The First Day of the Year of Jubilee

Luke 4:16-30 and the Proclamation of the Year of Jubilee

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel.

According to St. Luke chapter 4 verses 16 through 30. And Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as was his custom he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll, found the place where it was written, The spear of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He rolled up the scroll and he gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began to say to them today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

And they said is not this Joseph's son? And he said to them well doubtless you will quote to me this proverb physician heal yourself what we have heard you did at Capernaum do here in your hometown as well.

And he said truly I say to you no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth I tell you there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over all the land and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow.

And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha none of them was cleansed but only Naaman the Syrian. When they heard these things all in the synagogue were filled with wrath and they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down the cliff.

But passing through their midst he went away. This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you O Christ. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright have any of you ever heard an evangelist say something to this effect today is the day of salvation.

Have you ever heard anyone talk that? The Bible says it in these terms. But I remember hearing that many yesterdays ago and if you've heard it then you didn't hear it today. I was referencing something in your past.

So how can today be the day of salvation and then tomorrow is the day of salvation you know and last week was the day of salvation. Well here's kind of the idea is there are certain days and years in scripture that we still find ourselves in and you don't think of it the way we think of normal years or normal days.

It's not a 24 hour day. It's not a 12 month year. It's something a little bit different than that. And so in order to understand our gospel text today we're going to have to draw on the Old Testament concept of the year of Jubilee.

If you've been around the church for a while you've heard of the year of Jubilee. Now back in the day in the Mosaic Covenant you had to every seventh day, Sabbath, the Shabbat you had to have a day of rest.

Well that got rolled up into something a little bit bigger. Every seventh year the Shemitah. Every seventh year the land would be given a rest. But then when you count up seven Shemitahs you get 49 years add one and now it's the year of Jubilee.

A big deal. Why? Well according to scripture on the year of Jubilee all debts cancelled. All slaves set free. People return to their property to their inheritance and their land is given back to them.

It's a big deal. It's almost as if it's kind of like you know a precursor a type and shadow of salvation itself. And that's kind of the idea. And so we learn then in Leviticus 25 starting at verse 8 God gives these commands regarding the year of Jubilee.

And he says this, you shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you 49 years. Then you shall count, shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month on the day of atonement.

Get this the year of Jubilee begins with God forgiving everybody's sins. On the day of atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land and you shall consecrate the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants.

It shall be a Jubilee for you. When each of you shall return to his property, each of you shall return to his clan that 50th year shall be a Jubilee for you and in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.

It is a Jubilee. It shall be holy to you and you may eat the produce of the field. All debts cancelled, all property lost returned, all slaves set free. It's a big deal. And the trumpet blasts on the day of atonement.

All of that is type and shadow. And so in our Gospel text today Jesus is announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee which like the day of salvation is continuing to this day. This year has not yet closed.

So with that let's return to our Gospel text in Luke 4 verse 16 and we'll see what's going on here. See if we can kind of sort this all out. Unfortunately for the people of Nazareth it has a bad outcome for them.

A little bit of a note. When the word of God goes forth it always accomplishes that for which it sets out. Sometimes God's word softens, brings people to repentance. And those who are persistent in sin and unbelief the word of God goes out and it just takes their hardened heart and throws it out into the 20 below zero weather and just hardens it even harder.

Kind of an interesting idea there. But here's what it says. Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. This is the town where he lost his little teeth and then his adult teeth came in. This is the place where he learned his Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Dalet, the Alephbet if you would the alphabet of the Hebrew language.

This is where he was potty trained. You kind of get all of the ideas. They remember him when he was knee high to a grasshopper and now he's 30 years old and Jesus has gone and the news of Jesus has come back to Nazareth.

They're fully aware that he is performing miracles. That he's giving sight to the blind, healing the sick. And Jesus has a posse now. He's got 12 disciples and they're along with him. So it's kind of like small town boy grows up, hits it big.

He's like the talk of the whole country. And you'd think in a situation like that that they would be super duper proud to have him there and that they would be hanging on his every word. But you see here's kind of the thing.

The scandal of the incarnation is in play. The scandal of the incarnation is in play because they remember young Jesus being taught how to be a carpenter by his father. They know where Joseph's grave is.

It's just over there. They know all of this about Jesus and so for somebody who seems to be well up and coming and acting and behaving as if he's God, they sure do remember the fact that he's about as human as they get.

So it was his custom. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. This is a Saturday. And he stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll. Found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.

This is Isaiah 61. And something fascinating going on here because Luke does something a little bit strange. Luke is quoting the Septuagint's translation of Isaiah 61. And there's an interesting variant reading from the Hebrew text to the text that Luke is quoting.

