Jesus Great Announcement St Mark’s 23.2.20 2 Sam 7:11b-16; Ps 2; Acts 17:1-9; Luke 4:14-30
Audio: https://www.daleappleby.net/index.php/mp3-sermons/51-recent-sermons/1012-jesus-great-announcement
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsnUWyPjLXw
Introduction
The second in our series on “God’s Great Announcement” announces about the coming of King Jesus. He is the son promised long ago to David (2 Sam 7:16) whose kingdom will last forever for it is vastly more revolutionary than any of the political systems of this world. I felt constrained to draw out a lesson from today’s reading from Acts when I was recently in the Philippines. The Philippines is a self-proclaimed “Christian nation” where everyone is very public about their faith and it’s easy talk to people in the street about Jesus. When however the apostles preached in Thessalonica however the word went around that they were announcing “another king”, Jesus, whose kingdom conflicts with that of Caesar and they were recognised as “men who have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6-7). So-called “Christian nations”, like the Philippines today and many African nations, and Australia decades ago, have all domesticated the gospel into thinking “Christianity” is compatible with sins like political corruption, widespread domestic violence or child abuse. The passivity in the Australian Church into which generations of believers have been socialised is a sign that we do not believe that the gospel is God’s power to turn an upside-down world right way up. That the gospel is a Great Announcement was made clear by the priority Jesus gave it.
Exposition
That his first recorded public words were a proclamation of the gospel (Mark 1:15) confirms the assessment of the famous Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, “from all eternity… God looks on the gospel as the grandest of all His works”. The intensity of God’s own good news is summed up in Christ’s message in Luke chapter 4.
Jesus has been operating in the power of the kingdom of God with people being healed and delivered of evil spirits on every side (Luke 4:14-15; Acts 10:38). This swelled his popularity made him a very popular King (cf. Luke 6:26), but when he entered his hometown synagogue to articulate his mission in terms of the prophecy of Isaiah 61 everything suddenly changed.
He emphatically directed the attention of the congregation to himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me he has sent me…” (v.18). In declaring, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (v.21) he dramatically claims to be the initiator of God’s great last days salvation. His claim to be anointed of the Spirit makes him a successor of the Old Testament prophets, priests and kings (Lev 8:12; 1 Sam 16:13; 1 Ki 19:16), who operated in the power and favour of the Lord to enforce his kingdom. Jesus testifies that he is the long awaited “Christ” of God. To a pious first century Jewish congregation such language was electrifying because of what the presence and power of God’s kingdom in the Lord’s anointed will do (Ps 2:2).
Christ has come “to proclaim good news to the poor.” These are not just materially poor, but people of low status (women, those ignorant of the Law, people unclean in vocation or through physical condition). The good news is for all those believed to be outside the circle of God’s favour. In the Gospels it is “the poor” who accept God’s message in Jesus (6:20; 7:22 cf. Pss. 12:5; 41:1; 86:1; 113:5-9) and enter his kingdom (cf. 1 Cor 1:26-29; James 2:5). When I ask, “Are you one of ‘the poor’?” don’t think about your bank account but whether, as the Lord said in the beatitudes, you are someone hungry and thirsty for God’s righteousness to rule in and through your own life (Matt 5:3, 6 cf. 6:33)? The marginalised “poor” receive the message of God’s just rule for what it is, a great announcement.
Jesus is also sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives”. These are folk overpowered by life’s circumstances so that there seems to be no way out. In Christ’s day those locked up in debtor’s prison or like the crippled woman who “Satan had bound for 18years” until Jesus healing power untied her from her bondage (Luke 13:16). All of us are surrounded by “captives”, people enslaved to various addictions, inescapable fears, frets and anxieties from which Christ alone can release them.
Jesus came to bring “recovering of sight to the blind”, both physically (Luke 7:22) and spiritually blind (Isa 42:6-7; John 9:39). In Revelation the Lord tells the church in Laodicea that it is “blind” because it didn’t see its desperate need for him. They need ointment for their eyes so they might see (Rev 3:17-18). Do you ever pray, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:18 that the Lord enlighten “the eyes of your heart” to see spiritual realities? I pray this all the time because I cannot afford to be without spiritual insight. Neither can any of us.
