In today's text the Lord Jesus has just read the scriptures in His hometown synagogue. His words, according to v.22 gripped His hearers. After reading Isaiah 61:1-2a, the Lord Jesus declared He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy therein. The result is that salvation is available to anyone who acknowledges themselves as spiritually bankrupt.
In v.22, "All spoke well of Him." This doesn't mean they believed in Him as the Messiah, it just means that they spoke of Him in a positive way. The people who heard the Lord Jesus that day were eager for the Messiah to come and take out vengeance on their Gentile enemies. They hated their oppressors, the Romans. It bothered some of them that the Lord Jesus didn't include the last part of Isaiah 61:2 which is about the day of God's vengeance.
These disappointed Jews heard that day that salvation is available to anyone who acknowledges themselves as spiritually poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed. And they're the only ones who will be saved. These, who were increasingly being made angry, who were unwilling to confess their spiritual poverty, and bondage, they viewed themselves as deserving because they thought they were already righteous.
In v.23-24, the Lord Jesus reveals His understanding of these hometown Jews. His comments in v.23 shows He knew they wanted Him to perform miracles as He did in other cities. But, miracles never change hearts. In v.24, the Lord Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown." He was saying, "All experts are from out of town. I can see that it's hard for you to get past the fact that I grew up here and that I am Joseph's and Mary's boy."
Then, in v.25-27, to drive home His point, the Lord Jesus strategically uses stories from the Old Testament of Elijah and Elisha. These two prophets were largely hated, and rejected by the people of Israel. Elijah served around 850 B.C. At that time, there were many widows. In addition, in the days of Elijah lots of the Jews in Israel had turned to worshipping Baal. In fact, the King of Israel was married to a Gentile woman named Jezebel who was a Baal worshiper. And, Ahab was a worshiper of Baal, as well, who was the Canaanite god of fertility.
Elijah comes on the scene in 1 Kings 17. The first thing that he does is he announces a drought. The Lord Jesus says here in v.25 that there was no rain in Israel for three and a half years. The result we see at the end of v.25: "there was a severe famine throughout the land." In addition, there were lots of widows in the land, and God cares about widows. And, it was a time in Israel of apostasy, they're worshiping Baal. Then, God sends a judgment on Ahab and Israel, and the people start to die.
In v.26, we learn "Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon." The Jews didn't like hearing this story, and they are angry. And, to make matters worse, according to v.26, Elijah was sent to Gentile territory on the north coast of Israel. That area was the home of the father of Jezebel, Ethbaal, who was so devoted to Baal He named himself after Baal. Ethbaal means "Baal is alive." According to 1 Kings 17, God sends Elijah in this midst of all this famine to this widow who believes in the God of the Bible. She is a pagan Gentile widow in the midst of a pagan godless area but she believes in the true and living God. And so to her goes the prophet of God rather than to Israelites. She was desperate, impoverished and she believed.
The Lord Jesus was saying to those Jews, "You may be Jews, you may be part of Israel, you may be the people of the covenants and the people of the Messiah, but I'll tell you this, God will save an outcast Gentile widow who admits her spiritual destitution before He'll save any of you."
These hearers of the Lord Jesus are getting angrier by the moment. They don't like the fact that He's telling these stories. In v.27, we read, "And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian." Elisha followed Elijah in 850 to 790 B.C. At that time, leprosy was a major problem in Israel. Leprosy made the victim unclean, cut off from all fellowship, all social activity, cut off from the families and isolated because of the contagion that was believed to be a part of this disease. At that time, the people didn't like Elisha because they were still worshiping Baal.
Naaman was a commander-in-chief of a section known as Aram. He was a soldier who commanded a set of troops that were always raiding Israel. They would come across the border and they would terrorize and raid Israel and they would take prisoners and haul the prisoners back to Syria.
Naaman was a Gentile who had leprosy. On one of his raids he took captive a girl who became a servant in his house to help his wife. She knew about Naaman's leprosy and she told him, "You need to go find the man of God, Elisha, because God can heal you." Here is an enemy, a Gentile, somebody who has attacked and killed and plundered Israel and he's a leper. This is the outcast of all outcasts. And Elisha says to him, "The God of Israel is willing to heal you. All you have to do is go over to the river and go down seven times." So, Naaman dips down into the dirty river, and, he was healed, he was made clean!
According to v.28-29, when the people heard these stories, "they were furious. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the crest of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff." The people's pride led them further into their unbelief. These people were so angry with the Lord Jesus, they could not hear that if they humble themselves like a Syrian leper, unless they see themselves as no better than a pagan Gentile woman, unless they see themselves as no better than outcasts, they aren't going to get saved.
The people grabbed the Lord Jesus and led Him to the hill on which their city had been built. They meant to throw Him off the hill but they were not successful. These people were so entrenched in their self-righteousness, so unwilling to see their sin that when the Messiah came, they tried to kill Him. There's only one reason why people who know the truth about Jesus do not believe. It is because they do not see themselves as the spiritually poor, blind, and broken. God offers nothing to people who do not recognize their own need of a Savior, except judgment.
