Sermon: Christ's Mission Statement
Announcing His Great Work - and Ours
#1711B-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 28-May-23; 79 minutes
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transcript:
Most nonprofit organizations as well as the most for-profit companies publish a mission statement on their websites or in their organizational brochures. If you do not know what a mission statement is, it is a statement that is a short sentence or a paragraph used by a company to explain in simple and very concise terms its purpose for being why it is there, what it is going to do. The statement reveals what the company does, how it does it, and why it does it.
Now a company's mission statement is not just for public consumption, but it is also intended to educate or inform everyone that the organization engages. It defines the company's culture, its values, its ethics, its goals, its process, and its agenda. It also generally expresses how each of these things applies to the company's stakeholders, its employees, its distributors, its suppliers, its shareholders, its donors, and the community at large, especially the community in which it does most of its work. These entities can use this statement then to align their goals with that of the company so everybody is working in tandem.
Typical mission statements from this area run this way. (I actually pulled up a couple.) One is a nonprofit and the other is a for-profit statement. The first I have here is from Samaritan's Purse led by Franklin Graham:
Samaritan's Purse is nondenominational evangelical Christian organization, providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970 Samaritan's Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine, with the purpose of sharing God's love through His Son, Jesus Christ. The organization serves the church worldwide to promote the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So that is the nonprofit Samaritans Purse mission statement. Here is one from a for-profit corporation from around here. This is Sonic Automotive Incorporated. It was begun by the late Bruton Smith, and is now run by one of his sons. Theirs goes something like this:
Incorporated in 1997, Sonic Automotive Inc. is one of the largest automotive retailers in the United States. We have two operating segments consisting of franchise dealerships that represent over 25 different new vehicle brands and EchoPark Automotive which offers a unique car buying experience in the one- to four-year old preowned vehicle market. We have created a new high standard for vehicle sales and service. Our approach is customer-centric and does not include the typical pain points experienced at traditional car dealerships. Sonic and EchoPark customers enjoy a pressure-free environment enabling them to take control of their car buying experience. If they choose, customers also have expert guidance available to them from highly trained engaging employees.
So, if you want to buy a car in the one- to four-year range, Sonic sounds like a great place to go, but you better have a lot of money. They they specialize in high-end vehicles in many of their dealerships. That is not in the mission statement. I am just telling you.
In this social media age it is becoming more common for individuals, not just corporations and companies, but individuals to craft and post personal mission statements. And sometimes if you go through LinkedIn, you will see these occasionally. These personal mission statements often incorporate the person's financial and professional goals and sometimes they get more intent on their personal goals and they write down for everybody to see their spiritual and relational goals in life. And they do this as a reminder so that frequently seeing this, they will maintain a healthy work-life balance that increases their personal achievement in all these areas. It just is a reminder to them to stay on target.
While it is not designated as a mission statement in Scripture, a passage in the book of Luke acts like one for our Savior Jesus Christ. (I am going to have to go and talk to the writer of that sentence.) Like most mission statements, it tells us Christ's purpose, His goals, His authority, His means, and His values. As both products and stakeholders in His company, that is, the church, He calls on us to align ourselves with His purpose, goals, means, and values.
So on this Day of Pentecost, we are going to examine Luke 4:16-21 and consider how well we align to what He is doing in the church that He heads. Instead of going to Luke 4 immediately, however, I want to go to Mark the first chapter, verses 14 and 15 because what is said here can also be seen as a mission statement. This is the one we are probably more familiar with, especially those of us who heard Herbert Armstrong through the years. He would come to this section a lot.
Mark 1:14-15 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."
Now, Luke's announcement in the Nazareth synagogue, if you know anything about that chapter, you know that the chapter begins with the temptation of Jesus Christ there in the wilderness. And if you go up a few verses here in Mark 1, you will see that he also has a couple of verses about that temptation. Those are verses 12 and 13. So what we find is that these two statements were said at about the same time, right at the beginning of His ministry.
What He says here in Mark 1 is far more concise than what He says in Luke 4. Luke 4 has more detail, while Mark just hits a couple of obvious high spots. And so, we are going to go through the fuller expression of His mission statement there in Luke 4 because we want more detail than what is in Mark 1. That said, however, Luke 4, verses 18 and 19 though they are much more detailed, they are basically about one particular aspect of His work. It mentions the others but we will see as we go through this that He is interested more about one specific thing.
