"Doing What Jesus Did"

Isaiah 61:1,2 = The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, . . .

In this passage, the prophet Isaiah is predicting the type of ministry Jesus would have.

In the synagogue, 700 years later, Jesus read this passage from the scroll of Isaiah to describe His ministry.

Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth and went to the synagogue.

Luke 4:14-21 (PPT picture)

Jesus identifies himself as the subject of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Jesus’ ministry would include:

1. Preaching good news to the poor.

2. Proclaiming freedom for the prisoners.

3. Recovery of sight for the blind.

4. Release for the oppressed.

5. Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.

The synagogue was probably filled with friends, neighbors, and relatives.

The custom then was to read the word of God standing and to preach sitting down.

Jesus stood and read the words of Isaiah and then sat down to make the astonishing claim in verse 21:

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

In these verses Jesus is communicating the basic idea that salvation is here and now.

In this world we live in a very limited dimension – a time dimension with a past and a future.

When we leave this world, we move into some other dimension, believers and unbelievers alike.

We move into a timelessness with no past and no future.

Eternity isn’t lots of time.

It is no time.

Eternity has always been and will always be.

Jesus stood up in the synagogue and talked about God in the present tense, and that can be uncomfortable.

He was talking about the here and now.

It is much more comfortable to study about God and His mighty acts of the past.

Or to focus on prophecy and the Second Coming of Christ.

Studying prophecy and theology and church history are pretty safe.

It is much riskier to open your heart to God to listen and to ask, “God, what are you saying to me today?”

That plunges us into the now, which is the dimension Jesus introduces here in this passage.

If God is not here and if God is not for now, there is no God.

If we have only the God of history or the God of the apocalypse or the God of eschatology, we have no God.

Jesus said, Today this scripture is fulfilled.

The Bible is full of nows.

Now is the acceptable hour.

This is the day the Lord has made.

Today is the day of salvation.

The major application emerging from this scene where Jesus preaches in the synagogue involves the nature of his mission.

The church’s call is an extension of Jesus’ ministry.

We are called to preach the gospel to the poor, to the needy.

Independent, well-to-do people often have a false sense of security about life.

They live life as if it was really within their control.

Our culture tells people to take control of their own lives, as if they can grab life by the reins and steer their own way.

Yes, we are to take responsibility for our choices and actions.

But there are some things that are out of our control.

Many well-to-do people do not see their need.

The fact is we are all needy people.

We all have a spiritual need.

We all need a Savior.

Some people just don’t recognize that need.

Those who recognize their need are usually better prepared to turn toward God.

The gospel is not primarily a commitment to change society.

The gospel is a commitment to changing hearts.

But when hearts are changed, compassion emerges and society is changed.

Expressing genuine concern for people can become a powerful tool in evangelism.

People not only heard Jesus’ message of repentance, forgiveness, and release.

They also saw his compassion and care.

The “good news” is that Jesus saves.

Jesus saves us from sin.

When we share the good news with others, we must realize that not everyone will respond with joy to the mirror being held up to their faces.

This is because the gospel does not tickle the ears of its hearers with compliments.

It may be hard to look into a truly reflective mirror and see what is there.

Preaching the good news can be a difficult task.

Sin is confronted.

That’s the hard part.

Sin is confronted but is followed not with a message of doom and gloom but a message of hope.

God has an open door for any heart that is open.

What we need to guard against as a church is becoming selective in our choice of sins.

Sometimes the church sees abortion as bad and it is.

But somehow pride, greed, covetousness, jealousy and bitterness are tolerated.

These sins tend to be more subtle than some other sins.

To have credibility in identifying sin, the list cannot be selective or prioritized in such a way that some sins are less dangerous or more dignified than others.

Jesus challenged all sin but it seems like he spoke out on the subtle sins we tend to downplay.

If we have sinned, we need to take some responsibility for the situation we are in.

It is so easy to blame others for our problems.

But we need to recognize the sin and responsibility that we bear for the present situation.

We can blame bad parents, we can blame the other gender, we can blame a poor environment.

One can say I am who I am because of outside forces.

