WWUTT 2297 Physician Heal Thyself (Luke 4:22-30)

Jesus convicted the hearts of people in his own hometown and they hated him for it. How do you respond whenever you are convicted of sin? Do you point the finger at someone else or do you repent when we understand the text?

This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible commentary that we may be equipped for every good work in Jesus Christ our Lord. Please tell others about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

Jesus Reads Isaiah in Nazareth and the Town Responds

All right, y 'all, we're finishing up this section where Jesus teaches in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. And instead of going back over his teaching from Isaiah 61 as he read from the scroll, I'm gonna pick up right at the end of that.

So after he said, "'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'". This is Luke 4, verses 22 to 30. Hear the word of the Lord. "'And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

And they said, "'Is not this Joseph's son?'. And he said to them, "'Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, "'Physician, heal yourself. "'What we have heard you did at Capernaum, "'do here in your hometown as well.'.

And he said, "'Truly I say to you, "'no prophet is acceptable in his hometown, "'but in truth I tell you, "'there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah "'when the heavens were shut up three years and six months "'and a great famine came over all the land.

"'And Elijah was sent to none of them, "'but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon "'to a woman who was a widow. "'And there were many lepers in Israel "'in the time of the prophet Elisha, "'and none of them was cleansed, "'but only Naaman the Syrian.

"'When they heard these things, "'all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. "'And they rose up and drove him out of the town "'and brought him to the brow of the hill "'on which their town was built, "'so that they could throw him down the cliff.

"'But passing through their midst, he went away.'". So once again, Jesus is in the synagogue, his home synagogue, where they knew him, where he grew up, where he sat and listened to teaching from the age of five.

And as I mentioned yesterday, from the age of 13, it was mandatory that you had to be there in the synagogue to listen to the teaching. But now he's the teacher, given the scroll, and he reads from Isaiah 61, and basically says to them, this is about me.

This passage has been fulfilled in your hearing. And then verse 22 says that all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. So it's possible that Jesus continued teaching from there.

It wasn't just reading that passage, two verses from Isaiah 61. Of course, they wouldn't have had the chapter and verse markers, but you get it. That's how we mark it. That's how we know it to be. And then saying, today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

It wasn't just like this awesome mic drop moment. For us, it would have been because we know who he is. We know what he will go on to fulfill and do, dying on the cross, rising from the dead. We kind of have, we have that advantage over the rest of them sitting there in the synagogue.

We know the rest of the story, but it wasn't just this mic drop moment like this. Jesus probably continued teaching since it makes a statement there about his gracious words. Now, it was certainly gracious enough for him to read that passage and reveal to them that this passage has therefore been fulfilled.

You're hearing it. You're seeing it right now. I am the one that Isaiah was talking about. So that's certainly gracious of Jesus to say that to them, but he probably continued on and taught them other things.

So they marveled at his gracious words that were coming from his mouth, it says. And they said, is not this Joseph's son? So they're amazed at what he says, but they're like, where does he get this teaching?

We've seen that in the other two gospels. In Matthew and in Mark, it's said there as well. Where does this man get this teaching that he has? Is this not Joseph's son? Is Mary not his mother? Are not his brothers and sisters with us?

So he's not a schooled rabbi in the temple teaching along with the rest of the teachers of the law and the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He's not among them. So how does he have such learning in the scriptures?

Jesus is probably sitting there talking to them and probably even quoting it to them without having a scroll right there in front of him. He's already rolled it up and handed it back to the attendant.

And yet he continues to quote scripture to them. I'm speculating here. I mean, we don't know exactly what it was he continued on teaching them, but it was obviously something because they're amazed at the learning of this man.

But it's Joseph's son, he's a carpenter. He's not one of the scribes or the teachers of the law in the temple or in any other synagogue. And he said to them, this is verse 23 now. He said to them, doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, physician heal yourself.

