Luke 4:22-30 The Cliff
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: July 2, 2018 Luke 4:22-30
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
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.
(Understanding the Text / Revelation of God) Jesus must have said more than the few words recorded because they all marveled at Jesus’ gracious words. Then they started thinking about the implications. Jesus was saying that He was the Messiah spoken of in this prophesy, and that would make them the poor, captive, blind, and oppressed. They would have probably admitted oppressed, but not the others. We know from the call of one of the disciples that other Jews put down the people of Nazareth, so they were probably very defensive about the slightest insult. Now, here was one of their own who had gone out into the world and become famous coming back home to insult them and tell them that He was their Rescuer. They started responding defensively by trying to put Jesus down. “He’s just Joseph’s son, not the Messiah! We knew Him when he was in diapers running around playing in the dirt.”
Jesus saw what they were doing and their unbelief. He tried to appeal to their intellect, but they were lost behind their shields of bigotry and self-defense. They had gotten it in their heads that He was uppity and that they were just as good, no, better than Him. They were not deficit, so it must be Him that had the problem. He was the one that needed healing, not them.
(Understanding the Text) He gave them the warning of Elijah and Elisha. At one time, I did not understand how this would make them angry, but now I know a little more about them. Elijah was a prophet during the time of King Ahab and Jezebel and Baal worship. Elijah had to hide with the widow because King Ahab was out to kill him. Elijah was a prophet at a time when people who were faithful to God were killed for their beliefs by their fellow Jews. This was the time of apostate Israel. Elisha was Elijah’s successor and although Ahab and Jezebel died during his time, Israel remained in its apostasy. Naaman belonged to an enemy of Israel. The little slave girl in his household that told him about Elisha had been captured during a raid on Israel. Thus, insult was added to injury. Jesus was not just saying they were blind and sick, now He was implying that they were apostate and less than a Gentile.
They refused to humble themselves and so when the truth of their spiritual sickness and apostasy was presented to them, they reacted in prideful anger. They grabbed Jesus from off the chair and rushed Him out to the nearby cliff. Their village was built in the mountains on the edge of a cliff. (Mountains might be too lofty a word, but hills seem too tame.) The SDA commentary says they probably took Jesus “to a limestone cliff about 30 or 40 ft. high at the southwestern corner of the town, and still visible today, overhanging the Maronite convent” rather than Mt. Precipice which is two miles away as many commonly suppose. In other words, they may not have been trying to kill Jesus so much as throw Him out of town not caring if He were injured or killed in the process. On the other hand, Guzik says that they were planning to stone Jesus. “Pushing someone off a small cliff was often the first step in the process of stoning. Once the victim fell down, they were pelted with rocks until dead.”
Some of Jesus’ disciples may have been with Him, but they were probably in the back. The prideful Nazarenes probably hogged all the seating near the speaker. The disciples may have tried to fight to Jesus’ side, but everything happened so fast that they couldn’t react in time. I imagine that they were at the back trying to push to the front when a calm hand touched their shoulder and a familiar voice said, “It’s time to go.” Otherwise, Jesus was facing the people of His hometown alone.
If the disciples were not with Jesus this time, it may explain why the men of Nazareth felt confident to try to gang up on Jesus and throw Him over the cliff while they did not do this the next time when Jesus came with His disciples. His second return is recorded in Mark 6:1-6. He would be rejected again. They did not try to kill Him, but their stiffnecked unbelief again meant that He could do nothing for them. Maybe knowing what had happened the last time, his disciples formed a defensive barrier around Him that let the Nazarenes know that they would have to fight to try to hurt the disciples’ master. After thinking it through, I think it likely that the disciples were not with Jesus the first time He came back home. Why did He come back a second time? I can only think that it was for His family.
(Revelation of God) Why did Jesus go to Nazareth? He had to give them the chance to be saved even though He knew that for most of them, it was hopeless. He loved them and knew that their only chance to change was if He could break through the chip on their shoulders that would not allow them to admit how poor and worthless they really were. He tried, but their hard shell of emotionalism would not let any light shine through to display their real characters to the world. He let them play out the rejection to the end. He let them attempt the murder of their Messiah because they could not accept the truth of their own characters. Then, He left.
(Understanding the Text / Application) If John the Baptist had not prepared the way, would this story have been repeated throughout Judea? Is this an example of the attitudes of stiffnecked pride prevalent in all of Judea that had to be cut through by John the Baptist? The voice crying in the wilderness had to humble the Jews’ pride so that they would be open to God’s message of love in the form of Jesus. The people of Nazareth must not have gone to listen to John and been humbled. Maybe John needed to be so weird to shock the people out of their self-righteous satisfaction with their lives and make them realize that there was another higher calling that they should be striving for. John was weird, but weird in a way that they identified with as the Old Testament prophets were weird. Jesus was someone they just couldn’t get their minds around, but John was part of their caricature of what a prophet should be. Do I have caricatures of what God is and what serving God is that keep me from understanding the messages that God wants me to receive?
(Understanding the Text) As I was trying to find out more about the cliff, I ran across an interesting comment: “Jezreel lies below you with its twenty battlefields and scenes of Deborah, Barak and Gideon’s victories, Saul and Josiah’s defeats, Naboth’s vineyard and the house of Elisha at Shunem. Literally you see a map of Old Testament history.” From <https://www.itsgila.com/highlightsnazareth.htm> Sometimes, I’ve wondered why God chose Nazareth as the place for Jesus to grow up. After all, it couldn’t have been for the people, but I think it may have something to do with the view and the isolation. The isolation I had already considered because it allowed Mary and Joseph to teach Jesus without interference from others and allowed Jesus time to contemplate spiritual things. I can even see where the contrast between the sincerity of His parents and the others of Nazareth would be helpful. However, today I realized that the view itself might have made the scriptural lessons come alive and helped put events in the context of the land itself.
(Application / Prayer) My application to myself is that the first step to being healed is humility. The second step is trust. We must believe in the good will and expertise of the healer before we will be willing to expose our rotted souls to His healing touch. Jesus had proven Himself over and over to the people of Nazareth as a trustworthy person of sympathy and love, but they refused to let Him into their hearts to heal them. You have also proven Yourself to me over and over again, yet I am so reluctant to trust You. I pray for faith.