Luke 4 in Art: The Temptation, the Hometown Sermon, and the Verses Worth Remembering

Luke 4 covers the start of Jesus' public work: forty days in the wilderness and three temptations, a sermon in his hometown synagogue where he reads Isaiah and says it is fulfilled today, the same crowd turning on him and driving him to a cliff, a man in Capernaum freed from an unclean spirit, and a long day of healing that runs past sunset.

Tap any part to jump to it, with the paintings and the verses.

Jesus goes into the wilderness "full of the Holy Spirit" and eats nothing for forty days. Luke then adds, with great understatement, "and when they had ended, He was hungry" (4:2).

Kramskoi paints the temptation with no devil in it at all. The drama is entirely internal. It is one of the most famous religious paintings in Russia, and it hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The three temptations that follow are not really about food, power and stunts. Two of them begin the same way — If You are the Son of God — which is exactly what the voice said at the end of the last chapter. The question on offer is: prove it.

Jesus answers all three the same way, and there is a pattern in it that is easy to miss.

“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

Luke 4:4 · BSB, excerpt

The second offer is the largest one in the Bible: every kingdom in the world, in exchange for one act of worship.

“It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”

Luke 4:8 · BSB, excerpt

“It also says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Luke 4:12 · BSB, excerpt

Rohlfs painted this in 1914, the year the First World War began, when he turned increasingly to biblical subjects. In 1937 the Nazis declared his work degenerate and pulled over four hundred of his pieces out of public collections.

Where do Jesus' three answers come from?

All three come out of a single book: Deuteronomy. "Man shall not live on bread alone" is Deuteronomy 8:3; "serve Him only" is 6:13; "do not put the Lord your God to the test" is 6:16. He does not argue, improvise, or perform. He quotes one book, three times, and stops.

The wilderness setting is not an accident either. Deuteronomy is a book about Israel's forty years in a desert, being tested and failing. Jesus spends forty days in one and answers with its own words.

Why is Luke's order different from Matthew's?

Because the two Gospels are heading to different places. Matthew's order is bread, then the temple, then the kingdoms of the world. Luke's order is bread, then the kingdoms, then the temple — so that his version ends in Jerusalem (4:9).

Jerusalem is where the whole of Luke's Gospel is going. He arranges even the temptations to point that way.

And then the scene closes with a line that quietly refuses to end the story:

When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.

Luke 4:13 · BSB

Jesus returns to Galilee, starts teaching, and everyone is impressed.

Then he arrives in Nazareth, the town he grew up in. "As was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath" (4:16). Someone hands him the scroll of Isaiah, and he reads:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18–19 · BSB, excerpt

Did Jesus stop reading in the middle of a sentence?

Yes — and it is the most interesting thing in the chapter. He is reading Isaiah 61, with a phrase from Isaiah 58:6. The verse he stops on continues: "to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of our God's vengeance."

Jesus reads as far as favor, rolls up the scroll, hands it back, and sits down. He leaves the vengeance unread.

The "year of the Lord's favor" echoes Jubilee — the law proclaiming liberty and restoring ancestral land (Leviticus 25). He picks the sentence about release, and declines the one that follows.

Then, with everyone watching, he says eight words:

“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:21 · BSB

At first it goes well. They are impressed. And then comes the sentence that turns the room:

“Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”

Luke 4:22 · BSB, excerpt

It sounds like a compliment. It is not. It means: we know exactly who you are, we know your family, we watched you grow up — so who do you think you are?

Jesus does not soften it. He names the problem himself, with a proverb Luke alone records: Physician, heal yourself. Then:

“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.”

Luke 4:24 · BSB, excerpt

And then he does the thing that actually gets him thrown out. He brings up two stories from their own scriptures. The first: Elijah was sent to a widow in Sidon, not to any of the widows in Israel.

The second: Elisha healed Naaman the Syrian, and no Israelite leper (4:25–27).

Both times, the outsider got the help. He is quoting their own scriptures back at them, and choosing the two episodes in which the help went abroad.

That is the moment the mood breaks.

They got up, drove Him out of the town, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw Him over the cliff.

Luke 4:29 · BSB

Tissot went to Palestine to study the landscapes he painted. Here he imagines the hillside in Luke’s account; the painting does not establish the exact location of the cliff.

Then Luke ends the scene with one of the strangest sentences in the Gospel, and offers no explanation whatsoever:

But Jesus passed through the crowd and went on His way.

Luke 4:30 · BSB

He moves on to Capernaum and teaches there. The reaction is different, and Luke tells us exactly why:

They were astonished at His teaching, because His message had authority.

Luke 4:32 · BSB

Then a man in the synagogue shouts. The words are worth noticing: in a chapter where a hometown congregation could only manage isn't this the son of Joseph?, the first character to state plainly who Jesus is happens to be an unclean spirit — "I know who You are—the Holy One of God!" (4:34).

