And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
v28-29
When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.
There's a dramatic change in public opinion during the 6 verses separating those two passages. So what were "these things" that the people had heard to fill them with wrath?
v22b-27
And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to
me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
The suggestion that they could be overlooked and God could bless someone else left them fuming. The idea that God would be interested in the Gentiles and walk away from the Jews had them wanting to kill Jesus.
This seems very primitive to us, we are disgusted by their racism. But are there any people we think it would be outrageous for God to bless? Would the suggestion that God acts irrespective of our categories of good and bad fill us with rage? The idea that a blatent sinner could receive God's mercy but an apparently good person may not is so offensive that we also might find ourselves dragging Jesus up a hill with the intention of throwing him off.