So the two passages, Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4, I will just say 18 and 19, just to leave it at that, are quite different, but they are not at all contradictory. They are what I would call additive parallels. They say the same thing, but one adds a lot of detail to the other. You know what parallels are, right? It is easy to see this in the book of Psalms. Let us go back to Psalm 24 just so you understand what I mean by an additive parallel. We will read verses 1 through 4 and you will see several parallels here in these verses, but there is one in particular that is not necessarily synonymous but additive.
Psalm 24:1 The earth is the Lord's, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell there in.
Let us just look at this. He is saying the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. And the second line gives us some details here, the world and those who dwell in it. So when he is saying the earth, he is talking about everything in it, including human beings.
Psalm 24:2 He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.
This is a very clear example of a synonymous parallel. The "He has founded it upon the seas, established it upon the waters." they say the same thing, essentially. Founded is a synonym of established and seas and waters are basically the same thing. So that is synonymous.
Psalm 24:3 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?
Again, these are pretty synonymous statements: "ascend[ing] to the hill of the Lord" and "standing in the holy place." There is a difference here, but it is subtle. One is ascending and the other is standing. So it is not only just the person who is in the holy place, but one who is going to the holy place. All right. I do not want to go into theology on that at all or anything more than that. But I want you to see that the parallels can be very subtle in what information it is trying to pass on to you.
Psalm 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart [This is a person who can stand in the holy place or ascend to it.], he who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully.
Now, this is an additive parallel. It is saying the same thing. It is answering the question "Who may ascend" or "who may stand" in the holy place. But it divides the answer out into a general one. That is the first one: "who has clean hands and a pure heart." But then it gets to specific sins that we are not supposed to have. "He who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully." So the information is being added here to help us to understand a fuller picture of what is going on, of who is qualified, if you will, to stand in the holy place. It is not just generally who has clean hands and a pure heart, but he is talking specifically that no idolater should be there, nor one who has sworn deceitfully; deceivers, vow breakers, what have you. Those kind of people are not going to be in God's holy place. So it does not say exactly the same thing. It added some information so that we have a much fuller understanding.
That is what Luke 4:18-19 does to what is said at first in Mark 1:14-15. So I just wanted to define my terms here about what additive parallels are.
So here in Mark 1, Jesus clearly emphasizes three things. Preaching the gospel is one, the Kingdom of God is two, and the desired or expected response of those who hear the gospel. As it says in verse 15, repentance and belief. That is the expected response. Now, only the first one of these, that is, preaching the gospel, is mentioned in Luke 4. All the others, the Kingdom of God, and repentance, and belief are not mentioned in Luke 4.
What we get actually in Luke 4 is a fuller explanation of the preaching of the gospel. So, as it says here, "He came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God," the preaching of the gospel, that is, announcing and following up with teaching—fuller teaching, deeper teaching—is the chief means of doing His work. The Kingdom, of course, is the goal and repentance and belief are the basic required inputs of those who desire to join Christ in his enterprise. Those are the things that have to happen first. He has to believe the gospel, he has to believe in Christ. He has to believe the things that Christ says. And then he has to also repent of the sins that have been accumulating over the years to put himself right with God—aligned with God, aligned with Christ.
So, what we could say from Mark 1:14-15 is the announcing or the declaration of the most foundational and fundamental features of Christ's work: preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God and repenting and believing the gospel on the part of those who hear it. Those are the very basics of what He was saying that he had come to do.
Now, along with the preaching of the gospel, the only other near parallel between the two sections, Mark 1 and Luke 4, is that Jesus confirms in both that His ministry fulfills either the time or the prophecy. Here in Mark 1:15, He says, "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand." I just want to key in on "the time is fulfilled" here. This term, "the time" especially, let me just say the verb "is fulfilled" is dramatically a perfect passive indicative.
I know you guys are not real big on grammar. This is the South, right? But it might be better translated as "has been fulfilled." It is passive, it is something that is being done to time, if you will. And it is indicative, it is making a statement about this and it is in the perfect tense. So it is "has been fulfilled." We could also say that it could be translated, "Time has come. "Time has come" or "the time has fully arrived." This is kind of a little parallel to Acts 2:1 where it says that, "The Day of Pentecost had fully come." It had fully arrived. It was on the day. It was not before the day. It was not after the day, it was fully that day. So the the count that had occurred over the last 49 days had ended on Day 50 and it was that day, that 50th day. The time had fully come, had been fully or had been fulfilled.
How does Mark use this phrase then, "the time has been fulfilled"? What did He mean by that? (Actually, that was Jesus, not Mark. Mark just wrote it down.) The time has been fulfilled. What did He mean? Well, it is something like history's defining moment has arrived. This is what it has all been leading to, this moment. It is fully here. We can begin. That is kind of what Jesus is saying. All the things that have been said up to now have been leading to this one moment, this one time, and now it has arrived and things can commence. The things that had been prophesied can get started and start being fulfilled.
