WWUTT 2298 The Year of the Lord's Favor (Luke 4:18-19)

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Jesus came to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And that means that any one of us who are in Christ Jesus, we have the very favor of God.

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And he rewards those who seek him when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast that we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we've been in chapter four this week, looking at that section where Jesus teaches in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth.

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I don't wanna rush through this too quick, so I wanna come back once again to the portion where Jesus taught from Isaiah 61.

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Let me read once again from verses 16 to 21. Hear the word of the Lord. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the

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Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

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He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the

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Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

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He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the

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Lord's favor. And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

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And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

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There was a fellow online not long ago on social media claims to be this decorated theologian.

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I guess he has a couple of theology degrees, which he loves to remind people of so that you see him as an authority figure.

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But what he teaches is completely heretical. One of the things that he said on social media recently was, if America starts feeding the poor, releasing the captives and declaring the year of Jubilee, then maybe

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I'll start considering it a Christian nation. And there were people that pushed back on him.

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One fellow asked him, who are the captives? And he replied, people who are imprisoned.

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And the guy said, for what? And this theologian said, anything. So apparently for us to truly be a

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Christian nation, there can't be anyone in prison. Everyone has to be set free no matter what offense they have committed.

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And that's the way this guy with two theology degrees interprets this passage that Jesus read from Isaiah 61.

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Now, that may not have been too far removed from what the people sitting in that synagogue would have believed about this passage as well.

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They expected their Messiah to be an earthly emancipator. They thought that when the Messiah came, he was literally gonna set people free who were in prison.

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Those who are poor, the good news that he's gonna give to them, well, it's gonna be that they're not poor anymore. He's gonna give them food and homes and all this other good stuff.

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And those who are oppressed, no more oppression because he's gonna get rid of our enemies. He's gonna boot them out of our land and we will make

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Israel great again. That was kind of their expectation at this particular time. And that's the way that a lot of people today will even interpret this particular passage.

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They will think of Jesus as being a social justice warrior. And so if Jesus, if we're truly gonna be

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Christians, if we believe that Jesus is King and he rules over this nation, then social justice must be done in the midst of us that is exactly like what

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Jesus read here in Luke 4. Interpreting that strictly literal, that there won't be any more poor, there won't be anyone else in prison, there won't be anyone else oppressed for this will be the year of Jubilee.

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This will be the year of the Lord's favor. So let's come back to this again and look at it piece by piece, not rushing through it as quickly as I did a couple of days ago.

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So in verse 18, once again, Jesus read, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

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Now, maybe you don't have your Bible open in front of you. The majority of you are probably listening to this in the background or as you're driving in the car or something like that, which is just fine.

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But if you do have the Bible in front of you, if you have it open, look through this section, which is

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Isaiah 61 verses one and two. We're reading here in Luke 4, 18 and 19.

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What words do you see repeated? Well, that word proclaim comes up three times, right?

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Proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to the captives and proclaim the year of the

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Lord's favor. What else? What other word is repeated in there? It looks like liberty comes up a couple of times.

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Proclaim liberty to the captives and set at liberty those who are oppressed.

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So you see, first of all, kind of a heading on this. The heading is the spirit of the

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Lord is upon me because he has anointed me. Now that is a declaration of Christ's divinity.

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And I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago. He is saying that the third person of the

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Trinity, the Holy Spirit is upon him. He has received a divine mandate.

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And so what he does, whatever Jesus does has been appointed by God for him to do.

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And not just sent as though he were a prophet, but sent as though he were sent from God himself.

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The son of God, that title son of God is not just in reference to anybody who would be a follower of God.

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There's a lot of people that interpret it that way today. But when Jesus referred to himself as a son of God, as the son of God, the people around him clearly interpreted that as him equating himself with God.

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You just look at their reactions throughout the gospels whenever Jesus would make such a declaration.

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They would say he's making himself equal with God. So he is the one who has been sent from God, from the very throne room of God, being

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God himself incarnate in human flesh. The spirit of the Lord is upon him.

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And like I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, or a couple of days ago, rather, this was of course directly tied to his baptism, which was in chapter three, where the spirit of God literally did descend and rest upon him.

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And we read at the start of this chapter in chapter four, how he is led by the spirit into the wilderness. And then he comes into Nazareth, still in the spirit.

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Jesus returned in the power of the spirit to Galilee. So he comes into Nazareth led by the spirit of God, and then proclaiming to them this, which is actually said in Isaiah 61, showing them he is the fulfillment of this prophecy that was made.

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The spirit of the Lord is upon me. And as Jesus is reading this, he is not merely quoting

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Isaiah. He is speaking it in the first person as though to say, I am the one that this was talking about.