Jesus silences it and tells it to leave, which it does.

“With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!”

Luke 4:36 · BSB, excerpt

From the synagogue he goes straight to Simon's house, where Simon's mother-in-law has a high fever. Luke, traditionally identified as a doctor — Paul calls him "Luke, the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14) — describes the fever being rebuked like the demon was, and she gets up immediately and starts feeding people.

Then the sun goes down, and the whole town arrives.

At sunset, all who were ill with various diseases were brought to Jesus, and laying His hands on each one, He healed them.

Luke 4:40 · BSB

"Laying His hands on each one" is a small phrase doing a lot of work. Not a crowd blessed at a distance — one person at a time, for as long as it took.

By daybreak he has gone off alone, and when the crowds find him and try to keep him, he says no:

“I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well, because that is why I was sent.”

Luke 4:43 · BSB, excerpt

Here Jesus says why he must take the message to other towns. He says it to people who want him to stay.

1. The first answer: "Man shall not live on bread alone." (4:4)
2. The second: "Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." (4:8)
3. The third: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (4:12)
4. Not over: "he left Him until an opportune time." (4:13)
5. The job description: "He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor." (4:18)
6. Where he stops reading: "to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." (4:19)
7. Eight words: "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (4:21)
8. The put-down: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” (4:22)
9. The proverb: "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown." (4:24)
10. The exit: "But Jesus passed through the crowd and went on His way." (4:30)

The chapter is a job description, delivered twice and received very differently.

In the desert, Jesus is offered three shortcuts — comfort, power, and spectacle — and turns down all three using one book. In Nazareth, he says out loud what he is actually for: good news to the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind, the year of favor. It is not a programme anyone would object to in the abstract.

What they object to is the next part: that it might be for people outside the room. He brings up a Sidonian widow and a Syrian general, and his neighbours try to kill him.

And then he goes and does the job. A man with an unclean spirit, a woman with a fever, and a queue that lasts until after dark — one person at a time.

• Where we are: immediately after the baptism in Luke 3; the beginning of Jesus' public work.
• The five scenes: the wilderness (4:1–13) · the hometown sermon (4:14–21) · the hometown turning on him (4:22–30) · Capernaum (4:31–37) · the long day (4:38–44).
• Famous lines quoted here: "Man shall not live on bread alone," "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing," and "No prophet is accepted in his hometown."
• Easy to miss: all three answers come from Deuteronomy; Luke's temptation order ends in Jerusalem rather than on a mountain; and Jesus stops reading Isaiah halfway through a verse.

Visio Divina is Latin for "divine seeing" — praying with a picture instead of only a passage.

1. Look (Visio): Pick one painting above and stay with whatever your eye goes to first.
2. Meditate (Meditatio): Read the large verse beside it twice. Which word catches?
3. Pray (Oratio): Say one honest sentence. Jesus' own answers here are all short.
4. Contemplate (Contemplatio): Sit quietly for a minute. Nothing has to happen.

What are the three temptations of Christ in Luke 4?

First, to turn a stone into bread after forty days without food (4:3). Second, to receive authority over all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping the devil (4:5–7). Third, to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, on the grounds that angels would catch him (4:9–11). Jesus refuses each one with a quotation from Deuteronomy.

Why does Luke put the temptations in a different order from Matthew?

Matthew's sequence is bread, temple, kingdoms; Luke's is bread, kingdoms, temple. Luke's arrangement ends the episode in Jerusalem, which is the destination of his entire Gospel. Neither writer claims to be giving a stopwatch account, and the three temptations are the same in both.

What did Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth?

Isaiah 61, with a phrase from Isaiah 58:6, beginning "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18–19). He stopped at "the year of the Lord’s favor" — part-way through Isaiah 61:2, before the words about the day of God's vengeance — then rolled up the scroll and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Why did the people of Nazareth try to kill Jesus?

Not for reading Isaiah, and not for claiming it was fulfilled — Luke says they spoke well of him at first (4:22). The anger comes after he cites two episodes from their own scriptures in which God's help went to outsiders: Elijah sent to a widow in Sidon, and Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian (4:25–27). At that point the congregation drove him out of town toward a cliff.

What does "no prophet is accepted in his hometown" mean?

Jesus says it in Luke 4:24 about his own reception in Nazareth. The point is about familiarity: the people who watched him grow up cannot hear him as anything other than the carpenter's son. He pairs it with the proverb "Physician, heal yourself" (4:23), which only Luke records.

What is "the year of the Lord’s favor"?

An echo of the Jubilee year in Leviticus 25, when liberty was proclaimed, Israelite debt servants released and ancestral land returned. Debt cancellation belongs to the related seventh-year law in Deuteronomy 15. By reading Isaiah’s words and saying they were fulfilled that day, Jesus applies the language of release to his own work.