Now it's interesting to note that this is the only gospel in which Jesus says this of the four gospels. And by the way, the gospels, it's God's gospel. We'll say gospel of Matthew, gospel of Mark, so on and so forth.

But it's really the gospel according to Matthew or the gospel according to Luke. It's not Luke's gospel. I just say that for the sake of brevity, but this is the gospel of Jesus Christ really is what it is that we're reading.

Luke being the one who is presenting this gospel is the only one who uses or references that proverb physician heal yourself. And if you'll remember back to our introduction of the gospel of Luke, the gospel according to Luke is that Luke is a physician.

Paul refers to him as such in one of his letters. He's a doctor. And so Luke happens to quote the time that Jesus says, physician heal yourself. Now Jesus calls it a proverb, where does it come from? Well, it's not a proverb as in, it's quoted from the book of Proverbs.

It was something that was likely said among the Jews, a common saying that they use during that time. It's not in any of the Greek writers. So we don't have it in Greek, must've been something that was more common specifically to Hebrews.

And so Jesus quotes it, physician heal yourself. You'll say this to me. Why is it that Jesus responds with that? Physician heal yourself, meaning, hey, heal us. We're your hometown folks. We're the people that you grew up with.

So if you're gonna go about healing anywhere, like what you did in Capernaum, well, you gotta do it here. You gotta heal us. We've got sick here. We wanna see some miracles from you. So that's what Jesus says to them, knowing their hearts, knowing that their amazement at him is not genuine in the sense that it's not worshipful.

They don't see him as the son of God. They're not about to consider him their savior, even though Jesus had just read from Isaiah 61 and said to them, this scripture has been fulfilled in your midst. He's presenting himself to them as the savior.

He is the Messiah that they are waiting for. And they marvel at his words, but don't seem to make the connection. They're amazed at his teaching, but their hearts are not in the right place. And so Jesus challenging them and really kind of exposing to them that their hearts are not genuinely desirous of a work of God among them.

So he says to them, doubtless, you will quote to me this proverb, physician, heal yourself. What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. That's still a quote from Jesus who is saying what they are thinking in their hearts.

Physician, heal yourself. What we've heard you did at Capernaum, you gotta do it here. You gotta help us out here. Let us see it here. Why would you not care for your own? But Jesus said, truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

Prophets Sent to Outsiders in the Days of Elijah and Elisha

Now we've seen this previously in Matthew and in Mark. Though it happens a little bit later in Jesus' ministry, Luke is putting it right here at the beginning. But in Matthew, it's in chapter 13. It's after Jesus does the teaching on the parables.

And then he goes to his hometown and he teaches in the synagogue, although Matthew doesn't say exactly what it was that Jesus taught. Luke is telling us here that he taught from Isaiah 61. And it was the same sort of thing there in Matthew and in Mark where the people say, is this not Joseph's son?

Although we have more words that are added there. Is not his mother Mary? Are these are his brothers? These are his sisters? Where did this man get all these things? And they took offense at him. Matthew 13 57, Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and in his own household.

And then is recorded in both Matthew and Mark. He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. They don't mention this attempt to try to kill Jesus. That's only in Luke's gospel, but it's still the same scenario, same saga that is happening here.

And Jesus saying to them, a prophet is not acceptable in his hometown. You might be amazed at what I'm teaching. You've probably heard miraculous things that I've done in other places, but you're not really accepting of me.

You don't really know who I am. And he's proven it to them by reading from Isaiah 61 and telling them who he is. And yet they're still clueless to it. They just want a miracle. They are thinking with their flesh and not with the mind of God.

And so Jesus teaches them further from the Old Testament. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months. Okay, before continuing this, this is about Elijah and Elisha, prophets in Israel in first and second Kings.

Elijah's ministry finishes first Kings and then Elisha's ministry is at the beginning of second Kings. That's kind of the dividing point. Elijah challenged Ahab and Queen Jezebel. And this would have been in about the ninth century BC.

