The title of the famous novel by North Carolina native Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, is a very appropriate heading for the episode we discover in Luke 4:22-30. In these verses, Luke tells us about our Lord’s visit to Nazareth, his boyhood home, and His appearance in the synagogue there. While it was the place where Jesus had lived for so long, His return trip did not go well, to say the very least! In fact, His visit culminated with what the late New Testament scholar Leon Morris has called, an attempted lynching.

Why was Jesus treated this way? Why was He rejected back home, by the very ones who knew Him so well? Why would His message of “good news” for the suffering and lost transform the synagogue congregation into a violent mob? Why would Jesus, as far as we know, never again go back home to Nazareth?

On Sunday, our message will once again come from this story that is found Luke 4:22-30. As we investigate what happened that day in Nazareth, our Lord’s ministry will come more clearly into focus. And we will also learn something very important about the condition of the human heart.