It is kind of like Paul's phrase that he uses in Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10 where he says that Christ came in the fullness of time. A very similar idea there. He came when everything was ready for Him to come and the time had arrived for Him to appear as Messiah, born of a woman, as an incarnate human. So the time had come. This is what everything in the past has been looking forward to and now it is here.
So what we have, then, in Jesus saying this, "The time has been fulfilled" or "the time has finally arrived," is that He is saying that right now, as He begins His ministry, is a critical, opportune, propitious moment. It is like "Hear ye, hear ye! What you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. And now here we have Messiah and He's going to do His work!"
What He is saying is that this is the beginning of everything that is important. It is the beginning of the closing final stage of time. It is the Lord's time when He acts in history to commence what prophecy has been foretelling all along would occur sometime in the future. Nobody really knew the time. There were some ideas of when it would be at the end of 70 weeks, but now it is actually here. This is the time. So we can say that this announcement marked the beginning of the end. It is actually, technically, the beginning of the Day of the Lord.
Now, we think of the Day of the Lord as that year of tremendous pain on the earth and destruction right before He comes, but He is proclaiming right here that this is His time and this was when He began His ministry. So the Day of the Lord can be thought of as to have started right here, right at the beginning of His ministry. And all the time from that time forward is His to do His work.
I do not want you to confuse it with the one year at the end. That is definitely the Day of the Lord in prophetic terms. But He is saying essentially my time has begun right here at the beginning of His ministry.
Let us go to Luke 4 and look at that. Now, just before we read it here, I want you to notice above this, at the beginning of chapter 4, is the temptation of Christ here by Satan over that 40 days. And then if you go down to verse 14, you will see that Jesus begins His ministry in Galilee, just like we saw there in Mark 1. So they are very parallel in the things that they are trying to get across to us. The time and the setting are very much alike. The time especially. The setting is in Galilee. Mark is not quite so specific about where He was when He made that statement. Luke though is very precise, saying He was in a synagogue in Nazareth (which we will read in a minute).
So these two occasions, Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4:16-21, may have occurred either at the same time or just days apart. We do not know exactly. We cannot pinpoint where He said what He said there in Mark 1. But they are very close. If you look down to verse 31, you will find that that begins a narrative about Jesus casting out a demon. If you would flip back to Mark 1 you will find that that same story is recounted in starting in verse 21. (Mark 1:21) So sometime between Jesus beginning His ministry in Galilee and the casting out of that demon in Capernaum, both of these things took place. So we are in that general area at the very first days or weeks of His ministry.
Luke 4:16-21 So 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 to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. 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 has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted. to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Then he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. [He could feel the drama here] And He began to say to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
Let us go back up to verse 16 and pull out a few details here so we can understand a little bit better. The first thing to notice, other than the setting that He was in, is the time. That He went into the Nazareth synagogue on the Sabbath day. Very definite, or was it?, detail here. That it was a Sabbath day.
The Greek phrase underlying "the Sabbath day" is en te ton Sabbaton hemera. Literally, it is "on the Sabbaths/week's day, or we could say, if we arrange things just a little bit better so that we understand what He is saying (or will we?), "on the day of the Sabbaths/weeks." Sabbaton is a plural. That is why I have been saying Sabbaths and weeks. And it has led some people to speculate that this is a special Sabbath because there is a kind of special phrasing that the Greek employs here. It is en te ton Sabbaton hemera—"on the Sabbaths day" or "on the day of the Sabbaths."
So, thinking that about this "day of the Sabbaths" being plural has led some people to speculate that this was a holy day, an appointed day, appointed time in which multiple Sabbaths or weeks are involved. And those who keep the annual festivals of God would immediately think of Pentecost because is it not called the Feast of Weeks? You could see that in many places in the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch. In Exodus 34:22 it is introduced as the Feast of Weeks, Leviticus 23:15-16, where we go most often to read about the holy days, also in the list of the sacrifices that are given on the feast in Numbers 28:26, and also in Deuteronomy 16:10, 16, Pentecost is called the Feast of Weeks.
Pentecost is a Greek term—"count fifty." So it was never called Pentecost in the Old Testament. However, there is something wrong with saying, "Oh yeah, this was a Pentecost," and one of those things that kind of proves against it is that similar Greek phrasing is used in other places where it clearly does not refer to Pentecost. So we have to say, "Well, it could have been."
