The Third Preaching Tour

150:8.1This Sab­bath was a beau­ti­ful day, and all Naz­a­reth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this for­mer cit­i­zen of their town dis­course in the syn­a­gogue. Many of the apos­tolic ret­inue had to re­main with­out the syn­a­gogue; there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Je­sus had of­ten spo­ken in this place of wor­ship, and this morn­ing, when the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the roll of sa­cred writ­ings from which to read the Scrip­ture les­son, none pres­ent seemed to re­call that this was the very man­u­script which he had pre­sented to this syn­a­gogue.

150:8.2The ser­vices on this day were con­ducted just as when Je­sus had at­tended them as a boy. He as­cended the speak­ing plat­form with the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, and the ser­vice was be­gun by the recital of two prayers: “Blessed is the Lord, King of the world, who forms the light and cre­ates the dark­ness, who makes peace and cre­ates ev­ery­thing; who, in mercy, gives light to the earth and to those who dwell upon it and in good­ness, day by day and ev­ery day, re­news the works of cre­ation. Blessed is the Lord our God for the glory of his hand­i­works and for the light-giv­ing lights which he has made for his praise. Se­lah. Blessed is the Lord our God, who has formed the lights.”

150:8.3Af­ter a mo­ment’s pause they again prayed: “With great love has the Lord our God loved us, and with much over­flow­ing pity has he pitied us, our Fa­ther and our King, for the sake of our fa­thers who trusted in him. You taught them the statutes of life; have mercy upon us and teach us. En­lighten our eyes in the law; cause our hearts to cleave to your com­mand­ments; unite our hearts to love and fear your name, and we shall not be put to shame, world with­out end. For you are a God who pre­pares sal­va­tion, and us have you cho­sen from among all na­tions and tongues, and in truth have you brought us near your great name—se­lah—that we may lov­ingly praise your unity. Blessed is the Lord, who in love chose his peo­ple Is­rael.”

150:8.4The con­gre­ga­tion then re­cited the Shema, the Jew­ish creed of faith. This rit­ual con­sisted in re­peat­ing nu­mer­ous pas­sages from the law and in­di­cated that the wor­shipers took upon them­selves the yoke of the king­dom of heaven, also the yoke of the com­mand­ments as ap­plied to the day and the night.

150:8.5And then fol­lowed the third prayer: “True it is that you are Yah­weh, our God and the God of our fa­thers; our King and the King of our fa­thers; our Sav­ior and the Sav­ior of our fa­thers; our Cre­ator and the rock of our sal­va­tion; our help and our de­liv­erer. Your name is from ev­er­last­ing, and there is no God be­side you. A new song did they that were de­liv­ered sing to your name by the seashore; to­gether did all praise and own you King and say, Yah­weh shall reign, world with­out end. Blessed is the Lord who saves Is­rael.”

150:8.6The ruler of the syn­a­gogue then took his place be­fore the ark, or chest, con­tain­ing the sa­cred writ­ings and be­gan the recita­tion of the nine­teen prayer eu­lo­gies, or bene­dic­tions. But on this oc­ca­sion it was de­sir­able to shorten the ser­vice in or­der that the dis­tin­guished guest might have more time for his dis­course; ac­cord­ingly, only the first and last of the bene­dic­tions were re­cited. The first was: “Blessed is the Lord our God, and the God of our fa­thers, the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob; the great, the mighty, and the ter­ri­ble God, who shows mercy and kind­ness, who cre­ates all things, who re­mem­bers the gra­cious promises to the fa­thers and brings a sav­ior to their chil­dren’s chil­dren for his own name’s sake, in love. O King, helper, sav­ior, and shield! Blessed are you, O Yah­weh, the shield of Abra­ham.”

150:8.7Then fol­lowed the last bene­dic­tion: “O be­stow on your peo­ple Is­rael great peace for­ever, for you are King and the Lord of all peace. And it is good in your eyes to bless Is­rael at all times and at ev­ery hour with peace. Blessed are you, Yah­weh, who blesses his peo­ple Is­rael with peace.” The con­gre­ga­tion looked not at the ruler as he re­cited the bene­dic­tions. Fol­low­ing the bene­dic­tions he of­fered an in­for­mal prayer suit­able for the oc­ca­sion, and when this was con­cluded, all the con­gre­ga­tion joined in say­ing amen.

150:8.8Then the chazan went over to the ark and brought out a roll, which he pre­sented to Je­sus that he might read the Scrip­ture les­son. It was cus­tom­ary to call upon seven per­sons to read not less than three verses of the law, but this prac­tice was waived on this oc­ca­sion that the vis­i­tor might read the les­son of his own se­lec­tion. Je­sus, tak­ing the roll, stood up and be­gan to read from Deuteron­omy: “For this com­mand­ment which I give you this day is not hid­den from you, nei­ther is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us that we may hear and do it? Nei­ther is it be­yond the sea, that you should say, who will go over the sea for us to bring the com­mand­ment to us that we may hear and do it? No, the word of life is very near to you, even in your pres­ence and in your heart, that you may know and obey it.”

150:8.9And when he had ceased read­ing from the law, he turned to Isa­iah and be­gan to read: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the poor. He has sent me to pro­claim re­lease to the cap­tives and the re­cov­er­ing of sight to the blind, to set at lib­erty those who are bruised and to pro­claim the ac­cept­able year of the Lord.”

150:8.10Je­sus closed the book and, af­ter hand­ing it back to the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, sat down and be­gan to dis­course to the peo­ple. He be­gan by say­ing: “To­day are these Scrip­tures ful­filled.” And then Je­sus spoke for al­most fif­teen min­utes on “The Sons and Daugh­ters of God.” Many of the peo­ple were pleased with the dis­course, and they mar­veled at his gra­cious­ness and wis­dom.

150:8.11It was cus­tom­ary in the syn­a­gogue, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the for­mal ser­vice, for the speaker to re­main so that those who might be in­ter­ested could ask him ques­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, on this Sab­bath morn­ing Je­sus stepped down into the crowd which pressed for­ward to ask ques­tions. In this group were many tur­bu­lent in­di­vid­u­als whose minds were bent on mis­chief, while about the fringe of this crowd there cir­cu­lated those de­based men who had been hired to make trou­ble for Je­sus. Many of the dis­ci­ples and evan­ge­lists who had re­mained with­out now pressed into the syn­a­gogue and were not slow to rec­og­nize that trou­ble was brew­ing. They sought to lead the Mas­ter away, but he would not go with them.