HELP HAS ARRIVED!

January 27, 2019

Rev. Mark F. Bartels

Old Testament Lesson; Isaiah 61:1-6

Epistle Lesson; 1 Corinthians 12:12-21

Sermon Text; Luke 4:14-21

The text we will look at today is taken from Luke, chapter four, verses fourteen through twenty one. This is in our Savior's name.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding area. He was teaching in their synagogues and being honored by everyone.

He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because He anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

These are your words. Heavenly Father lead us in the way of truth. Your Word is truth.

Amen

When it comes to quality level of pastors or preachers there are all kinds of different quality levels. Some pastors are boring, and some pastors are exciting to listen to. Some pastors preach long sermons, and some preach short sermons. Some pastors have sermons that have a lot of 'fluff' in them. Some pastors preach sermons that go over the top of your head. Some pastors have good illustrations in their sermon, and some have no illustrations. Pastors come in all different types of quality.

And, we may judge them by all their different ways of preaching. But, I will tell you, there are some great preachers. The greatest preacher that ever lived was Jesus Christ. He was the greatest preacher. Jesus had a full, absolute control, and power over scripture. Jesus, not just as God, but as Man, had studied scripture, and poured over scripture. He knew The Bible backwards and forwards, even at the age of twelve! The Bible tells us, when He talked to the teachers, they were amazed at His knowledge of scripture. He had a full command of scripture.

The Bible tells us He “preached as One who had authority”, because He could authoritatively speak the Word of God. People heard the Word Jesus preached, and it struck their hearts.

-Jesus was a master teacher. He often used parables, which were earthly stories, with a heavenly meaning. He knew how to apply it to people's day to day lives.

-Jesus knew the audience He was talking to. He knew when to apply The Law and strike peoples' hearts, and make their consciences realize their guilt.

-Jesus knew when to apply The Gospel, and when to tell them the good news of the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus was a powerful, powerful preacher. He was the best, the absolute best. In fact, our Scripture reading begins this way.

“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and the news about Him spread through all the surrounding area. He was teaching in their synagogues and being honored by everyone.”
Can you imagine the opportunity to hear Jesus preach? And now, in today's scripture reading look where He goes. It says, “He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day...”
Think about that for a little bit.

Sometimes pastors never get calls to bigger congregations, because they are just the type of pastor who is not the greatest preacher in the world. They will probably be in little congregations all of their lives.

Jesus grew up in Nazareth. He went to church in Nazareth. Nazareth was a tiny, little, rural town. It was out in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the saying was, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” I would venture to guess, but we can't say this with certainty, the preacher Jesus grew up listening to probably wasn't the most powerful preacher in the world. He probably didn't have great illustrations that enraptured everybody. He maybe, sometimes, spoke over people's head. Maybe there was 'fluff' in his sermons. But, the people in Nazareth probably didn't have, what maybe by early standards would be considered, the greatest preacher in the world.

That did not deter Jesus from going to church. The Bible tells us it was Jesus' custom to go to church on the Sabbath Day. Jesus traveled all over the place, and He heard lots of preachers, lots of preachers.

Sometimes, as a pastor, when you are preaching to somebody you know, somebody really theologically important in the congregation, like a visiting pastor who is known as a great preacher somewhere else, it is always a little intimidating, thinking, “I wonder what he thinks about the sermon today?”

Jesus sat in the congregation. It was His custom to go to church. He is the greatest preacher in the world, but He listened to other pastors. What did Jesus do? He gleaned from what they said. Jesus sat in the pew, and He gleaned from what the pastor preached, and taught. He wanted to hear The Word. He wanted to know The Word, and wrap it around His heart. Jesus, as God and Man in one Person, wanted to study scripture. He had a love for scripture. And so, it was Jesus' custom to go to church, and listen to The Word.

We can learn a lot from Jesus' attitude towards going to church, hearing The Word, and wrapping His mind around it, wanting to really learn God's Word. That was His custom.

Now, He shows up in Nazareth. Can you imagine being in Nazareth that day? They probably had, at best, an average preacher. And, now the greatest One in the world shows up. He is sitting in the pew. He is sitting in the pew, and the church service is going on. It is custom, or tradition, sometimes in the church during Jesus' day, if there was a visiting Rabbi to offer that visiting Rabbi to read one of the scripture lessons for the day. Jesus was in the congregation, and when it came time to read one of the portions of scripture, The Bible tells us Jesus “stood up to read”.