So this is over a hundred years before Isaiah. And then Elisha succeeded Elijah's ministry. And so why is Jesus telling them this? Why is he even bringing this up? Because there's no obligation upon a prophet to even have to help his own people.

Because in the examples that Jesus gives, the people that Elijah and Elisha helped weren't even Israel. They prophesied to Israel, but this whole physician heal thyself concept, there is no obligation upon a prophet to have to do that.

They did what the Lord told them to do. They did the will of God. And the will of God was to command the people to repent, to turn from their wickedness back to the Lord. That's what both Elijah and Elisha did, that they had no obligation to heal their own people.

Who did they heal? How did they show miraculous signs and wonders? Well, Jesus goes on to tell them, it was people not in Israel, but outside of Israel. I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the day of Elijah.

When the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them. God didn't send Elijah to any of those widows to give them relief, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow.

Where is that? It's way up in the Northwest above Israel. Yeah, not like so far outside of Israel, but it wasn't within Israel. It's more like modern day Lebanon was where Jesus went. So he's helping someone, a woman, a widow who was not even in Israel.

And then verse 27, Jesus gives the second example, this one concerning Elisha. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha. And none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

Yeah, man, it was a commander of the armies of a nation that were Israel's enemies. And that's who Elisha healed. This is in second Kings chapter five, Naaman commander of the army of the king of Syria was a great man with his master and in high favor because by him, the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper, which is crazy. I mean, this successful general, but he's a leper. He has to keep himself covered whenever he goes into battle so that nobody will see how sick and leprous he is.

Now, the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria, he could cure him of his leprosy.

So Naaman went in and told his Lord, this would have been the king of Syria, this is what the girl from the land of Israel had said to me. And the king of Syria said, go, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.

The king wants his most successful general to be healed. So he went taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6 ,000 shekels of gold, 10 changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant that you may cure him of his leprosy.

And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God to kill and make alive that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.

But when Elisha, the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him. Elisha doesn't even approach him and talk to him personally. Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.

It's kind of a foreshadowing of baptism going on here, right? The very place where John the Baptist would later baptize 900 years later. That's the place where Naaman is being told to go and cleanse himself of his leprosy.

But Naaman was angry and he went away saying, behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon me by name, by the Lord, his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.

Are not Abana and Farpa the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? And I don't think he's just necessarily speaking of his loyalty to Damascus.

They probably were cleaner rivers than the Jordan. So he turned and went away in a rage, but his servants came near and said to him, my father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it?

Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word the man of God had said to him and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.

And it's a foreshadowing of the cleansing that we receive in Christ. Seven, the number seven even has significance. It doesn't mean that we get saved seven times or we need to be baptized seven times or anything of the like.

Seven is a number of completion. And so Naaman dips himself in the water seven times and he's completely healed. He totally obeyed. He was totally healed. And whenever we are cleansed by Christ, it is a total cleansing, not by our obedience, but because of God's mercy.

He has shown grace to us and he cleanses us of our sin so that we are clean before God. We are righteous before him. It says here that his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. We're born again.

We're made new before God because of his mercy, the work of the Holy Spirit upon us, our faith in Jesus Christ who forgives our sins through his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

By him, we are justified. And so just as this was with Naaman, with his physical flesh, so it is with our spiritual sickness washed away by the precious blood of Jesus. Now, of course, that's not the point that Jesus is raising here in Luke chapter four.

He's pointing out to them, pointing out to the people there that prophets were sent even to people outside of Israel. They were helped while Israel continued to languish because they were being punished.

So Jesus is highlighting there. Again, he's highlighting for them that your hearts are not right. I can't do anything here for you in any sort of way that is gonna change your heart, which is really what you need.

And you see how this account is even compatible with the other two accounts that we've got in Matthew and in Mark, where it says Jesus could do no mighty work there. In Mark, it says that he healed a few people.