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I am the one who was speaking here. When Isaiah wrote this down, the spirit of the

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Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.

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He's chosen me. He's consecrated me. He is the one that God has set apart to accomplish his purpose, the anointed one, which is what

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Messiah means. Messiah is anointed one. So Jesus is saying to them that he is the promised

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Messiah to proclaim good news to the poor and proclaim liberty to the captives.

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There's our first couple of proclaims there, okay? So proclaiming good news to the poor, this is where we have a mention of the gospel because that's literally what gospel means.

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Evangelion, gospel, meaning good news. So to proclaim good news to the poor.

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And once again, what they're expecting is that this Messiah is going to come and set the poor at ease.

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He's going to give the poor good things. They will have food. They will have a place to live.

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They won't be poor anymore. They expect their Messiah to come and be a social justice warrior of sorts.

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And you see many people today that will interpret this, they'll still interpret this that same way. Black liberation theology, for example, will use this passage in that same sort of fashion.

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If we're truly Christians, if we're truly doing what Jesus said that he was going to do, if we're going to be like Christ, then we're going to give the poor wealth.

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We're going to give them money so that they would not be poor anymore. And that's the good news because that's really the only good, that's the only news that would be good to somebody who is poor.

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You're no longer destitute. You've won the lottery. So here you go, here's some money and here's you a house and status.

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We're even going to give you social status so that you can be an influencer like the rest of us.

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That's that liberation theology mentality. That's the way that they interpret this. Straightforward, as though this is only talking about our physical condition.

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But there were still many, many people who were poor during the time of Christ.

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There were many poor after he died and rose again from the dead. There were many who were still poor, even when he ascended into heaven.

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In fact, he said to the disciples that they would leave lands and homes and families and all other manner in order to follow him.

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So they would essentially give up everything in order to follow Jesus. Jesus encourages people to be poor.

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So how could it be that his message to the poor was going to be that you wouldn't be poor anymore? How's that supposed to be the way that we interpret this?

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Remember that Jesus said to the rich young ruler, sell all that you have, give it to the poor and then come follow me and you will have treasure where?

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You will have treasure in heaven. And so if Jesus has come to set the poor at ease to give them possessions and make them not poor anymore, why would he be telling this rich young ruler to become poor?

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Wouldn't he say to him, well, you've already got everything that you need. So give a portion of what you have to the poor.

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That way you're sharing with the poor and they won't be poor anymore. And then you won't be poor anymore. But that's not what it is that he says to the rich young ruler, challenging his heart because he was full of covetousness.

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He was full of greed and loved his possessions. Jesus said, sell all that you have and give it to the poor.

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And then the rich young ruler went away sad because he had many things and he didn't want to give up all that he had to follow

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Jesus. So what does it mean then that Jesus comes to proclaim the good news to the poor?

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Well, it's interesting to note that in the King James Bible, if you read Isaiah 61 .1 in the

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King James Bible, it doesn't say poor there. The word that's used is meek.

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He has come to proclaim good news to the meek because that word can also be translated that way.

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This is a person who is humble, a person who has recognized they don't deserve anything. That is not expecting anything in return.

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This is one who would give of themselves to others, not expecting payback.

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That's somebody who is meek. They are generous. They are considerate. They do not think too highly of themselves.

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They recognize I have nothing and God gives me everything. So they are completely humble to the

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Lord. Consider in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter five, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

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Blessed are those who are willing to give up all that they have. They don't cling too tightly to what they do possess, nor do they claim to be entitled to anything.

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Jesus is proclaiming good news to those who recognize I have nothing and I need

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God. He's proclaiming good news to the poor. And this is best understood too through the

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Beatitudes. Like I mentioned, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.

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Poor in spirit. Now we've got it coming up here a little bit later on in Luke that Jesus is going to say the sermon on the plane is what it's called in Luke, not the sermon on the mount.

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But in the sermon on the plane, it's blessed are those who are poor. He doesn't just say poor in spirit, but he says poor, but this is the spiritual connotation that it has.

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You're not saved by virtue of being poor. You're saved because you have faith in Jesus Christ, because you're spiritually poor and you recognize

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I have nothing, I cannot save myself, I need Jesus. And so when

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Christ comes, the message that he has is good news to those who recognize their poor estate.

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It is good news to the poor. It's not good news to the rich. They think they have everything.

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This is a rebuke that Jesus gave to the church at Laodicea in Revelation chapter three, when he said, you think that you're rich, but you're pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

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I charge you to buy from me white garments so that your nakedness will not be seen. This was a church that boasted in,

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I've got everything. What else can I need? Now you need everything. Jesus said to them, and those whom

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I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. He said to that church.