The pastor who was presiding saw Jesus stand up. Jesus was a recognized teacher, and preacher. And so, Jesus was invited forward, and was given a scroll to read. It was a scroll of Isaiah, the prophet, which was written seven hundred years earlier. You can imagine the whole congregation at that point must have been in rapture. “What is going to happen now?” “What is He going to do?” “What is He going to say?” “What is He going to read?”

The Bible tells us He opened up the scroll, and He “found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because He anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Back in Jesus' day, they didn't have chapter and verse numbers like we do. Those chapters and numbers were added a thousand years later, over a thousand years later, just to help people find places in scripture. And, they didn't have page numbers like we have today. It was just a scroll. It would be like taking out your phone, and instead of looking through the 'pages', just scrolling, and scrolling. But, Jesus knew exactly, exactly what He was looking for in the scroll of Isaiah. He knew exactly where to find it, because He had mastered scripture. He knew it all. He wanted to find this exact verse taken from Isaiah, chapter sixty one, and He finds it.

In our Bible we also get these little 'cheat sheets'. At the top, when this section begins, it probably says something like, “The Year of the Lord's Favor.” Well, that was not in the original, but now it is there as a 'cheat sheet', to let you know what is coming.

So, He finds this section that is called, “The Year of the Lord's Favor.” What was The Year of the Lord's Favor? Every fifty years in The Old Testament there was a special year known as The Jubilee Year, or The Year of the Lord's Favor. If you were lucky, you lived through it once, maybe twice in your entire lifetime. The Year of the Lord's Favor was this.

-If you had any debts, (and it didn't matter how big, or how huge they were), in The Year of the Lord's Favor, every debt was totally canceled.

-If you had sold any property, if you had sold your land, (and it didn't matter how many years ago you had sold it), in The Year of the Lord's Favor, that land came back to you, free. It was back to you, again.

-If you had to sell yourself into slavery, because you were in poverty, in The Year of the Lord's Favor, you were released from slavery, and you were free!

-If you had been incarcerated for something you had done, in The Year of the Lord's Favor, you were set free from prison.

It was a year where people who were in trouble got a new start so they could start over.

That is the section Jesus finds in the book of Isaiah. And here is what He reads.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because He anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives,

recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed,

and to proclaim The Year of the Lord's Favor.”

Consider the impact of what Jesus had just read to that little congregation that was sitting there listening to that great preacher read scripture. He said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because He has anointed me...”

Now, we know Jesus was anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit, at His baptism, into His office as Messiah. Here Jesus is claiming, “This is about me. I am the Messiah. The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to (listen to this) preach good news to the poor.”

Now in His ministry, we never run across a miracle where Jesus got a poor person out of physical poverty. There never was a miracle where Jesus had some poor person win the Lottery, or some poor person all of a sudden falls into all kinds of money. But, Jesus helped many poor people. The word here for “good news to the poor” is actually a word for “extreme poverty”, so extreme that you are on your knees, begging, begging for some help. Jesus preached to people who were in extreme poverty, spiritually. There were people who came to Jesus in a spiritual condition where they were on their knees, understanding, “The only, the only chance I have to get help here is the mercy of Jesus.” Like the woman who had been caught in adultery. She was in extreme spiritual poverty to the point that she knew, “If I were to die tonight, I am going to go to Hell for all eternity.” She comes to Jesus in this poverty, and what did Jesus do? He proclaims good news to her.

There were people sitting in that room, as Jesus read that message, I have come “to preach good news to the poor”, who were in poverty themselves, spiritual poverty. There were people in that room, as there are people in this room today and those who are reading this who understand spiritual poverty.

-Maybe you are on your knees before your husband, or wife, begging them to forgive you for something you have done. You know it is only mercy that is going to remove it.

-Maybe you are on your knees begging a friend, because you did something, or said something that hurt their feelings so badly. And you know it is nothing but mercy, absolute mercy that you need.

Martin Luther, when he died, had a piece of paper in his coat pocket. It had this little sentence. It said, “We are all beggars. We are all beggars. We all need absolute mercy from Jesus. We are just poor beggars.”

Jesus here reads, I have come “to preach good news to the poor.” It is The Year of the Lord's Favor. It is The Year of the Lord's Favor. All of those debts are gone. They are forgiven. They are removed, because Jesus came to take them all away. Jesus came to bear all of those debts. All of those debts were laid on Him.

“By His wounds

we are healed.”

He goes on, and said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because He anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives...”

