THE CHRISTIAN JUBILEE.
Luke 4:18-19 (complete).
Bible reading: Luke 4:14-21.
1. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:18a).
Jesus was “anointed” by the Holy Spirit following His baptism by John (Luke 3:21-22). After this, ‘Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost’ was ‘led by the Spirit into the wilderness,’ where He was ‘tempted by the devil’ (Luke 4:1-2). Today’s reading commences with Jesus returning ‘in the power of the Spirit’ into Galilee, and ‘teaching in their synagogues, being glorified by all’ (Luke 4:14-15).
The passage passes on immediately to the so-called inaugural sermon of Jesus in His hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). The thrust of this sermon was to set out His Messianic agenda (Luke 4:18-19). However, when Jesus’ neighbours heard His claim, ‘This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears’ (Luke 4:21), they could not accept it (Luke 4:22-24), and violently rejected Him (Luke 4:28-30).
2. “He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18b).
Luke 4:18-19 is a perfect statement of the gospel, the “glad tidings” of what Jesus came to do. The segment of Scripture read by Jesus (Isaiah 61:1-2a) shows how Messiah was coming to set right the harm that sin has done. Each of the pictures in this passage portrays both sin, and sin’s inevitable consequences.
As such, Jesus conducted literal physical healings, but the much greater work was not just to undo sin’s consequences, but to deal with sin itself! In the Sermon on the Plain, ‘Blessed be ye poor’ (Luke 6:20) stands over against ‘woe unto you that are rich’ (Luke 6:24). However, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of ‘the poor in spirit’ (Matthew 5:3) - which we take to mean those who recognise their own spiritual poverty before God, and their need of God.
Jesus said, ‘They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.’ Jesus did not, after all, come to call (those who think they are) righteous, but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:31-32). It is sin that impoverishes, and the healings illustrate Jesus’ authority to forgive (Luke 5:24).
John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus whether He is really the One, or whether they should look for another (Luke 7:19). To whom Jesus replied, ‘Tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached’ (Luke 7:22).
3. “He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted” (Luke 4:18c).
We are all familiar with the images of human tragedy in war torn parts of the earth, in areas of natural disasters, and in the midst of epidemics and pandemics. Or with the sound of inconsolable weeping at a funeral. One phrase that we often hear is ‘innocent’ victims.
Yet this is not the fault of God: the fault is with man. Man was given just one simple commandment: ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die’ (Genesis 2:16-17). Man was warned that sin has consequences; but man decided instead to listen to the devil’s lies, and to rebel against God.
Until then, there was no sin, no sickness, no suffering, no war, no death. Even the distribution of the consequences of sin seems unequal and unfair. But remember: God came down into the garden, and found man, and introduced him to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Genesis 3:14-15)!
Listen to this, from the wider context of Jesus’ reading: ‘Your iniquities have separated between you and your God’ (Isaiah 59:2). ‘The LORD saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice’ (Isaiah 59:15). ‘THEREFORE His arm brought salvation unto Him’ (Isaiah 59:16).
‘The Redeemer shall come to them that turn from transgression’ (Isaiah 59:20). ‘Then shall you know that I the LORD am your Saviour and your Redeemer’ (Isaiah 60:16). Jesus came, ‘to comfort all that mourn; to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness’ (Isaiah 61:2-3).
The LORD had said earlier, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones’ (Isaiah 57:15). There is a mourning that comes on account of our being made aware of our situation in relation to God as a result of our sins (cf. Psalm 34:18).
‘Blessed are those who mourn,’ says Jesus, ‘for they shall be comforted’ (Matthew 5:4). ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,’ says your God (Isaiah 40:1). ‘Come unto me,’ says Jesus, ‘all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28).
‘He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds’ (Psalm 147:3).
4. “To preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18d).
We all have our own presuppositions about who Jesus is, and what He came to do: but one thing Jesus is NOT is a political revolutionary! Jesus did not come to raise an army, and drive the Romans out of Judaea. He did not even secure release from wrongful imprisonment for His relation John the Baptist.
Before we ‘proclaim to captives deliverance’ we must understand who the captives are, and what the nature of their captivity. It would be quite inappropriate, for example, for me to proclaim release for those incarcerated in our prisons - except, one might hope, the spiritual release of the gospel. But Jesus’ “deliverance” reaches beyond politics, beyond crime and punishment, to the very heart of the matter: to the issue of the sin within every one of us.
In this very chapter, one obvious set of ‘captives’ is illustrated in the case of the demon possessed man in the next scene (Luke 4:31-37). But meantime there was another group of ‘captives’ sitting there in the synagogue in His hometown, with their eyes glued upon Jesus, waiting to hear what He would say. They were captive to their own presuppositions concerning Israel’s Messiah, and even thought to murder Jesus after church (Luke 4:28-30)!
So what made them so mad? Was it just that He omitted the bit about ‘the day of vengeance of OUR God’ in Isaiah 61:2? Perhaps not, but rather that He had the audacity to illustrate from other parts of the Scripture that Israel’s ‘God’ was more inclusive than they realised (cf. Luke 4:23-28)!
It appears that the ‘religious’ people of Jesus’ day were particularly susceptible to ‘captivity.’ Later, in the Temple precincts in Jerusalem, Jesus’ declaration, ‘If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ prompted the response, ‘We were never in bondage to any man’ (John 8:31-33).