So he did do some miraculous things, but he couldn't do anything in such a way that would make the people believe. Their hearts were already wrong. They wanted Jesus to do something miraculous to appease their flesh.

It was not gonna change their heart. And so when they hear these things in verse 28, when they hear that Jesus is saying to them, the people outside of Israel are more worthy of my help than you are. And then all in the synagogue are filled with wrath.

And they rose up and they drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down the cliff. Now, I've read some things about the landscape of Nazareth and some of the objections that skeptics have made to this particular passage.

They will say that there's this big mountain that's like two miles away and it must've been there that Jesus was taken. No, it's too far away. It's not in Nazareth anymore. And the town would not have been built on that hill if it's two miles away.

But there are some land formations around that area that have been heavily eroded by the waters that will come off of mountains like that. Nazareth is actually in a valley, so it's not up high. So how is it that there's a cliff in a valley?

Well, these waters run down the mountain into the valley and they erode the land on which Nazareth is built, the piece of land that Nazareth, the town, would have been upon. And there are there to this day, you can still see them in the historical location of Nazareth where there are cliffs and drop-offs, some of which 40 and 50 feet high.

And so it was probably to that spot that they took Jesus and were ready to throw him over the edge. And this is not a form of execution that's common in Israel. I mean, you're probably used to in the law, the Lord saying stone him to death with stones.

There's nothing in the law that says throw him off of a cliff. Although we do have an occasion in 2 Chronicles 25 when some Edomite prisoners were executed by being thrown off of a cliff. I don't know that that's necessarily what the people had in mind here.

It's kind of like they're just looking for the most available thing to take care of this man who's telling us he's not gonna do anything for us, but instead speaking of us as if we were evil like in the days of Elijah and Elisha.

So they take him to the edge of the cliff, they're gonna throw him down the cliff. Verse 30 says, but passing through their midst, he went on his way. They're ready to throw him off the cliff. He just walks through them and strolls off.

It was almost like to say, there, there's your mighty work. You can't do anything to me. And this was gracious of Jesus to do this because it's far more merciful than what they really deserve. They're trying to kill the son of God and yet Jesus just walks off and avoids them.

But how is it that we respond to conviction like this? Whenever the Holy Spirit convicts our hearts, whenever a preacher says a word, if he's preaching from the Bible, whenever we read scripture and we read something that convicts us, how do we respond to it?

Are we gonna respond with anger? Are we gonna try to make excuses, point the finger somewhere else? No, no, this made me do it or that person or whatever else. Instead of taking responsibility for our actions and repenting before God.

Here, Jesus convicted the hearts of people in his hometown. How did they respond? They responded by lashing out with anger, pointing the finger back at God, pointing at Jesus, not realizing they're pointing at God, of course, but that's what it was and saying, no, this is you and we're gonna take care of you.

Would we respond just like people who had put Jesus to death, who wanted to kill him and those that did kill him, would we have that same reaction? Or do you listen to the conviction of the Holy Spirit and turn from your sin and ask Jesus for forgiveness?

Maybe even tell somebody about your sin for James chapter five says, confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. We need to be cleansed by Christ, forgiven of our sins in only a way that Christ can give.

Let us even be diligent to pray as David did, Lord, search my heart, find any hidden faults within me so that I may be blameless before you. Let us desire to walk in holiness as Christ has called us to live upright and godly lives in this present age.

Prayer for Repentance and Cleansing

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here in this saga that has happened in Nazareth with Jesus convicting the hearts of the people in his own hometown. They respond with anger. May that not be our reaction whenever we are faced with our sin.

Even if our sin has to be exposed to us, we don't try to make excuses or dodge or point the finger at someone or something else. We're ready to take ownership for our sins and say before God, I have rebelled against you.

I am worthy of death. Cleanse me that I might be made new. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Closing Announcements and Sign-Off

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Gabriel Hughes. Pastor Gabe is the author of 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says, examining some of our most common Christmas beliefs and traditions and bringing them back to the truth of scripture.

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