Big Idea: Back in Nazareth, Jesus sets out on his mission of deliverance, but his own townspeople in Nazareth reject him because of his vision for the salvation of all people everywhere, which includes the Gentiles.

Understanding the Text

Jesus’s return from the wilderness area marks the beginning of his public ministry, which will be focused in his home province of Galilee until he sets off for Jerusalem in 9:51.

Mark and Matthew record a single visit to Nazareth, which they place later in their narratives. Luke not only tells the story in much more detail, and with his typical focus on Jesus’s mission of deliverance, but also has inserted it at the very beginning of his account of Jesus’s public preaching to act as a sort of frontispiece (a decorative illustration facing a book’s titl…