Now, recently because of new information about the shemitah ["When Is the Year of Release (Shemitah)?"], David speculated that this might have occurred on the Day of Atonement due to the Jubilee imagery within what Jesus proclaims in Isaiah 61. And as David mentioned yesterday ["The Two Wave Loaves of Pentecost"], it can be explained by calling Pentecost an annual, mini-Jubilee because of the way it is counted. We know that Pentecost is counted by seven weeks or seven sevens or seven Sabbaths, plus one day, the next day. Just like the Jubilee, which is counted with seven sevens of years, plus one year. They both add up to 50—Pentecost. The Jubilee is a little bit of Pentecost too because you count 50 there as well. So in this way, its meaning applies to both Pentecost and Atonement. It could be looked at both ways and not necessarily be wrong, because on Atonement is when the Jubilee is declared: Proclaim liberty throughout the land. And so Pentecost has some of those same kind of vibes of Jubilee that Atonement does.
When all of this is put together, you say, yeah, it might be Pentecost. But yeah, it might be Atonement. You cannot know for certain because there is not enough detail to say with certainty that yes, it is this day unless we are totally missing something. Maybe in a few years, somebody will come up with something that will reveal to us which it actually was.
But there is one thing that we have to understand in addition to this and put it in our minds and kind of let it marinate a little. And that is, if it is a Pentecost in which He did this, then that makes Jesus' ministry almost four years long—three and three-quarters, not three and a half. And if it is three and three-quarters approaching on four, that interferes with a bit of prophetic chronology. And so it is kind of like, aah, well that is unfortunate because now we know even with less certainty which day it was. I am not going to take a firm stance on this because from what we currently know, it is not definitively provable either way. It is enough that we understand, right now, right here, May 28th, 2023, it is enough that we understand it was a Sabbath day and we can take the imagery and the lessons out of the Sabbath to understand what He was getting at.
Now, we understand the Sabbath pictures God's rest as well as liberty from this world. This is a day that we come out of the world. It is a separate day. And we also know that the Sabbath day is God's day. It is God's time and that was what Jesus was declaring. This is the day of the Lord. This is His appointed time to do His work. It has begun. So if we understand the Sabbath imagery and the Sabbath symbolism, we have a pretty good idea of what He was talking about. We do not need necessarily to pin it down to one of these holy days because what we see and in this mission statement here that He gives in verses 18 and 19, it has a lot to do with God's rest and God's work and being at liberty from this world.
Let us go to verse 17. I spoke enough on verse 16. I do not want to get bogged down there. He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written and so forth. Jesus here takes the initiative. He is in control. Yes, He gets handed the book of Isaiah, the scroll of the book of Isaiah, and He then goes up to where the readers in the synagogue would normally go. But notice what He does. It says here when He had opened the book, or the scroll, He found the place where it was written.
The Jews have a standard cycle of Scripture readings for their worship services. For many centuries, the Jews have had such readings in a three year cycle. It is called the triennial cycle. More recently, in recent centuries, they have gotten it down to a one year cycle where they go through the most significant verses as far as they are concerned. However, scholars, when you try to pin them to the wall about this triennial cycle, say, well, we are not exactly sure whether the known Jewish readings reach back as far as the first century. And if you, you know, grab their throats and make them spit out a little bit more, they say, well, history shows us that at that time they were still being established, those various readings that they later became concretized into their lectionary.
So, trying to find out when Isaiah 61 was read in the synagogue in the first century is not a conclusive proof of when this happened. Even so, I will just let you know so yo will be further muddled about which day this was, on Pentecost in the second year of the Jewish three year lectionary cycle, Exodus 20 and Isaiah 61:1-2 are to be read. So it was read on a Pentecost in the second year of the cycle. But I do not know if we can say that this was the second year of the cycle or what. There is just not enough proof to be conclusive about it.
In addition, Luke 4 does not say that Jesus read the expected text. This is the Eternal God Almighty in human form. He can read whatever He wants. He does not have to read the text that the Jews prescribed should be read that day. Yes, He was handed the Isaiah scroll, that is true. But Luke writes, He found the place where Isaiah 61:1-2 was written. That is kind of interesting, from a speaker's point of view, that He even went there. He went there and read it from the scroll. I am sure He had it memorized. He did not need to read it from the scroll. But for those of you who are speaking, it is probably a good idea for you to have the Bible open and read it from the Bible as our Savior did because it shows His authority. He was reading from the scripture, speaking from the scripture. Anyway, that is an aside. So Isaiah 61:1-2 was the prophecy He wanted to read to His friends and neighbors there in Nazareth.
