of God that
led Him there. At the end of His fast
Satan tried to divert the Lord from the purpose that He had been sent to earth
to fulfill. Of course, Satan failed in
his attempts, and Jesus returned out of the wilderness "in the power of the Spirit" and entered into Galilee.
At that time Galilee was one of three provinces in Palestine -
Judea and Samaria were the other two. It
was referred to as "Galilee of the Gentiles" because of the large
percentage of Gentiles that inhabited the area.
To say that the "purer" Israelites of Judea looked down their
noses at the Galileans, and felt superior to them, would be an
understatement. When Philip first told Nathaniel
about Jesus, Nathaniel’s comment was, "Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Nazareth was the town in Galilee where
Jesus grew up, and Nathaniel couldn’t imagine the Messiah coming from such a
place.
Jesus began to preach and work miracles in Galilee, and word of
His ministry spread quickly throughout the region. It was at this point that He came to His
boyhood home of Nazareth. As He was in
the habit of doing (and as He had no doubt been doing His whole life), Jesus
went to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath day. It was customary, after the reading of the
Law, for the minister, or attendant, to deliver a portion of one of the
Prophets to someone to read and exhort on.
Jesus was offered this opportunity. “And He
came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went
into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of
the prophet Esaias [Isaiah]. And when He had opened the book, He found the
place where it was written, the
Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me
to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the
synagogue were fastened on Him.” (Luke 4:16-20).
It was no coincidence that Jesus read where He did. He found the place in Isaiah that prophesied
of His ministry. The verses that He read
fortold how God had anointed Christ to bring the gospel of salvation to the
poor, to comfort the broken hearts, to deliver the captives, to restore sight
to blind eyes, to liberate the downtrodden, and to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord. When Jesus was finished
reading, and had sat down, all of the eyes of those who were present were fixed
on Him. It was then that He spoke these
simple, but profound words, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in
your hearing.”
What power is contained in these words! Today - this very moment - God is prepared to
fulfill His promises to you! God was
announcing that the time of God’s grace and acceptance was, and still is, now! Your healing, your deliverance, and your very
salvation, are yours to receive! Could
there have been a greater message preached to these Jews of Nazareth? Could God's invitation to them have been any
clearer? With these simple words Jesus
said it all. The long awaited time when
the Messiah would appear was upon them. Isaiah
also prophesied of that day when he said, “Thus
saith the LORD, In an acceptable time
have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee.” (Isaiah
49:8). The Apostle Paul echoed this
message, writing about this dispensation of grace that Christ had ushered in to
the Corinthian Church, saying, “We then,
as workers together with Him [Christ],
beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. (For He saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation
have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day
of salvation.)” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
Now is the
time frame in which God operates. Man
would procrastinate, but God is ready now. We may think that we have to do this thing
and that thing before we can be accepted by God, but now is the accepted time, and our acceptance with God is not
based on our performance, but on what Christ has already accomplished! It is God Who is working in us (through our
Lord Jesus Christ and the office of the Holy Spirit) to give us not just a
willingness to do His will, but also the ability and strength to do it.
God is speaking to us today, and is fulfilling His promises to us
today. His Word comes to us through the
ministry of the Holy Spirit, the One Who guides us into all truth. As
Jesus said, "I have yet many things
to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when He, the Spirit of
truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not
speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come. He
shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you." (John
16:12-14). He speaks to us with a timely
word that has the potential to quicken our mortal bodies and change our
lives. Like a sower casting seed on the
ground, God plants His Word into our hearts and minds. It is up to us to believe, however, and allow
that Word to grow and mature in us. We
often feel like we are waiting for God to move in our life when it is often He Who is waiting for us to believe the Word that He
has already spoken to us.
One would think that those who were at the synagogue in Nazareth
on that day would have flocked to Jesus to be healed, delivered, and
saved. Instead, they began to reason
against Him in their hearts. "And all bare Him witness, and wondered
at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And
they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?" (Luke 4:22). They reasoned that they knew this man and
knew His parents. They couldn’t imagine
that the Messiah could have grown up right under their noses and they wouldn’t have
known it! His life didn’t seem that
remarkable to them up to this point.
The people in Capernaum had no problem believing Christ for
miracles, but the people of Nazareth were crippled by their own unbelief. Jesus called them out by saying to them, "Ye will surely say unto Me this
proverb, Physician, heal Thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum,
do also here in Thy country. And He
said, Verily I say unto you, No
prophet is accepted in his own country." (Luke 4:23, 24). We need to understand what God is speaking to
us today, and trust in it, despite what friends, family, or others may say or
think. Those closest to us may sometimes
be our biggest detractors. Those of
Jesus’ hometown were offended by Him, and He was unable to perform many
miracles among them. “And He did not many mighty works there
because of their unbelief.” (Matthew 13:58).
What Jesus said next to the Jews was what really sent them over
the edge. He said, "But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days
of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great
famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias [Elijah] sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon [a Gentile city], unto a woman that was a widow. And
many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus [Elisha] the prophet; and none of them was cleansed,
saving Naaman the Syrian [also a Gentile]." (Luke 4:25-27) By saying this, Jesus was rebuking not only
their unbelief, but also their prideful prejudice and bigotry. They thought themselves better than other
Galileans - holier and closer to God; but, in reality, they were placing
themselves beyond God's blessings. They
were jealous to think that God would bless others who they felt were unworthy,
but it was these very souls whom God found to be open and receptive to the Gospel. As Isaiah had prophesied, it was the "poor" to whom Christ had come
to preach the Gospel. "Blessed
are the poor in spirit: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3).
"And
all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,
and rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him unto the brow of the
hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong. But He passing through the midst of them went
His way, and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the
sabbath days. And they were astonished at His doctrine: for His word was with
power." (Luke 4:28-32). These friends and neighbors of Jesus and His
family were so incensed at His words that day that they would have murdered Him
on the spot if God had not delivered Him from them. By contrast, He went and taught in Capernaum
where they received His words, and were astonished at His doctrine and the
power by which He delivered it.
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