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So proclaiming good news to the poor, those who recognize that they are poor, the message of the gospel is good.

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And then the next one, he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. Does that mean he's gonna set all those who are in prison free?

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No, can't. It can't mean that because the disciples would all be imprisoned.

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The apostle Paul died in prison. It's exactly what he's saying to Timothy and second

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Timothy, I'm about to die. I'm here in prison and I'm gonna be martyred for this. So he wasn't set free while he was in prison.

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What about John the Baptist? Jesus' own cousin wasn't set free from prison, but was beheaded there in prison.

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So it cannot mean literally that Jesus is going to free all the prisoners no matter what they're put in prison for.

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So what does it mean that we're set free from our captivity? He has set the captives free.

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It means that we have been captive to sin and to Satan and to the law, and from which there is no deliverance.

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You cannot deliver yourself from your sin. You cannot deliver yourself even from the schemes of Satan and you are under the law.

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You will be judged by the law, every person who stands before God. So the only way that we can be delivered from these things, sin,

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Satan, the law, and the wages of all of this, which is death, the only way we can be delivered from that is through Jesus, by faith in Jesus, who saves his people from their sin, redeems them from the law, sets us free from our captivity, and will even rescue us from the schemes and the pursuits of Satan.

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Remember that 1 Peter 5 says, our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

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Resist him firm in your faith. And it is God who sets us free from those schemes of Satan.

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He delivers us through the preaching of the gospel. When we hear the gospel and believe it, then we are set free from these things and we are saved.

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We're free. We're free from the bondage, all of this bondage that we were under in sin and following after the prince of the power of the world.

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A prince of the power of the air is talked about in Ephesians 2. The spirit that is now at work of the sons of disobedience, we've been set free from all of that and now are free to worship

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God and we have received eternal life. So we continue on.

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He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind. We were blind.

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And I think I quoted this a couple of days ago too, from amazing grace. I once was blind, but now

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I see. We could not see our condition. We probably couldn't even see the end of the road that it was gonna result in our own destruction.

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We couldn't see God either. For as it said in Romans 3, no one seeks for God.

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And so it was when the Lord opened our eyes to see our sin and need for a savior, he recovered our sight.

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He gave sight to the blind so that we may see him and worship him.

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And all of these things here, the miracle regarding sight to the blind, giving liberty to the captives, proclaiming good news to the poor, setting at liberty those who are oppressed.

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So these things that sound to be literal and the way that the people would have received them would have been literal.

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This is what our Messiah is gonna do to us. He's gonna give sight to the blind. Now, Jesus really did give sight to the blind.

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He literally gave sight to the blind. So he's not just speaking spiritually here or figuratively, because he really did do this miracle.

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In fact, he had said in Matthew 11, remember when John's disciples came to Jesus and said, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?

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And what was Jesus' response to them? Go and tell John, John the Baptist, go and tell him what you hear and see.

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The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

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And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. And so John's disciples go back and report to him all of this because this is what was prophesied about the

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Messiah. And so Jesus says, look at what you've seen. Have you not seen what had been prophesied fulfilled?

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Have you not seen that? You've witnessed it with your own eyes. Go and report what it is that you've seen.

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Literally, Jesus gave sight to the blind, but this was to show what he was gonna do spiritually, which was on a much, much greater level.

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Like what you need is not sight. What you need is to be saved. You need to have your sins forgiven so that you may have eternal life.

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That's what you need. In Luke 5, so when we get to the next chapter in Luke 5 is where you have a miracle that we've read about in Matthew and in Mark as well,

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Jesus healing the paralytic. And if you remember, when we looked at this particular miracle, the point of that miracle is to show that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.

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He says to the paralytic, Sir, man, your sins have been forgiven you.

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And the scribes and the Pharisees are like, this is blasphemous. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

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And Jesus answered them. Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven you or to say, rise and walk, but so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

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And he said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you, rise. Pick up your bed and go home.

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Jesus does this miracle so that you will see that he has the authority to forgive sins.

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And that's the same thing that's being said here in Luke 4 regarding Jesus granting sight to the blind.

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He will literally do that. But it is so you will see that he opens the eyes of the blind spiritually so that they may see and be saved.

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And so then also, end of verse 18, set at liberty those who are oppressed.

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Well, what oppresses us? Same sort of thing we read about Jesus proclaiming liberty to those who are captive.

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We are oppressed. Or another way to understand this is that we are bruised. We have been beaten down.

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We are struggling under the weight of our sin and cannot stand up. We have been oppressed by Satan and his schemes.

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We can't save ourselves. We would be crushed right there if left in that place.