Another little bit of information here that says that this may not have been the prescribed reading of the day is that he added Isaiah 58:6 right in the middle of it. It was like He was reading Isaiah 61:1 and suddenly a thought came in His head, well, that is how it would have been for me, He probably had this planned all along. But He inserts a snippet of a verse from Isaiah 58 right in the middle of what He was reading in Isaiah 61. (By the way, that is Isaiah 58:6, right at the end of verse 18.) And beyond that, He left the last part of Isaiah 61:2 completely unsaid.
Now, if you go back to Isaiah 61:2, you will find out that little part that He left off was "and the day of vengeance to our God." So that was not part of what He was trying to get across that day. That was way in the future. He was speaking about the things which He would begin to do during His ministry.
What I am saying is that there is a way to look at what Luke said here that Jesus, in a way, played fast and loose with Isaiah 61:1-2 and may have gone totally His own way here to read to the people what He wanted to read to them and not necessarily what was supposed to be read on that day. We do not know, there is just not enough proof to know, but these are little interesting questions that make any identification of the day a little bit questionable. But He was making a specific point and He made the point with the verses He wanted to make it with.
Let us reread the first part of verse 18. This is what I have called Part A and B. That is the first two lines.
Luke 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me [that is A], because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor [that is B]."
This begins His message. This opens His announcement or, as I have said, His mission statement. This is what He had been commissioned to do. And what He does here with these first two lines is to give His credentials. This is the authority that He has to speak from. This is the authority He has been given so that He can do the work that He will get to in just a bit.
Now, it was common in ancient Israel and in the Old Testament to identify a prophet by stating the Spirit of the Lord came upon whoever it was, Samson; or the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul. Let us look at that one. Saul back in I Samuel 10. You will see how it is generally used.
I Samuel 10:6-7 "Then the Spirit of the Lord [Samuel speaking] will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. And let it be when these signs come to you, that you do as the occasion demands; for God is with you."
Notice those very interesting details that are in Samuel's instructions here to Saul. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon you, you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. That is very interesting because when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, it turns us into a different person. Also verse 7, "do as the occasion demands; for God is with you." The Spirit of the Lord coming upon a person put God with him. And that is what turns us into another person, God's Spirit working with us.
I Samuel 10:9-10 [this is after the instructions are given] So it was when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, that God gave him another heart; and all those signs came to pass that day. When they came there to the hill, there was a group of prophets to meet him; then the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesized among them.
So taking this idea back to Luke 4. He is telling an audience of Jews, who are very familiar with the Old Testament, that He had been anointed with God's Spirit. The Spirit of God had come upon Him and given Him a task to do the next phrase.
Luke 4:18 "He has anointed Me to preach the gospel. . ."
This next phrase is very similar, anointing to preach, because in ancient Israel kings, priests, and prophets were anointed to their positions. That is someone in authority like Samuel or like the high priest or whoever it happened to be that, that God chose to do that, would pour oil on top of the head of the person who is being given a job to do. Like I said, king, high priest, and also prophets. Let us go back to I Samuel. This happened in I Samuel 9, just a little bit before the occasion that we just read.
I Samuel 9:27 As they were going down to the outskirts of the city, Samuel said to Saul, "Tell the servant to go on ahead of us." And he went on. "But you stand here a while, that I may announce to you the word of God."
I am going to give you something. God told me to tell you.
I Samuel 10:1 Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him and said, "Is it not because the Lord has anointed you commander over His inheritance?"
This is where Saul was anointed as king originally and commander of the Lord's people. So a flask of oil was poured all over his head. And even though Samuel was the only one there, as far as we know, because all the servants and everything had been told to go on, it announced that he now had a new position. In like manner, Jesus tells the people there in Nazareth that He had been anointed to preach the gospel. So Jesus is declaring that God, through His Spirit, was with Him and had commissioned Him to do a divinely appointed or assigned work, just like He had given Saul a work to do. They had given him a position and authority and His Spirit to do that work.
He did the same with all the prophets. He did it with David; all the kings were anointed in the same way. And so they were shown to be to everyone who were witnesses there that God had done this. He had charged them with a task and He had given them position and authority to do that. So if nothing else, He is telling them that he had been anointed to a high position and selected specially and given power to do a work, that is, as a prophet at the very least, just like in the Old Testament, that he had been appointed as a prophet.
So, we can see here that a prophet is perhaps the first thing we should think of here. No, maybe it is the second. But the prophet's ministry or the prophets work was as preachers, foremost. That was their main job, preachers of God's Torah or His instruction. But they were also witnesses of God's way, they were supposed to live as God wanted people to live and so they were witnesses. And we know from the Old Testament that a third job that prophets had was as a watchman, to warn Israel about the way they were going, warn Israel about their sins and that God's judgment was impending if they did not repent.
