This week, Michael writes: the gospel is both good news and bad news. If we look at the news of world around us, it is said “if it bleeds it leads”. The world focuses on death, destruction and devastation ... the bad news. As it says in Ecclesiastes 3, For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. There is a time for purging … a time where God will unburden us of the things we thought were important. As mother Theresa said, God works best with nothing.
Luke 4:16-31 “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
The passage was Jesus’ inaugural address ... His public announcement of His mission “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” that had been foretold in the scroll of Isaiah. Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 61. He said, today I have come to fulfill this prophecy. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Jesus was not anointed and appointed by a missionary commission or a church nominating convention, He was called by God himself who empowered Him with His Holy Spirit. Jesus had said, “I always do my Father’s will.” He followed his Father’s direction…. He had his spirit attuned to God’s Holy Spirit.
He came to preach the gospel to the poor: blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. To receive anything of God requires that we empty ourselves of ourselves, then God can fill us with His Holy Spirit. When we mourn over the sin that separated our hearts from God’s heart, then when we turn from ourselves and unto Him for He can deliver us from our own sin nature. Jesus came to set the captives free. We are all born captive to sin. We inherited the sin nature from Adam in the Garden of Eden. You are slaves to whom ye obey. We could not help but sin … to miss the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus Christ came to set us free from the bondage of sin.
He came to bring light to them who sat in darkness … to heal those who were born spiritually blind … those who pray, “open my eyes that I may see”… glimpses of truth thou hast for me. For Jesus Christ himself is the way, the truth and the life. He is the light of the world. He is the great physician whom God called to heal us and open the eyes of Believers in Him, who were born spiritually blind. He came to preach deliverance to those who were oppressed. Without the light of the truth, we were oppressed by the power of darkness, the power of sin. We were under the dominion of the devil, the god of this world, whose eyes he has blinded lest the light of the glorious gospel of truth should shine unto them.
Let's continue Michael's message on the acceptable year of the Lord in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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