Luke - Chapter 4

¹ Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert,

² for forty days being put to the test by the devil. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry.

³ Then the devil said to him, 'If you are Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.'

⁴ But Jesus replied, 'Scripture says: Human beings live not on bread alone.'

⁵ Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world

⁶ and said to him, 'I will give you all this power and their splendour, for it has been handed over to me, for me to give it to anyone I choose.

⁷ Do homage, then, to me, and it shall all be yours.'

⁸ But Jesus answered him, 'Scripture says: You must do homage to the Lord your God, him alone you must serve.'

⁹ Then he led him to Jerusalem and set him on the parapet of the Temple. 'If you are Son of God,' he said to him, 'throw yourself down from here,

¹⁰ for scripture says: He has given his angels orders about you, to guard you, and again:

¹¹ They will carry you in their arms in case you trip over a stone.'

¹² But Jesus answered him, 'Scripture says: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'

¹³ Having exhausted every way of putting him to the test, the devil left him, until the opportune moment.

¹⁴ Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in him, returned to Galilee; and his reputation spread throughout the countryside.

¹⁵ He taught in their synagogues and everyone glorified him.

¹⁶ He came to Nazara, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read,

¹⁷ and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,

¹⁹ to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.

²⁰ He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him.

²¹ Then he began to speak to them, 'This text is being fulfilled today even while you are listening.'

²² And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips. They said, 'This is Joseph's son, surely?'

²³ But he replied, 'No doubt you will quote me the saying, "Physician, heal yourself," and tell me, "We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own country." '

²⁴ And he went on, 'In truth I tell you, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.

²⁵ 'There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah's day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land,

²⁶ but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a town in Sidonia.

²⁷ And in the prophet Elisha's time there were many suffering from virulent skin-diseases in Israel, but none of these was cured -- only Naaman the Syrian.'

²⁸ When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged.

²⁹ They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him off the cliff,

³⁰ but he passed straight through the crowd and walked away.

³¹ He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath.

³² And his teaching made a deep impression on them because his word carried authority.

³³ In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil, and he shouted at the top of his voice,

³⁴ 'Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.'

³⁵ But Jesus rebuked it, saying, 'Be quiet! Come out of him!' And the devil, throwing the man into the middle, went out of him without hurting him at all.

³⁶ Astonishment seized them and they were all saying to one another, 'What is it in his words? He gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and power and they come out.'

³⁷ And the news of him travelled all through the surrounding countryside.

³⁸ Leaving the synagogue he went to Simon's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in the grip of a high fever and they asked him to do something for her.

³⁹ Standing over her he rebuked the fever and it left her. And she immediately got up and began to serve them.

⁴⁰ At sunset all those who had friends suffering from diseases of one kind or another brought them to him, and laying his hands on each he cured them.

⁴¹ Devils too came out of many people, shouting, 'You are the Son of God.' But he warned them and would not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.

⁴² When daylight came he left the house and made his way to a lonely place. The crowds went to look for him, and when they had caught up with him they wanted to prevent him leaving them,

⁴³ but he answered, 'I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns too, because that is what I was sent to do.'

⁴⁴ And he continued his proclamation in the synagogues of Judaea.

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