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And it is Jesus who picks us up and restores us and grants us salvation and draws us to himself.

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And so summarizing all of this with verse 19, he has proclaimed the year of the

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Lord's favor. And that is the time in which we are in right now, the time in which we can look at what

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Jesus said and taught and what he accomplished on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, all of these things that have been written down for us in his word, in the

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Bible. We can look at those things and we can come to understand our need for a savior. Who is

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Christ? Who sets us free? Who has given us more than we can ever ask or imagine, not only fellowship with God, not only the forgiveness of our sins, but forever life in heaven above in glory with God.

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This is the year of the Lord's favor. He's shown mercy and grace to us by sending his son.

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And my friends, if you know Jesus, then you are living in that time. You are living in the year of Jubilee.

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The year of Jubilee in the Old Testament law was a foreshadowing of the year of the

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Lord that was to come. The year of the Lord's favor. It was a type and a shadow.

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Jesus has come and shown God's favor to us. Let me finish sharing this story here.

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So Tony Campolo just passed away. I think that was this week. And in case you aren't familiar,

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I guess it could have been last week. Anyway, in case you aren't familiar with him, very popular Christian teacher in the 90s and the early 2000s.

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As a matter of fact, I think he had the ear of Bill Clinton at one point and was a spiritual advisor to the president of the

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United States. I saw many messages from him. I listened to several sermons from him when

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I was in college because I had a college youth leader who really liked Tony Campolo and he would play messages for us.

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So I was familiar with him. There were some things about him that were a little off to me, even when I was younger.

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But then in 2015, he came out accepting same -sex marriage and said it was a perfectly acceptable union before God that a person could be in a same -sex marriage and still honor

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God and be saved and so on and so forth. So I mean, and the man was a full -on heretic. And even though he may have with his mouth affirmed all of the

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Orthodox creeds and confessions of the historic church, there were things that in practice he encouraged people to do that God promised he would judge and those who do such things would not inherit the kingdom of God.

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So he was a very, very dangerous teacher in that sense. There was at one point where in one of the messages that I remember hearing from Tony Campolo, I remember him saying, could you still love

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God even if you don't get heaven? Even if there's no such thing as heaven and hell, could you still love

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God? And he was trying to make it like a kind of a test. Do you really love God or are you only in it for yourself?

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Because if you're only in it for yourself, then you couldn't possibly love God. So do you love God? Would you still be a follower of Jesus even if heaven and hell don't exist?

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They do exist, but even if they didn't, could you still say that you love Jesus and you would follow him? And that's such an ignorant question.

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Like he thinks of it as profound. And a lot of the people who followed Tony Campolo thought of it as profound.

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I heard people repeating it even after he died that this was one of the famous questions that Tony Campolo had asked, but it's an ignorant question.

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Why is it ignorant? Because Hebrews 11, six says, without faith, it is impossible to please

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God for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

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It is a fundamental aspect of God and his character that he rewards people who seek him.

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To say that I would love God even if he wouldn't give me heaven is to deny something about the love of God.

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It would be to say that God is not actually loving. Even though he's not loving, I'm going to love him anyway. That's just absurd.

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If you don't know him as savior, you don't know him at all. It's such a stupid question to say, would you love

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God even if he wouldn't give you heaven? Even if heaven doesn't exist, would you still love God? Well, that's absurd because then

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God doesn't reward and he wouldn't be God. Jesus doesn't save and he wouldn't be savior.

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So we read this about Christ, what Jesus comes proclaiming of himself when he begins his earthly ministry, the spirit of the

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Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. It's not good news unless there's something that wouldn't make you poor anymore.

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He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. There's no liberty unless he's setting captives free and recovering of sight to the blind.

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There's no accomplishing that unless Jesus actually heals the blind, unless he actually opens our eyes to something, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

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Where's the good news in that? If he is not saving us from what oppresses us and to proclaim the year of the

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Lord's favor, we have the favor of God upon us because of what

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Christ has done for us. And so it is not wrong, my friends, it is not selfish to love

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God expecting heaven because that is what God has promised to those who seek him.

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You must believe he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

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He is our father in heaven who loves his children and gives us all good things.

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And the best thing he ever gave us is Jesus. Heavenly father,

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I thank you for what we've read here and I pray this would be a great reminder to us of the wonderful gift we have been given in Christ.

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And may we seek him, may we love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. May we not be satisfied by anything in this world.

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May we not turn back to our sin, expecting that we're gonna find more satisfaction in our sin than we will find in Christ.

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Jesus is all, he is our everything. So draw us near to you through your son that we may proclaim the year of the

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Lord's favor has come in Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray, amen.

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You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

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New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.