This week the other shoe drops. Last week Jesus spoke in a Nazareth synagogue and now we will hear the people’s reaction to his message.

A hint: they will try to throw him off a cliff.

To see why, look at how bold Jesus was. First he searched out a prediction of the Messiah from the book of Isaiah. Here are the words he read in the synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

The people loved him for this. But then he applied the reading to himself!

He said, “today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Gospel)! "This scripture passage" was known to all as referring to the Messiah. They saw clearly that Jesus was actually claiming to be the Messiah!

The synagogue was stunned. He had grown up in their midst. He was the carpenter’s son, the one they used to see weekly in this same synagogue. Why in the world would a local man come up with such a bizarre story?

We already know why.

At the Jordan river, when he had received baptism, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him and a voice from the heavens said, “You are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21-22)!

The Father’s voice, out loud! Jesus’ public ministry had begun. He was openly the anointed servant of God.

Immediately he fled into the desert to brood and to pray. His divinity formerly had been lodged mainly at the depths of his human awareness. Now it had to be drawn up into consciousness and dealt with.

He was human, as well as knowing the divine answer deeply, and so he was attracted to the wrong answers too, ones suggested by the devil. Turn his divinity into self-satisfaction, into power, into reputation. He was authentically tempted. But each time he refused.

Now, as Luke says, he came back to Nazareth in the power of the Spirit. It became obvious why he had selected that passage from Isaiah in the synagogue. Isaiah's words were about him! He had heard it from God at his baptism.

How were the Nazarenes supposed to have any understanding of this? He looked like a madman claiming equality with God! To them he was simultaneously insulting his home town, his people, his country Israel, and God.

  “He is out of his mind!” they shouted.

Jesus tells them that neither Elijah and Elisha, great prophets, could work their miracles in Israel, but went elsewhere to do them. “No prophet is accepted in his own native place,” he says.

Suddenly he is claiming to be one of the prophets!

They pull him out to a cliff to throw him off, planning to annihilate such a blasphemer. He escaped somehow but now the ball was in motion. This scene—and it is the first one described in his public ministry—forecasts his remaining life. First loved and accepted, then led to his death.

In the coming months we will see him carry out all of this. What will he do? We must find out, because we are to be filled with the same Holy Spirit.