SCRIPTURE: Luke 4: 18-19.
Jesus said
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind.
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
OBSERVATION:
Jesus came to Nazareth and ministered in the synagogue, wherein He declared here that He is the Messiah, and He came to fulfill this prophesies from Isaiah 61. This passage is covering the very meaning of why He came. That His mission and His main purpose are to:
Firstly, He came to bring good news to the poor.
We maybe thinking why to the poor? Jesus pertains both poor in society, and poor in spirit.
Luke 6:20 says “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God.
Poverty does not solely reflect a lack of financial resources. But it also reflects, powerlessness, lack of position, lack of identity, lack of authority and voice. When Jesus stands before the synagogue and announces he will bring good news to the poor. He is effectively proclaiming that
The silenced will now have their own voice.
The ignored will have God’s attention.
He came to give those who have lost their position, their identity and to bring back the authority we have lost in His kingdom.
Secondly, Jesus came to heal us who are poor in spirit. These are all of us broken-hearted.
And so, anyone who is the midst brokenness and despair, let us remember that Jesus came to heal our brokenness.
Its like a remake of leftover food, all moms/chefs can relate to this. You know when you open your fridge and collect all leftovers and make something new out of it
Like either turning it to a delicious pasta sauce, yummy fried rice, or to a sumptuous soup.
And then give a new brand name on it.
You know, Same thing as well for us.
Jesus can pick all our leftovers, our broken pieces, turn our broken pieces into His masterpiece
and then us a brand new name.
A new name as an adopted child of God.
Thirdly, He came to proclaim liberty to the captives. There is none of us who hasn’t struggled with something that has not gotten the best of us. Either a habit, an addiction, a circumstance, a financial crisis. Whatever it is, it is likely something that tendency to holds us in its grip, and take away the best of us. But Christ has set us free. It is through Jesus Christ that we are set free and delivered from all bondages and strongholds of sin.
And our fourth one is, Jesus came to recover the sight of the blind.
Blind people can only see darkness which can make them immobilized.
The Blind represent people who are blinded by the truth and paralysed by the enemy’s lies.
But Jesus says He is the Light of the World. And that He is the Truth, the Way, and the Life. He will open our eyes to the truth.
There is distinct difference between what kind of truth the Gospel is telling us Versus the World or Being religious.
Religion the World says “What we do determines who we are”
If you fail, then you are failure. If you succeed, then you are successful. If you do this, then God will give you this.
And Lastly, He came to Proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
The year of Jubilee. All the Jews, saducees who are listening to Jesus at that time knows the meaning of Jubilee. Back in the Leviticus 25, God established a tradition called the Year of Jubilee . Every fiftieth year Israel was to take the whole year off, cancel all debts, return to its original owners, all family property that had been sold. Proclaim liberty throughout the land. It is foreshadowing our liberation through Christ. The cross cancels all our debts. Jesus is saying Christ have set us free from wages of our sins.
This passage is completely fulfilled by Christ, through His victory on the cross.
Let’s stop living under the shadow of our past, for it will just paralyze us.
Remember that He has delivered us from destruction, from the chains of pains from the past, vices and bondages.
He can liberate us from power of depression, anxiety, from our dark past and set us free from our own shackles and captivity. He is our greatest Bondage Breaker.
When we are in Christ, the power of sin no longer have any grip on our lives.
When we are in Christ, sin does not have the authority to rule in any area of your life.
When we are in Christ, you have the choice to live free in Him.
The moment we received Christ we have now the position, and authority in His Kingdom being a child of God. Let us access that authority. Let us remember our new identity in Christ. Let us choose to live free through Christ, and access that freedom by surrendering to His Lordship.