The Lord was sent “to set at liberty those who are oppressed” v.18. These were the day labourers whose employment was always uncertain, the homeless, abused, those ground down by life’s circumstances (Isa 58:6-7). The language of liberation/release that Jesus uses here is Luke’s normal word for forgiveness (aphesin 5:23; 11:4). Christ is announcing that with his coming God is transporting his people from a place of wrath to God’s gracious favour. The entry through forgiveness into the realm of divine favour explains why conversion so often leads to psychological and economic uplift. When people know Jesus, they stop wasting money on alcohol and gambling etc, their relationships stabilise, and they become honest and hard workers. Where the gospel has been received communities come to enjoy economic development, better health, lower infant mortality, less corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women). The democracy and prosperity of Western nations is a fruit of the gospel. Our problem, as it was for Israel of old (Deut 32:15, 18), is that once lifted up by God we forget our need for him (Rev 3:14ff).
Jesus concludes his declaration by saying he was sent “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19). This year of favour was a special year appointed by God to reveal the all-inclusive character of his salvation. The so-called “year of Jubilee” (Lev 25:8-55) came every 50 years and began when the Day of Atonement cleansed the nation of its sins. This was the year when all property was returned to its original owner, all debts were cancelled, and bond servants were released. This images the revolutionary nature of the gospel.
Jesus summed up his message from Isaiah by declaring, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” v. 21. He is the warrior Messiah of Psalm 2 through whom God is reclaiming everything as its original owner. In Jesus the end time era of salvation and divine favour has arrived. This is marvellously good news. But the story presses on with Jesus testifying to rejection in his hometown (v.24), for as he teaches that salvation is coming to the Gentiles, as it did in the times of Elijah and Elisha (vv.25-27), the Nazarenes sensed they were being bypassed as unworthy of the kingdom of God and in fierce anger sought to destroy God’s anointed one (vv.28-30). The parallels to this passage in the other Gospels tell us, “he could do no mighty work there…because of their unbelief.” (Mt 13:58; Mk 6:5)
Conclusion and application
We should not judge “God’s Great Announcement” by our own limited experience. Wherever the gospel is being heard for the first-time great things happen e.g. a friend of mine recently returned from Nepal with fantastic news of how the Lord is healing and saving people in that nation, despite tremendous opposition. Part of our problem is that, “familiarity breeds contempt.” I’m reminded of a book about the life and teaching of Jesus first published in 1966; “The Man You Can’t Ignore”. If we look around at how our society deals with Jesus this title looks false. But Jesus has not ceased to be the most dynamic person who ever lived and whose presence draws out responses polarised from fierce anger to total devotion. Christ is sidelined in Australia because by and large his revolutionary message that “turns the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) has been domesticated and watered down by us, the Church! It was the tremendously influential German philosopher Nietzsche who said, “to make me believe in their Redeemer: his disciples would have to look more redeemed.” What are we missing out on?
This week I saw something in Luke 4 I have never seen before. The Greek word dektos appears twice in this passage and it can be translated like this. Jesus came “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s welcome” (v.19), then he testified, “no prophet is welcome in his hometown” (v.24). Putting these two things together, we see that the people of God will always experience God’s liberating welcome/jubilee to the degree that they welcome Jesus. Since spiritually speaking we are in the place of Jesus’ hometown audience our lived experience of God’s liberating healing delivering presence, great or small, is an expression of how we have welcomed Jesus. In the realm of the kingdom of God the way to welcome Jesus is to bring to him, without reservation and with unbridled humility, the depths of our needs trusting by faith that as he never turned away the poor, enslaved, blind and oppressed in the Gospels he will not turn us away either but pour out the presence and power of God’s kingdom on all who cry out to him in desperate need.
“God’s Great Announcement” is that the King has come with a blessing for all those who self-identify as poor, captive, blind or oppressed, or with rejection for those who refuse to see themselves as needy and refuse to come to Christ. By the fact that we have read the gospel, and preached it, today (v.21 cf. Luke 5:26; 13:32-33; 19:9; 23:43), means today is day of reckoning. We can express our desperate need to Jesus, for if we do not, as has happened in so many places so many times, he will quietly walk through our midst (v.30) to a place where his message will be received for the great news it truly is (Luke 4:31ff.).