Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in His home-town of Nazareth.  It was going well.  All the local people were impressed by the local carpenter, the son of Joseph or so they thought (Luke 4:22).  But Jesus knew there was another side to them.  In the same way He had exposed Satan's evil intentions during the confrontation in the desert (Luke 4:1-13), Jesus exposed the shallow vanity of the congregation.  He knew that they really wanted to see Him do some miracles and to get Him to resolve their problems.  After all, He was their local man; surely He owed it to His local community to help them.  Perhaps they also wanted the reflected glory of saying that He was 'their' Jesus.

Whatever illusions they may have had, Jesus deliberately shattered them.  After telling them what they were thinking (Luke 5:22), a trademark of His ministry (and still is today), He reminded them how God selected Gentiles to receive blessing and not Israelites.  The widow in Zarephath (a Mediterranean coastal village eight miles south of modern Sidon) was a poor single mother who received miraculous food provision and healing for her son under Elijah's ministry (1 Kings 17:8-16) - she was a Gentile.  So too was Naaman, the Syrian army commander who was healed under the ministry of Elisha (2 Kings 5:1-19).  Jesus then shocked them by saying that no Israelites had comparable treatment.  As we shall see in the following verses (Luke 4:28-30), they were furious.

In some cultures, it is normal to demand help from relatives, friends and local folk.  However, Jesus' mission was not to play tribal games and please the crowd, but to teach the truth.  At the outset of His ministry, He effectively said that He had no special obligation to Nazareth, but He would go wherever Father God sent Him ... ultimately that was to the cross. His mission was to the whole world, including the Gentiles (John 10:16).  The widow and the soldier had one thing in common - they believed God's Word, while others in Israel had become faithless.  That point exposed the synagogue congregation as their approving smiles turned to lip-curling anger: as we shall see in the next verse.

Let us make no mistake. Jesus cannot be sweet-talked into playing our games.  He is the Lord, and not us (Isaiah 42:8).  He does not dance to our tune; we are to march to His command.  Where our agenda and His are different, He ignores ours.  But when we willingly cooperate with His mission, we will get blown out of our comfort-zone and into His adventure for the world.  Being a Christian is not about getting Jesus to bow to our demands, but for us to willingly serve Him.  The sooner we learn that truth, the simpler life will become!