The truth is the one person each of us has most access to is ourselves.

The way to start fixing what is wrong in the world is by letting God change us.

Only then will we have the eyes to see how we contribute to the problems that sometimes make the world a painful place of broken relationships.

Luke 4:18b = He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed . . .

There are many people without hope, people who are in bondage and oppressed.

When we talk about hope we are talking about something that is quickly becoming a diminishing commodity.

You see you need hope for hope and what is happening is people are losing hope in hope.

We all hope things will turn out.

We all hope things will get better.

We all hope that we will remain healthy and productive.

But when tragedy strikes, people start losing hope in hope.

They become hopeless.

When one loses hope, there is no confidence that things will get better.

There is a world walking around out there in a state of hopelessness because they have lost hope in their hope.

This should not be the case for believers.

We don’t have to conjure something up to raise our hope.

Our hope does not lie in balance sheets and budgets.

The basis of our hope is rooted in our theology, what we believe about God.

Our hope comes from our faith in who God is and what God has in mind for us.

The chances are that there is somebody within our realm of influence that is currently in a state of hopelessness.

They may be headed for hell.

They may be in an abusive situation.

They may be bound by the clutches of addiction.

What can we do?

What can we do as a church?

What is our mission?

Our mission is to set other people free through the Good News of the Gospel.

We can share our hope with those who have no hope.

Luke 4:18b,19 = Jesus came to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The “year of the Lord’s favor” is reminiscent of the Jubilee, that one year every 50 years, when debts were forgiven and slaves set free.

The picture of Jubilee, a total release from all debt, wonderfully describes the essence of salvation.

The books are wiped clean, all legal obligations are removed through the grace Jesus provides.

We only need to look at Jesus’ compassionate ministry through miracles to see the sense of release that so many experienced from what he did.

These miracles are an audio-visual of deeper realities that are at the center of his work.

According to Luke 4:18, the church must care about the oppressed.

I Peter 3:15 = Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect . . .

The ministry of Jesus required supernatural power.

The ministry of the church requires supernatural power.

It will require the power of the Holy Spirit to:

preach good news to the poor,

bind up the brokenhearted,

proclaim freedom for the captives and

release from darkness for the prisoners.

If we are going to do this kind of stuff we need the power of God in our lives.

Playing spiritual games will not cut it.

We want the power of God in our lives but we don’t want to spend time in prayer.

We want the blessings of God to come down upon us but we don’t want to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We want freedom but we don’t want to talk about responsibility.

Satan will do everything he can to keep us from:

preaching good news to the poor,

binding up the brokenhearted,

proclaiming freedom for the captives and

release from darkness for the prisoners.

He will try to distract us.

He may use our finances to distract us.

He may use our pain to distract us.

He may use problems to turn us inward.

When our problems cause us to turn inward and we become concerned only about ourselves, we have been rendered useless.

Satan will use difficulties to distract us.

But sometimes he uses good things to distract us.

He may bring along circumstances so enticing that we lose our focus.

And as a result the poor remain poor,

            The brokenhearted remain brokenhearted,

            The captives remain captives,

            And the prisoners remain prisoners.

The hope that God gives us enables us to look Satan in the eye and say:

“You may have some power but you don’t have all power.”

Remember “Greater is He that is within us than he that is in the world.”

There are brokenhearted people in our community who would say to us:

“I have hit the bottom.

Society has abandoned me,

Friends have forsaken me, and

my family has forgotten me.

Why would God want to rescue me?”

The truth is God specializes in rescue missions, broken hearts and broken lives.

Ps.34:18 = The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Jesus’ ministry included:

preaching the good news to the poor,

binding up the brokenhearted,

proclaiming freedom for the captives,

and release for the prisoners.

If this was Jesus’ ministry, this should be the church’s ministry.

The church should be a place:

1. Where the lost can be found,

2. Where the hurting can find healing,

3. Where the broken can be restored,

I believe Word of Life has become such a place.

I see many of you reaching out to the lost.

I see you reaching out to the hurting.

I see you reaching out to the broken.

I thank God and I thank you for carrying on the ministry of Jesus in this place and in this community.