His Mission and Ours: To Proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor
--Luke 4:14-21
World renowned evangelist Luis Palau, shares this personal testimony in his sermon “Go to the Ends of the Earth.” “My family and team have gone to over sixty countries declaring the glory of God. When I first went to the Muslim-, Hindu-, and Buddhist-majority nations, I trembled to do the right thing for the glory of God. I talked to a Hindu guru years ago, and he said, ‘Luis, don’t ever use the Western style of arguing, trying to show your religion is better than my religion or your Savior is superior. Just simply tell who Jesus is. Tell of His character. Tell what He’s like. Let people do the comparing for themselves.’ Palau concludes by saying, ‘That was great advice.’” [SOURCE: --Luis Palau, “Go to the Ends of the Earth,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 124.]
Today is our fourth message in our series “His Mission and Ours” from Luke Chapter Four and Isaiah Chapter 61. His Mission and Ours is “To Proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor.” The King James reads “To Preach the Acceptable Year of the Lord.” Our final mission as stated by Jesus is preaching, and preaching is as Luis Palau states so well, “Telling people ‘Who Jesus is, of His character, and what He is like.’” Jesus Christ is the root and heart of our preaching.
Actually this is the second time in our text that Jesus declares that His mission and ours is preaching. Going back to the middle of verse eighteen we remember He says, “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives.” We saw that the word Jesus uses in this first instance for proclaim is the word from which we get our English word evangelism. We found that second major part of our mission is evangelism. By the power of the Holy Spirit working through us we are enabled to bring people into a personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
The word that Jesus uses now in verse nineteen for proclaim literally means “to preach.” The two ministries of evangelism and preaching are closely related, like the two sides of a coin, but evangelism is accomplished in many more ways than preaching alone. We are God’s evangelists in all our relationships with persons outside of the fellowship of the Church. Friendship evangelism is one of the most effective means of bringing lost persons into the Kingdom of God. I have shared with you previously that we have a saying in Emmaus: “Make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.” That’s evangelism; and we can all do it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
That’s the ministry to which Jesus calls us, and each stage is equally important—first, make a friend; next, build that relationship by being a friend; finally, in God’s time bring your friend to Christ. I believe the Lord has enabled me to make several friends outside our Church family since moving to Kankakee. Many of these have been established through my daily exercise routine at the Kankakee Area YMCA, but one special person seems to be my barber. He and I are the same age; he has been raising a grandson just as Liz and I are raising our granddaughter Sheila.
Now we all know barbers and beauticians always make good conversation, and that’s one reason I appreciate my barber. Recently I learned that he was hurting, and it was a hurt I truly feel and understand, for I have walked in his shoes. The last visit I had with him was the closest I felt to Jesus this week. No profound words were spoken. The Lord simply led me to share with him that I cared and would be available to him to help in any way I can even in such a simple way as to offer him a listening ear. I don’t know what will happen next in our relationship, but I know that God has enabled me to make a friend and brought me to the stage of being a friend. What happens in the future is in the Lord’s hands, but I pray I can be there for my friend; that he will know I care, and that the reason I care is because Jesus cares for both of us and died on the cross to bring us eternal life. Evangelism means “to announce good news.” Our good news comes by living our lives in the power of Jesus before our friends and assuring them that Jesus loves them and so do we.
A little girl was always scared to go to sleep alone in the dark. Oftentimes she would want to sleep with her parents, but they were trying to help her conquer her fear. Meaning well, they would say, “Don’t be frightened, Elizabeth, Jesus is with you; He will protect you; you don’t need to be afraid.” Elizabeth simply replied, “Yes, but Daddy and Mommy, I want a Jesus with skin on.” Many times evangelism is simply your obedience and mine to “be Jesus with skin on” to our friends who are hurting.
