Daily Bible Reading 9th May 2026 // Luke 4:14-30
14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marvelled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” 23 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 home town as well.” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his home town. 25 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, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 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.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 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. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.
The wonder (22) with which the Jews at first heard Jesus' words and testimony quickly turned to opposition and violence. Thus early, our Lord is seen to be a divider of men, who came not to send peace but a sword. At first reading this would seem to be a truly extraordinary reaction in face of such an announcement and proclamation of good news; but it is in fact in keeping with the whole testimony of the New Testament. The gospel is a disturbing force, and it touches men somewhere in the raw - in this case the Jews' hide-bound prejudice and exclusiveness vis-à-vis the Gentiles. One thinks of Paul's experience in Acts 22:21, where the Jews were quite prepared to listen to his testimony until he mentioned the Gentiles. Jesus' words in 25-27 have an impressive prophetic ring about them, for they describe what in fact proved to be so true of the Jews as a people, not only in Biblical times, but down the ages until now. John sums it up well in the Prologue to his gospel (1:11): 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not'. One wonders, however, whether the real heart of this opposition shown here lies in the fact that they failed to recognize who Jesus was. 'Is not this Joseph's son?', they asked. This was purely an earth-bound view of Him; faith must surely have seen that anyone making such a claim as He did - that the Scripture just read had been fulfilled in His reading of it - could only be the Messiah Himself, and the Son of God. It was this that made them stumble and, stumbling, react as they did, in bitter hostility against Him. They did not see the truth; they would not see it, because 'seeing' it would have proved too costly and caused too great an upheaval in their lives. As we say, there are none so blind as those that will not see.