Now, there maybe were no people in that congregation that day who Jesus preached to who had sold themselves into some kind of slavery, or captivity. But, there were plenty of 'captives' in that room, as there are today here in this room or who may be reading this, people who are 'in captivity'. It is a captivity that no army can free you from. Nobody can remove you from that captivity, because it is so hard, and so deep. There is only one Person who can free you from that captivity.

Much of this captivity is a self imposed captivity. There are people here today, or are reading this, who know they are captive to alcohol, captive. There are people here today or are reading this who are captive to drugs. There are people here today or are reading this who are captive to pornography. There are people here or who are reading this who are longing to get free from that, people understanding: “This is ruining me. It is ruining my life. It is ruining my relationships. It is ruining what I do. I wish I could be free.”

Captivity

In a sense, all of us are captive to sin. Jesus now says, “I have come to proclaim release for those who are captive. It is the Year of the Lord's Favor.” Jesus has come with good news. The great news is not only this, that Jesus paid for the guilt of your sin, and takes the punishment for your sin, but He now has given us freedom from the power of sin. It is only Jesus who can enable us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to overcome those captivities by His power, and His grace.

He goes on and says,

The Lord has sent me to proclaim

“recovery of sight to the blind.”

In the context here, this is talking about people in captivity. It is like being a captive in a dungeon somewhere. It is dark, and you can't find your way out. There are people here or who are reading this, who feel like you are in a place where you can't find your way out.

Our sins blind us, sometimes. We don't see how we are hurting someone. We don't see the impact it is having on somebody else. We don't see, “Now that I have done something wrong, how can I somehow make this right?”

Jesus says, “I have come. I have come to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind.”

Jesus, through His Word, shows us, “Yes, I have sinned.” We need to see that.

But then, He shows us the way out. The way out is through His Word, and His message of forgiveness.

Then, He goes on, and says,

He has sent me

“to set free those who are oppressed...”

The word here for 'oppressed' actually is the word 'bruised', or 'beat up'.

Jesus was preaching to people who were oppressed. There were probably people in that room who were physically oppressed. Maybe oppressed by a husband, physically beaten, and bruised. He was probably preaching to people who had been sexually abused in one way or another, as there are in this room or who are reading this. There were people who were oppressed by their own consciences, and I mean beaten up by their own consciences.

This past week was the anniversary of Row vs Wade. I happened to read about a young woman who had an abortion. She was hurt. Her conscience was beating her up, just beating her up, and she was oppressed.

Jesus says, “I have come to proclaim freedom to the oppressed. It is The Year of the Lord's Favor.”

-If your conscience is beating you up, Jesus is there to tell you, “I forgive you, unconditionally. I have died for you.”

-If somebody else is oppressing you, Jesus is there to tell you, “No matter what anybody else thinks, I love you. I have you in my arms. I care for you.”

-If that oppression lasts for a long time, Jesus is there to tell you, “Someday, someday you will be totally free from all this oppression. That is why I came. Not just to save in this life, but to save for eternity.”

That is what Jesus read.

And then it says,

“He rolled up the scroll,

gave it back to the attendant,

and then he sat down.”

Now that does not mean He sat back down in the congregation. In Jesus' day, when a Rabbi read a passage of scripture, he would then, (if he wanted to preach on it), sit down in a designated spot in front of everybody, and then he would begin to preach.

Here is how His sermon began. It says,

“The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him.

He began to tell them...”

And, all we get is the first line of Jesus' sermon. That is all we get. We don't know how the rest of it went. But, here is the first line. He said to everyone there,

“Today, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He was telling them, “The Messiah is here. I am He. I have come, and I have come to help you.”

I heard a pastor once focus on that word, “Today”.

“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

There is a Bible passage that says,

“If you hear His voice today,

don't harden your hearts.”

If you are in captivity to whatever it may be, (some sin, some trouble, what people think about you), don't wait until tomorrow.

Today.

If you have some idol in your life, (and we all do in different areas), don't wait until tomorrow.

Today.

If you have guilt that is oppressing you, don't say, “I will take care of that tomorrow.”

Today.

Today is the day.

This is The Year of the Lord's Favor.

Right now. Right now you are free, free from all guilt, free from all sin, free from captivity, because Jesus has come. And, every day, every day in the life of a Christian, not just once every fifty years, every day is a new start. Every day is The Year of the Lord's Favor, sins forgiven, loved by God out of His mercy, and it is a new start, right now, today!

Amen