And one that actually is quite fascinating and oddly enough it shows up in our sermon hymn. I'll explain it here in a minute here because it's very fascinating. So the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

This is a prophecy regarding the Messiah. And he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind. Hold on there for a second here. Let's check the Hebrew from Isaiah 61.

The Hebrew says the opening of the prison to those who are bound. The Septuagint translates that as recovery of sight to the blind. What are we to make of that? So in other words, the way the Septuagint translates Isaiah 61 tells us about this particular kind of blindness.

This isn't blindness where you have to wear glasses and you have a stick and you're walking this way and making sure that you don't get hit by traffic and things like that because you're blind. It's not that kind of blindness.

The blindness that's being referred to here is the blindness that comes when you're locked up in a dark, dank prison and there is no light. There's only smells and rats and drips of water and things of that nature.

It's the blindness caused by being locked up in the dark. And so the recovery of sight to the blind here is literally the opening of the prison door. The letting of the sunshine come in. But remember what John says in his gospel.

That Jesus Christ is the light of the world and that light has shined in the darkness. But men like the darkness instead. It's kind of like in the prison of sin. We lie there in the dark and Jesus now shines brightly in to give us sight to show us that we're not able to see because we were wandering and trapped in the dark.

And we sit there and go, could you turn the light off? It's really glaring. I'm trying to enjoy my sin here. That's kind of the idea here. So the opening of the prison doors for those who are bound. And let me remind you that this idea of the darkness of sin is a major theme in scripture.

Romans writes it this way. Paul in Romans writes it this way. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness they suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God, well it's plain to them because God has shown it to them. For God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

So that men are without excuse. In other words, everybody knows that God exists and atheists are just putting on a pretense, if you would. And here's what it says. For although they knew God, they did not.

They refused to honor him as God and they refused to give thanks to him. So they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Think of it this way. Remember the movie Titanic, right?

So there's the Titanic. It's hit the iceberg. It's sinking into the Atlantic and everything kind of seems kind of surreally okay-ish until the lights go out, right? And then when the lights go out, you realize this is serious.

Something really bad is going to happen here because everyone's going to end up in the dark Atlantic and there is no light except for the starlight. That's kind of the idea here. So God gave them over to their foolish hearts and their foolish hearts were then darkened.

And then claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, creeping things, idolatry. Keep this in mind. Every other breaking of God's commandments flows from the breaking of the first commandment.

You will have no other gods before me. And then following the breaking of the first commandment, well, things get darker with, well, sexual immorality. Romans then continues, therefore, because of this God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

And for this reason then, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. Men likewise gave up natural relations with women and instead were consumed with passion for one another and men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

But, oh, the commandments don't stop with that sixth commandment. Oh, it gets worse from there. And it says this, and so since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

And listen to this part of the list. Now we're into utter darkness. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

Their gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil. I love that little phrase, inventors of evil. Could you imagine having a patent or a trademark on some new kind of evil?

We call this one the Rose Bro. But that's the idea. They are inventors of evil. They're disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know that God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, they give approval to those who practice them.

Such is the nature of sin. Darkness indeed. This is blindness like you could not believe. A blindness caused by the darkness of sin. And if you weren't paying attention, then each and every one of us should have had in the list that I just gave off, some of our own sins listed as actual foolishness and darkness.

You see, each and every one of us, we're guilty. We've participated in this. The darkness isn't out there. The darkness is inside of each and every one of us. We were born under the dominion of darkness.

That's the power of the devil. Paul continues with this kind of thought then regarding darkness in Ephesians 4 starting at verse 17. He says, You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

They are darkened in their understanding. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. They've become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality.

They are greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him. As the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and it's corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

To put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. And so the idea here is that our righteousness given as a gift as part of our salvation is described in terms of whiteness, in terms of radiance, in terms of brightness as opposed to sin being described in terms of darkness and blindness and slavery and imprisonment because that's what sin really is.

So Jesus then continuing with Isaiah 61 says that he's here also to set at liberty those who are oppressed. And you're thinking well who am I oppressed by? Scripture answers that quite clearly. You are oppressed by the demonic.

You are oppressed by the devil. The devil is not your friend. Selling your soul to him would make no sense. He's not going to be kind to you. He's a domineering tyrant who seeks your destruction with him in the lake of fire.

And so to be oppressed is to be oppressed by the devil and Christ is claiming here in this text as he's reading it about himself that he's here to set at liberty those who are oppressed under the oppression of the devil and then the last phrase to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Jubilee is what he's referring to here. The type and shadow of the Old Testament now gives way to the substance and the jubilee is the year that we find ourselves in. That year began with Christ reading this text out in Nazareth.

