Immerse: Gospel of Luke - Flipbook - Page 25
4:14-34
Luke–ACTS
13
Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports
about him spread quickly through the whole region. He taught regularly
in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as
usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.
The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll
and found the place where this was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down.
All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. Then he began to speak
to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”
Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that
came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
Then he said, “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: ‘Physician,
heal yourself ’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those
you did in Capernaum.’ But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in
his own hometown.
“Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when
the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine
devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent
instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. And
many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only
one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”
When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which
the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, but he passed
right through the crowd and went on his way.
Then Jesus went to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught there in the
synagogue every Sabbath day. There, too, the people were amazed at his
teaching, for he spoke with authority.
Once when he was in the synagogue, a man possessed by a demon—an
evil spirit—cried out, shouting, “Go away! Why are you interfering with