When Jesus says, “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” the word He now uses literally means preaching. Yes, that includes the ministry of evangelism, but it is more. The core meaning is “to cry or proclaim as a herald.” It refers to a formal presentation of the faith, a sermon. To herald something is to “announce it loudly.” Throughout history a herald has been one who announces important notices, especially of a king or emperor. Several pictures come to mind: (1.) Two trumpeters escorting an Elizabethan herald at a Madrigal Dinner, sounding, their fanfare; the Herald, unrolling his scroll and declaring, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye; their majesties the King and Queen request the pleasure of your company to dine this evening with them at 6:00 p. m. in the Great Dinning Hall”; (2.) A New England Town Crier, ringing his bell, and declaring, “It’s 8:00 p. m. , and all is well”; (3.) John the Baptizer, the forerunner of the Messiah, “preparing the way for the coming of Jesus” as we shared during Advent.
The hymn writer Laura S. Copenhaver so eloquently expresses it; we are “Heralds of Christ”:
Heralds of Christ, who bear the King’s commands,
Immortal tidings in your mortal hands,
Pass on and cry swift the news you bring;
Make straight, make straight the highway of the King.
Jesus commissions us to “bear His commands.” Ours is an official, formal proclamation to declare the Word of the Lord publicly.
There is no more sacred, urgent calling of the Holy Spirit to His Church than that of faithfully preaching the Word. Paul speaks compellingly II Timothy 4:1-2, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, Who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage— with great patience and careful instruction.” In preaching the Word, we not only seek to evangelize the lost by “offering them Jesus,” we also affirm for one another how we are to live the Christian as Disciples who follow In His Steps. Preaching shows us how to live as Christians through correcting, rebuking, and encouraging one another by applying His Word in our daily lives.
In our post modern world, preaching the Word of God is still the highest calling of His Church. We do not do it through great rhetorical eloquence but in the power of the Holy Spirit. All Godly preaching is accomplished in the same spirit as the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 2:1-5, “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
“God does not call the powerful, He empowers everyone He calls,” therefore, preaching never is delivered in eloquence, superior wisdom, or persuasive words.” True Biblical preaching always proclaims the testimony about God and exalts no one except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Preaching is effective not because of any wise or persuasive vocabulary but because it is a demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power, and the faith of those who hear never rests on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Paul was confident that His preaching at Corinth was a demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power, because He stood on the promise of God he had proven true in I Corinthians 1:21, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” God still saves those who believe through the foolishness of preaching. Jesus Christ and Him crucified must always be the theme of the Church’s preaching. Jack Hayford, Founding Pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, declares, “I don’t perceive my call as one to protest the culture but to proclaim the Saviour.” [SOURCE: --Jack Hayford, Leadership, Vol. 14, no.2]. The Church’s mission of preaching is simply to “proclaim the Saviour.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer studied for one year in New York City’s Union Theological Seminary. He was extremely discouraged by the preaching he heard there; he chastises, “One may hear sermons in New York upon almost any subject; one only is never handled, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, of the cross, of sin and forgiveness.” [SOURCE: --“Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Christian History, no. 32]. Our mission of preaching as heralds of Christ is to proclaim His Gospel, His cross, and the message of sin and forgiveness through His blood.
Dr. Stephen F. Olford was blessed with a long and fruitful ministry on both sides of the Atlantic. Olford Ministries International in Memphis, Tennessee, is his legacy. His passion was for training pastors, preachers, teachers, and leaders in effective, expository preaching. In his book Preaching the Word of God, he pointedly reminds us: “(The preacher) cannot afford to be influenced by the reaction of his congregation, or the opposition of his critics: he is accountable to his Lord alone.
“Jesus transformed a mountainside into a Bible conference; a fishing boat into an evangelistic platform; a wellside into a counseling room; and, the shadows of evening into an opportunity to lead Nicodemus into the experience of the new birth. He preached the Word continuously and so must we.” [SOURCE: --Stephen Olford, Preaching the Word of God, pp. 14-15, 19.]
His mission and ours is to preach God’s Word. That is only effective when it is led by the Holy Spirit. By the power of His Spirit, let us “simply tell who Jesus is, tell of His character, and tell what He is like.” We are called to proclaim our Saviour; the message of His cross, of sin, and of forgiveness. As Luis Palau reminds us, our mission of preaching must always be “to do the right thing for the glory of God.” Oftentimes our message will be evangelistic as we “offer people Jesus,” but it must also be to correct, rebuke, and encourage each other in our daily, Christian walk as we live by the power of the Holy Spirit in our contemporary world. May we always be faithful to our high calling to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