What? had they forgotten their own history? Were they unaware of their historical captivity in Egypt? Or more recently, their exile in Babylon? Were they unaware that they had been under the yoke of other nations: Persia, Greece, and Rome ever since? Well, later still, when Pilate asked, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ the chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar’ (John 19:15)!
‘How can you say, Ye shall be made free?’ continued the earlier interrogators (John 8:33). ‘Amen, Amen, I say unto you,’ began Jesus’ emphatic answer. ‘Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin.’ ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed’ (John 8:34-36).
Outside of Christ, we are all held captive to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Christians must remember that we too were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1-3) - not to revel in it, but to celebrate our release (Ephesians 2:4-7). Jesus came to set us free from sin, and to deliver us from its consequences.
5. "Recovering of sight to the blind" (Luke 4:18e).
There was a man blind from birth, and Jesus’ disciples asked, ‘who sinned that he was born blind? The man himself, or his parents?’ (John 9:1-2). This betrays a complete misunderstanding of sin and its consequences. As I have hinted before, even the distribution of sin’s consequences is not tit for tat, but sometimes somewhat arbitrary.
The point is, the man born blind was both healed, and ‘saw’ and recognised Jesus to be the Son of God (John 9:35-38). Meanwhile, the Pharisees were discovered to be the ones with the greater blindness (John 9:39-41).
One former Pharisee, hitherto known as Saul of Tarsus but now as the Apostle Paul, was commissioned by the risen Lord Jesus to ‘open the eyes’ of the nations, ‘to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God’ (Acts 26:18). This is Jesus’ own mission, ‘to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace’ (Luke 1:79).
6. "To set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18f).
The Greek word for ‘bruising’ here carries the meaning of being crushed. Jesus came to set us free from sin, and to liberate us from its consequences - suffering and death (Isaiah 42:3). This includes releasing us from sickness.
Think of some of the people hitherto held captive by sickness, delivered by Jesus in this Gospel. A leper (Luke 5:12-13); a paralysed man (Luke 5:25); a woman with an issue of blood (Luke 8:48) A wild man with a legion of devils (Luke 8:27-33); a woman bent over by a spirit of infirmity’ (Luke 13:11-13), ‘bound by Satan these eighteen years,’ said Jesus (Luke 13:16).
Then there are those delivered from death, a brief shadow of His own much greater triumph. In His death, death is conquered (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:55-56).
This gives hope to the persecuted church, too. If we die, we die in hope of the resurrection (John 11:25-26).
7. “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19).
The expression, “the acceptable year of the Lord” includes everything in the previous verse: that is, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
It includes the healing of the sick (Luke 4:38-40), and the raising of the dead (Luke 7:22). It includes bringing Christian salvation to the house of the ‘whosoever will’ (Luke 19:9; John 3:16): people like you and me!
There are two Old Testament equivalents suggested here. One is what we might call the ‘sabbath for the land’ (Leviticus 25:5). If this command were ever kept, it would require both faith, and a double miracle (Leviticus 25:20-22).
However, we have reason to doubt whether it ever was kept, because the seventy year exile appears to have been ‘to fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate, she kept sabbath, to fulfil seventy years’ (2 Chronicles 36:21; Jeremiah 29:10; cf. Leviticus 26:34-35). The equation appears to be, 70 years exile for 490 years of not keeping sabbath!
The second Old Testament equivalent is the ‘year of jubilee,’ the festival of the fiftieth year (Leviticus 25:10). This is the ‘proclamation of liberty’ whereby everyone returns to their possession, and to their family. Mortgages were to be cancelled, and slaves set free! This, too, prefigures in a big way the return from exile.
Which in its turn anticipates what we might call ‘the Christian Jubilee’: that proclaimed by Jesus in His hometown of Nazareth. This is the dispensation of grace, the year of God’s favour, the age of the Holy Spirit. ‘This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears,’ said Jesus (Luke 4:21).
It is the ‘today’ in which we are now living (Hebrews 3:13). ‘Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts’ (Hebrews 4:7). ‘For He says, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation’ (2 Corinthians 6:2).
In this era the true captivity is exposed: the captivity of sin and of death. In the gospel, sin is remitted through the blood of Christ, and death is dealt a mortal blow by His resurrection (cf. Romans 4:25). This is for our justification: that we might be ‘declared the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Man in sin is in bondage to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Man under the law is also in bondage, still waiting for the redemption which has already been revealed. Jesus came as the new man, to set us free: out of bondage to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15), into eternal life (Romans 6:22).
The pass mark in God’s ‘school’ is not 50 percent, or 60 per cent: it is one hundred per cent. So we have all failed (Romans 6:23). If one link in my anchor chain is broken, the whole chain is broken. If we break one law, we have broken them all (James 2:10).
The law was not given to bring salvation, but to expose sin, and thereby lead us to faith in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:22-24). Salvation from sin is not brought about or bought by our own efforts, or by balancing our good deeds over our bad deeds, but only by the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:24-26).
Jesus said, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-30).
This is the day when Jesus is standing outside the door, knocking. This is the day when He comes in, and sups with us (Revelation 3:20). Will we leave him standing there? Because, if we refuse Him, we will one day be found knocking at His door, and His reply will be, ‘I know you not’ (Matthew 25:12).
The ‘year of Jubilee’ anticipates the whole Christian age, the era in which we are now living. This is the time of opportunity, the epoch in which the Lord is ‘long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:8-9). The year of God’s favour; “the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19).
