Gospel according to Luke 4

¹ Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness,

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

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

⁴ But Jesus replied, ‘Scripture says: Man does not live on bread alone'[*a].

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 the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose.

⁷ Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours.’

⁸ But Jesus answered him, ‘Scripture says: You must worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone'[*b].

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

¹⁰ for scripture says: He will put his angels in charge of you to guard you, and again:

¹¹ They will hold you up on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone.'[*c]

¹² But Jesus answered him, ‘It has been said: You must not put the Lord your God to the test.'[*d]

¹³ Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.

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 praised 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[*e]

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 has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free,

¹⁹ to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour[*f].

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 as you listen’.

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 countryside”‘.

²⁴ And he went on, ‘I tell you solemnly, 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 Sidonian town[*g].

²⁷ And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’

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 down the cliff,

³⁰ but he slipped 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 he spoke with authority.

³³ In the synagogue there was a man who was possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil, and it shouted at the top of its 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 said sharply, ‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ And the devil, throwing the man down in front of everyone, went out of him without hurting him at all.

³⁶ Astonishment seized them and they were all saying to one another, ‘What teaching! He gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and power and they come out.’

³⁷ And reports of him went all through the surrounding countryside.

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

³⁹ Leaning over her he rebuked the fever and it left her. And she immediately got up and began to wait on 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, howling, ‘You are the Son of God’. But he rebuked 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 preaching in the synagogues of Judaea.