Foretelling, as we often think of prophets, was just a part, and sometimes a small part of their job. And we understand that the prophecies that we see in the Old Testament, many of them do foretell the future, things that have happened and will happen in our future. But a lot of what they wrote is what we would call doctrine or Christian living. I mean, David is called a prophet, and he did a fair amount of prophesy in the future, but the Psalms are full of how to live, not necessarily what is coming down the pike. So that is at least what we see there in Luke 4, that at the very least He is a herald of what God is going to do.
But there is more than that. For us, looking back from our time to this, it is very clear that He was anointed as our High Priest in that same way because that is how He acts toward us. He acts as our King and all those other things, but most intimately He is our High Priest training us to become priests under Him, learning how to live the way of God and to teach the way of God. So there is that. Let us just go back to Psalm 133 and see what he may be alluding to in terms of becoming the the priest here. We can read the whole psalm. It is only three verses.
Psalm 133:1-3 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing—life forevermore.
If you are interested, I did a sermon (and then I later did a Bible study) on Psalm 133. It is amazing what those three verses hold. I would recommend you go listen to that if you are interested.
Here we have, at least he is saying here, that he is a prophet. We can easily see that he is saying that he is our high priest. But anointed was a hot button word at the time because messiah in Hebrew means "the anointed." And Jesus was very straightforwardly telling those people in Nazareth that He was the anointed one. This is the earliest time, as far as I am aware, that I can think of, that He directly said, "I am the Messiah." Because He told them very clearly that the scripture of Isaiah 61:1-2 was fulfilled in their hearing. I am the one that this prophecy predicted would come. I am the Messiah, He says. He was anointed directly by God Himself. "He has anointed Me to preach the gospel," it says.
Now if we would go on and read, we find out that His friends and neighbors and relatives disbelieved Him. "Is this not Joseph's Son?" What is going on with Him? How can this be? Part of their disbelief is probably a result of what He goes on to say about the Messianic mission. Because what He said was not to kick the Romans out and set up a new Davidic kingdom. As a matter of fact, the Jews at the time did not consider Isaiah 61:1-2 to be Messianic. That was not in their list of Messianic prophecies because they thought of the Messiah coming with a sword and reestablishing the kingdom of David by kicking the Romans out and reestablishing a physical kingdom. But He is telling us also by telling us that He is the Messiah, that He is also the King of kings.
There is a lot being announced here. All the titles of Jesus that we think of are being announced here. I am the one that you guys have been waiting for and this is what I am going to do. He is very clear, they should have understood Him, but they obviously did not. So He is making a very bold declaration of who He was and what He was going to do. And He specifically, He purposely left out the Messiah's day of vengeance in Isaiah 61:2 because that was not part of His agenda at the time. That would come later and it has not come yet. But He was telling them this is what I have come to do and this is what I am going to get on to just as soon as possible. So He was going to be a very different kind of Messiah and King than they expected. It was going to be nothing like what they thought.
So He got through saying this and His friends and neighbors and relatives say this is preposterous. Let's go throw him over a cliff, which they tried to do, and if you look at verse 30, notice what verse 30 says. "And then passing through the midst of them, He went his way." This is delicious irony because these are people that thought they knew Him and here they rushed Him to the brow of the cliff, and they were going to send Him over, and He walked through the midst of them as if they did not know Him. It is just one of those little tidbits in here that tells us that they were blind. Here they thought they knew Him and they did not know Him at all. They did not recognize Him. "He came into His own and His own did not receive Him. They did not see who He was.
Let us go on to Part C here.
Luke 4:18 "He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor."