And so Jesus rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and he sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue they were fixed on him and then he began to say to them today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Wow! Jesus here is claiming to be the Messiah. Make no mistake about it. But notice here he's proclaimed the complete destruction of the dominion of darkness. He's come to forgive and pardon our sins to set us at liberty, to free us, to proclaim the year of jubilee for all.

And they sit there and they're kind of scratching their heads. We're going to deliberate on this a little bit, shall we? You seem a little bit uppity, Jesus. Who exactly do you think you are? We've heard about these miracles and stuff, but hmm.

And so it says this. All spoke well of him. Then they marveled at his gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And then they said yeah, is this not Joseph's son? As if somehow that's the definitive answer here.

Yeah, no. Sorry, you're just a nobody. That's how that kind of came across. Now Cyril of Alexandria on his great sermon on this text, which I'll rely upon as we kind of close up our thoughts here. He had this wonderful way of describing what's going on here.

Cyril of Alexandria he says this. Since they did not understand Christ, who had been anointed and sent by God, who was the author of such wonderful works, they returned to their usual ways and they said foolish and useless things about Jesus.

They wondered at the words of grace that he spoke. You know, the words of grace regarding freedom, pardon, release. And yet they treated these words as worthless. And they said, isn't this Joseph's son?

But how does this diminish the glory of the worker of the miracles? You see, even if he was Joseph's son, they knew about the miracles that he was performing, but they said, oh, isn't he Joseph's son as if somehow to discount, to cast aside the miracles that Christ had done and that they had heard about.

And that's the problem. So what prevents him then from being both venerated and admired, even had he been as was supposed Joseph's son. Cyril writes, he says, so don't you see the miracles? Don't you see them?

They are signaling to us that Satan has fallen. The hordes of the devils are now vanquished and the multitudes are set free from various kinds of diseases. You see, those miracles are testifying to the crushing defeat of the dominion of darkness and Satan.

And so he says, you praise the grace that was present in his teachings. Do you not then, do you then in Jewish fashion think lightly of Jesus because you thought that Joseph was his father? And Joseph isn't his father, by the way.

He may have been his earthly legal father, but he was not a direct descendant of Joseph. So Cyril says to them, how absurd. Truly it is said about them, see they are a foolish people and they are without understanding.

They have eyes and they don't see, ears and they do not hear. So Jesus, seeing their complete lack of faith, seeing how they discarded not only his words of grace, his proclamation of the good news that he's come to set them free, that the year of Jubilee is now begun in their hearing, he now in a sense begins to really draw out their unbelief.

And if you've ever noticed this about sin, sin seems like it's really insane. It's really irrational. It's really emotionally explosive, if you would. And so they've sinned against him in words and now he's going to double down and they're going to sin against him in actions as well.

So Jesus said to them, alright Dallas, you're going to quote me this proverb, physician, heal yourself. It's almost like what Jesus was told while he was hanging on the cross. If you're the son of God, save yourself.

Come down from the cross. We'll believe in you. That's kind of that mocking thing. So Jesus is keying in on their unbelief. And so you're going to say, physician, heal yourself. What we heard you did in Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.

And then he said, well truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land.

And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow, subtext, and a Gentile, and a pagan. See Jesus here, he's making it very clear, this release of captives, this forgiveness of sins, this opening of the prison doors, and letting the light shine in so that your blindness can be healed.

But this is not merely for people who are genetically Jewish. This is for the whole world. Salvation is for Jew and Gentile, Norwegian and Greek, and German, and Polish. It doesn't matter what your heritage is.

Christ is bled and died for all. And this of course, in their unbelief, would be scandalous. Because that's the funny thing about unbelief, is oftentimes kind of clutches to itself, and basically says salvation is for us, but not you.

And so Jesus here is just putting his finger on their own prejudices, and notes that salvation came in the days of Elijah to a pagan widow in Zarephath. And then, to make the point even further, he says, and there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha.

None of them were cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. You know, Naaman, who actually worked for the king of Syria, who as part of his official duties had to go into the pagan temple of the god Rimmon, and was required to actually bow before him.

That pagan fellow, that uncircumcised guy, he was cleansed, and that cleansing was more than just skin deep. That cleansing went all the way down to his trust in the one true God. And so when they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.

Well, that's no way to behave in church. Huh. And so they rose up to drive Jesus out of the town. They brought him to the brow of the hill, kind of murderous mob mentality here, the hill on which their town was built, so they can throw him down the cliff.

That's it, Jesus, you're dead! How dare you! But, passing through their midst, he went away. Now here's some thoughts. Again, drawing on Cyril of Alexandria's sermon on this text, which again is so brilliant.

