About 750 years before Christ was born, the Prophet Isaiah predicted His coming and said that He would be a Man of Sorrows and One who would be “despised and rejected by men” as well as “acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3). Many have commented on the fact that Isaiah’s prophecies about the Lord, particularly in Isaiah 53, pointed to His cruel death on the cross. That is certainly correct.

But His sorrows include more than His death. In fact, His entire ministry, beginning with His baptism (Luke 3:22), can be described as being marked by grief. At His baptism, His Father’s voice proclaims that Jesus is His beloved Son. The Father’s words probably allude to another of Isaiah’s prophecies (Isa 50:6, 14) about His sorrows, thus pointing to the suffering the Lord will endure as He goes to the Nation of Israel.

The Lord, therefore, knows from the beginning that He will be Isaiah’s Man of Sorrows. Immediately following His baptism, the Lord is tempted by Satan in the wilderness for forty days. During that time, Jesus goes without food (Luke 4:1-13). His hunger and His time alone in that desolate place foreshadow the difficulties He will face.

After being tempted by the evil one, Jesus’ preaching and healing ministry begins in earnest. He travels around Galilee preaching in many synagogues and performing numerous miracles of healing. The Scriptures tell us that the people were amazed by His teaching. He was offering the kingdom of God to the nation and, through the powers He displayed, demonstrating that He could do what He said.

There is a moment in Luke when it appears that His life will not be as bad as one may have surmised from His baptism and temptation in the wilderness. While preaching in Galilee, Luke says that He was “glorified by all” (Luke 4:15). This doesn’t mean that they saw Him as the divine Son of God, but that they honored/praised/respected Him for what He said and did. That was an encouraging beginning.

But it was short-lived. One of His stops in Galilee is His hometown of Nazareth. The people there have heard about His preaching and healing tour. The Lord comes to town and preaches in their synagogue. Not surprisingly, He speaks on another passage in Isaiah about the coming Christ (Isa 61:1-2; Luke 4:18-19). In that passage, Isaiah says that the Christ will set Israel free from her enemies and establish the kingdom of God. The Lord then tells the people in Nazareth that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. How would those who had known Him since childhood respond to His message?

They reject Him. At first, they acknowledge that His words are gracious (Luke 4:22), but they conclude that He cannot be the Christ. Ironically, their actions are a fulfillment of one of Isaiah’s prophecies (Isa 53:3). The Christ would be despised and rejected by those to whom He came.

When the Lord tells them that they are like their ancestors who mistreated the prophets Elijah and Elisha, the people become enraged. Not only do they reject Christ; they see Him as a false prophet. The OT said that false prophets were to be put to death. The people of Christ’s hometown decide to carry out this sentence. They attempt to throw Him off a cliff, after which they evidently plan to stone Him to death.

Many have noted that these events at Nazareth foreshadow how the nation as a whole will treat the Lord. The Lord is not put to death at Nazareth. But the handwriting is on the wall.

That is how the Lord’s earthly ministry begins. The Father says that He will suffer. He goes without food. He stays in a desolate area, confronted by Satan. He goes to His hometown to announce the greatest news the people there had ever heard. His friends and acquaintances despise Him and want to kill Him. His earthly ministry, by human standards, looked bleak. Isaiah was right. He was a Man of Sorrows.

We don’t need to be professional theologians to understand why He went through what He did. He did it for us. As He walked away from Nazareth, we can only wonder what He thought. But when we proclaim His message of grace and the world opposes what we have to say, there is one thing we do know: We walk with Him.