At its most fundamental, the gospel is, as we have learned, the good news of the Kingdom of God, the good news of the inauguration of God's Kingdom, by sending its King Jesus Christ to earth to invite many more into the Kingdom and prepare them for the establishment of the Kingdom on the earth. That is the gospel in a nutshell. Who, though, are its recipients? He says He preached the gospel to the poor. Who are the poor? Now, we should be careful not to define it too narrowly. A lot of commentators like to say, it is an economic poverty, it's the poverty of people who do not have any money. The best answer as I've come to think of it is to say, the poor is everyone who has not already accepted the riches of God's grace, but have the submissive, humble contrite spirit that God can work with. So it combines everybody with the qualifications of those who are submissive and humble, who are poor of spirit. It has very little to do with their economic condition and everything do to do with disadvantage and spiritual prov poverty, spiritual destitution. Ultimately, he's speaking about those whom God would call because frankly, we are all poor and weak. I mean, just look what Paul says about us in First Corinthians one versus 26 through 29. You know, we are not many wise men are called not many noble, you know, all the things he says thereHe calls us nothing. At one point in those scriptures, he's going to bring something to pass through these nothing people and, and it's going to make a great witness. Um I was going to go to Matthew 11 but Ted did that for me in that scripture or that passage between verses 25 30 Christ calls us babes and infants. They are the poorest of the poor babes and infants do not own anything. They are the most destitute of all, but they do have that submissive, humble spirit that God can work with. And then he later says that that little children are the ones who will come to him. So that's kind of an overall definition of what he means by the poor. Let's go on to the next part. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted. Let's just get this out of the way. Just a little thing. The word sent here is Apostolos. He is sent as an apostle to the broken hearted. Um And if you would maybe jot down Hebrews three verses one through six, he is called the great apostle of our faith there and he has great honor for fulfilling that position as the son. All right. So who are the brokenhearted that he was sent to, to heal a broken hearted person suffers grief, through loss or a broken hearted person is one whose heart has been abused through betrayal, deceit or, or having been taken advantage of, you know, when a, when a girl says, oh, you broke my heart, she's been betrayed by one she thought was her boyfriend or um you know, some sort of deceit has happened. Um or she's been taken advantage of. Those are people whose heart has been broken either by grief or through sin, we would say through loss or sin. Now, I prefer here to think of it as the latter one. People whose heart, hearts have been abused through betrayal, deceit and being taken advantage of he was sent to heal people's hearts after the this cruel world and their own sins had crushed them. So part of his job, he says here is that he has come to rebuild or fix or renovate their hearts. Now, we know if we go back to Ezekiel, the 36th chapter that it's actually a heart transplant. Let's go back to Ezekiel 36. This is actually speaking of the second Exodus and what he will do for Israel when they return, but it also applies to everyone else who is to be convertedWhat did I say here? Ezekiel 36 verse 25 rules come back and then he says, then I will Sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them. And I think that's all I need for right now except that you shall be my people and I will be your God. So this is what he is going to do generally. It's part of his overall commission that he is going to heal the hearts of the broken hearted. Those who have been abused. Spiritually, those who have been had such a weight of sin that they have, their hearts have been crushed and they need a new heart, new life within them and a new, new beginning. All right, let's go to the next part of Luke four, verse 18 to preach deliverance to the captives. Liberty to the captives is one of the easiest of these to understand because we know that Satan has held this world captive under the bondage of sin and falsehood and guilt. Beth found a, an interesting quotation that I just this morning that I think goes here quite well. This is Johann Von go. None are so helplessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from from the depths of their mind by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes unquote. And this is what he has done. He has thoroughly filled this world with lies and made the people of this world think it's the truth. And so their, their perception of right and wrong gets totally out of kilter where right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. This is the world out of which Jesus liberates these people. They have been held captive as prisoners of war in this conflict between Satan and God and Christ was sent as the captain of the host of God to release those captives and give them liberty finally to make right choices for themselves. So, this is the, the gist of Mr Armstrong's booklet from way back, a world held captive. And this is one of our savior's main things that he came to do to bring the truth and release these people who have been all their lifetime subject to bondage. All right, let's go on to the next oneThis is what I've called 18 f recovery of sight to the blind. And that's very similar to the previous one. We've just seen. Most people in the world have been intentionally blinded. I do not know if you're aware of this, but it's a fact and it's God's doing primarily God has been the one that's been blinding people because he does it as a way of preserving them for the second resurrection. He lets most of humanity go their own way to, soak in their own juices. If you will, the, the ideas that they have come up with that are contrary to him and his way. He just lets them go right now and lets them do what they do and it's their own sins that blind them to the truth. If you want to go to Romans one, you'll see where it says very clearly that he has done this. Romans won versus 24 26 28after saying that they had rejected him and started to worship idols. He says, God also gave them up to their, to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts. We do not need to go any furtherverse 25 they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions and he goes on verse then 28. And even as they did not like to retain God and their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do the things which are not fitting God, let them do that. You also go very quickly to first our second Thessalonians 2 11. You see that He continues this in the end timeOnce the man of sin comes upon the scene, this is second Thessalonians two. And let's see what's the verse verse 11. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie. And here He does it that they may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure and righteousness. So there are very, there are different reasons why God has blinded them. But I think in this case, um what Jesus is getting at is that the whole world is, has been blinded, whether it was, whether it was Satan or whether it was God, this their sins have blinded them and they need to be given sight. But as David said in his, his sermon at an article I do not know, it seems like it was a couple three years ago or so. Um, Satan has never shown to blind anyone, he can deceive them. But he, he is not anywhere shown except in that one verse, second Corinthians 44. and it says that the God of this world has blinded them and people have interpreted it to mean that it was Satan. But who is the God of this world? Who is the real God of this world? It's one of those things that you really have to study into, to understand that that's a power that God keeps to himself. Read his article. It's good. Now, most, as I've said, most people in the world have been blinded, like I said, they have gone their own way and they have believed what they wanted to believe. Jesus though as Messiah was sent to open the blinded eyes of those whom God was calling. You can see an illustration of this in John nine over the whole chapter. He's the man that was born blind and Jesus healed him of his blindness. And as you go through that chapter, you can find how his eyes have been opened. But his persecutors, the Pharisees who were trying to kick him out of the synagogue were the ones that were actually blinded, not the one who had been physically blind from birth. So that, that Vignette there and John nine gives you a really good idea of what Jesus came to do. So he gives us his Holy Spirit and that allows us to understand truth and act on it. In fact, in First Corinthians two, Paul says, it gives us the very mind of Christ and that mind is concentrated on the truth. All right, let's go on. Just have a couple more phrases here. This is verse 18 G to set at liberty. Those who are oppressed, the oppressed or a very pitiable group. They are the ones who are broken, shattered, crushed, abused. They're the people whom powerful forces of evil have dominated. They and they because of their lack of strength have buckled under the strain of domination and ultimately the weight of their own sins. They are the ones who have been crushed to the earth and Christ has come to set them at liberty. That verb said at liberty can mean a release from death or pardon or forgive. So by forgiving their sins, by for by pardoning them through justification. They can begin to put their lives back together and be free. This is the, the phrase that Jesus inserts from Isaiah 58 6 where he says there that a proper fast is an occasion to let the oppressed go free. Satan is the great oppressor and he has many willing goons among men who oppress their neighbors and try to dominate their thinking. Jesus came to lift the oppression by defeating the oppressor and forgiving the oppressed sins, those who have been deceived and abused. And he does this ultimately by his own shed blood, giving them the liberty. Then once they are called to choose their own path. Now, it's very interesting as I mentioned earlier that we have these two occasions in Luke four and also in Mark one where we have the temptation of Jesus to start the chapter and we have the casting out of the unclean spirit, right at the end of the chapter, these two bracket, this mission statement that that Jesus says, saying that giving examples of how Satan and his demons oppress people, keep them from the truth and do all kinds of terrible things and make them try to do their will. But Jesus, right in the middle of these two illustrations says, I've come to beat the oppressor up and put him down. All right, let's get to verse 19. We do not need to stay here long. He says that he's been sent to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Probably a better translation would be the year of the Lord's favor. It brings in very clearly the jubilee theme. It implies the opening of our day of salvation and that it's a very urgent statement to us that we comply with what Jesus Christ is doing now because this opportunity is not going to come our way again. This jubilee theme also comes out in terms of some of the phrase theology that he's used, for instance, um pro proclaimed liberty that he said, where is it here? Um Set at liberty in the last one, especially. But that's what the jubilee was. It was a time when the Israelites freed their slaves, they canceled debts, they returned land to their original owners and then they depended on God for providence and blessing through that year. So this was the year of the Lord's favor. This was the year when they thought a lot about liberty, freedom, being free to choose and free to give. It was a time when nationally everything was set. Right. Again, the jubilee we could think of as like a chess game. Let's just put it in that, that term where you go through and you play a game and then the jubilee comes and you reset the board and start over. Jubilee was a resetting of the board back to the way God intended it. So they were given every 50 years a chance to replay the game better than they did before and they always failed. Of course. But that was the idea to give a reset every 50 years. And this is exactly the core of Christ's mission to reset all things to God's intended order in Luke four. He was just getting started. That's why he was proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of the Lord's favor because he was starting to reset the board. He was going to begin by calling a small group of people. He ended up with 12 apostles and 100 and 20 names. It says they are an a whom he sent to call more to this work. He's still doing this. There are more people that he's working with, but it's still the same job he's working through his church made up of the once poor, the once broken hearted, the once captive, the once blind and the once suppressed whom he has rescued and freed and given a job. He's forming them, drilling them and preparing them to be his headquarters staff. When he starts going to the whole world with the same mission, they are going to be his chief servants and aides so that he can expand this project among all humanity. What we have seen today is his mission statement. What we have seen today is our mission statement. We too as first John 2 27 says have been given and anointing. We have been anointed to the same work as our savior to assist him in what he is doing. What we have seen today is that there is a lot of work to do. So let's be about it.
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