So, they threw him out of their city, Cyril writes, pronouncing by their action their own condemnation. And so they confirmed what the Savior had said. They themselves were banished from the city, from the Jerusalem that is above, for not having received Christ.

You'll note that being part of Jesus' hometown did not give them special privileges when it comes to salvation. Salvation is by grace, through faith, for all who believe. And they did not believe, and they did not get any special privilege, so that he might not convict them merely of impiety in words.

He then permitted their disrespect of him to proceed to actual deeds. And their violence was irrational, and their envy untamed, and leading him to the brow of the hill, they sought to throw him from the cliff.

But he went through the midst of them without taking any notice, so to say, of their attempt. And note this, Jesus did not refuse to suffer. In fact, he had come to do that very thing, to suffer, to bleed, and to die for your sins and for mine.

But he had to wait for a suitable time. Now, at the beginning of his preaching, which is what this was, it would have been the wrong time to have suffered before he had proclaimed the word of truth. And remember this, Jesus says, no one takes my life from me.

No one does, but I lay it down willingly. And he, being God in human flesh, had not chosen this time for the time which he would lay down his own life. So despite the fact that this mob was ready to throw him over the cliff, they had no authority to do so, Jesus being King of kings and Lord of lords.

And so the scriptures had to be fulfilled, that by his death and his resurrection for your sins and for mine, that Christ now has delivered us from the dominion of darkness, and God himself has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we now have redemption and the forgiveness of our sins.

And so that last word, though, that Jesus spoke to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord's favor, what does that mean? Well, it signifies joyful tidings of Christ's advent, that the time of the Lord, yes, the Son, had finally arrived.

For that was the acceptable year in which Christ was crucified on our behalf. Because we then were made acceptable to God the Father, as the fruit was born by him in us. You see, the acceptable year of the Lord's favor culminates, has its pinnacle, if you would.

The greatest day in that year is the day when Jesus bleeds and dies, so that we who are rebel sinners, under the dominion of darkness, can be made acceptable to God by what Christ has done for us. See, that is why the Lord said, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.

And so, truly, he returned to life on the third day, having trampled on the power of death itself. And after that resurrection, he said to his disciples, all power has been given to me. That, too, is in every respect an acceptable year.

And in it, in that acceptable year, we were received into God's family, we were admitted to him, having washed away sin in holy baptism, and been made partakers of his divine nature in the Lord's Supper, through the Spirit.

That, too, is an acceptable year in which he manifested his glory by these inexpressible miracles. So, sadly, the people of Nazareth hardened their hearts against this great proclamation of the fact that the year of Jubilee had begun.

That Christ had come to proclaim good news to the poor, the penniless, you and me. That Christ had come to proclaim liberty to the captives, those under the dominion of darkness, you and me. The recovery of sight to the blind by the opening of the prison doors.

And I said, that's actually in the hymn that we sang. Listen to the first stanza. The author of this hymn knew what he was writing about. Here's what it says. Praise the one who breaks the darkness with a liberating light.

Praise the one who frees the prisoners, turning blindness into sight. Isn't that interesting? The guy who wrote this, by the way, his name is Rusty Edwards. Boy, I couldn't come up with a more American name if you tried, right?

Rusty Edwards. So, Rusty knew his Bible, that Christ is the one who frees the prisoners, and by doing so, turns the blindness into sight. So then, what does this all mean? The year of the Lord's favor is still today.

This year has been going on for thousands. But I must warn you, this year, like all years, comes to a close. In fact, I would even argue that the year of the Lord's favor, if you're not paying attention to the weather, there's a particular chill in the air.

You can now see your breath in the morning. And the leaves are falling. And the winter is coming. Which means the year of the Lord's favor is coming to a close. And so we must not behave like the people of Nazareth.

We have no inside track with God. We must recognize that we are poor, pitiable sinners. And that we are the captives of the dominion of darkness. And the devil himself. That we have been blinded by our own sin and have lying in chains.

Is that a word? Laying in chains? Yeah, I'll have to work out the verbs on that later. In chains, bound in a prison in the darkness. But Christ, in our Gospel text, says that He has come to set us free.

To forgive us our sins. And that He has good news for us. That He has gone to the cross to bleed and to die for us. To set us free. And this is the year of the Lord's favor. Because He has made us favorable to God.

So let us repent of the deeds of darkness. Let us cast them aside. Let us see them for what they are. The snares of the devil. The snares by which he desires to re-enslave us. And to throw us back into the darkness of that prison.

And let us, with boldness, believe this good news proclaimed by Christ. And see ourselves for what we really are. Captives who have been set free by the graciousness and loving kindness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And let us bear fruit in keeping with that repentance. All to the glory of His name. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message. And again, thank you for listening.