Jesus Beginning His Ministry.
Luke 4:16-30

Intro.: 1. Monday’s Sept  29,1986  New York Times has  a  story about spiritual concepts  drawing a  new breed, One of the more weird stories concerns a 40 year old woman, J.Z. Knight, who claims she is the  embodiment  of a 35,000 year old man. She has been made popular by Shirley MacLaine who has been promoting her and the idea of reincarnation.  Thousands of people have been flocking to pay $400.00 to see her “transform”  herself into “Ramtha,”  a 35,000 year old man who delivers  the message  that man is God, that man can achieve whatever he wants, create whatever he needs.”  Mrs.  Knight says, “I think people have realized that they have gleaned many great lessons from their religions, but it doesn’t work anymore.  People are beginning to discover their  own divine self.  We’re pulling away from  congregational,  fear-oriented religions.”

2.  This overall mentality is called the New Age movement.  The people follow the view of many Eastern religions that there is a unity in the  Universe, of which all things, including  God and man are equal parts.  According to this view, Man is a deity who can create his own reality.”

3. This new sense of  deity is attained though “altered states of consciousness, thru the use of psychological techniques as meditation, hypnosis, chanting, biofeedback, prolonged isolations and the intervention  of “spirit guides” or “ghosts.”  Psychologists who have  studied the process say that while participants are in this “altered state” leaders of the groups are able to implant new ideas and alter their thinking processes.  People often experience euphoria in the altered states and this is one of the reasons for their popularity.

4. This pseudo-therapy is having an effect on people.  The groups are using hypnotic states are not being told about it.  Many use the hypnotic  states to plant beliefs in their minds they are unaware of.  One concept commonly transmitted in these sessions by “human potential” groups is that because man is a deity equal to God he can do no wrong:  thus, there is no sin, no reason for guilt in life.
5.Why get involved in this?   Reginald Alex, executive director of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago, said,  “Most of the people over who get involved in these New age groups, which are growing all over the place, are intelligent, altruistic, idealistic.  They want to know the meaning of life and someone comes along and tell them they have the answer.  Then they’re told they are the master of their own destiny, but they don’t know they are being subjected to mind control.

6. One of the adherents of the New Age thought said that people are turning away from traditional ideas and rejecting them.  This means a rejection of Christian ideas, and of Jesus Christ.  This was not  the first time that Jesus as has been rejected.   He was in a synagogue in Nazareth and after telling them his message they wanted to kill him.     Jesus’ message is one that is different from the world and the philosophies that come along in each generation.
The passage of Scripture that Jesus read was Isaiah 61:11-2:  “ The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;  to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; “

What does all this mean?

I.  Good News is preached to the poor.

1.  Let’s think about the poor, first of all.  The good news is preached  to the poor.  In the world there are great gaps between rich and poor.  In India there are four castes and then there are outcastes. The high caste is the Brahmins.  They are so good in their caste position that the shadow of the outcaste will defile their body.  The poor out-castes do not even have caste. In this system based on karma there is no forgiveness.  The law of karma states that a person is born into caste system because they deserve to be there due to past sins.  He cannot be accepted by the upper castes.  The poor in caste deserves to be there and there is no forgiveness nor compassion.

Looking westward to Greek times, there were a lot of poor people in Greece. There was slavery and slavery was justified  that it was needed for the economy.  Slaves should not be free; only the really intelligent, the philosophers, should run the state.  Now the implication is that no slave would be intelligent to run the state.  Freedom for everyone was no accepted.

2. In almost every society, the poor are not worth talking about. We have the poor in our society, in our slums, in the coal mine of England, etc.  We have not always taken the example of Jesus to preach the good news to the poor.

3.  What is that good news?   The Good News is that God loves them.  They are his sons and daughters by faith in Jesus Christ.  Jesus has come seeking the lost sheep that they might be restored to his fold.  The good news that that God can transform a life to give it meaning and purpose.  The good news is that we have  eternal  life in Jesus.  The good news is that the poor are equal to anyone else before God.  The good news to the poor is that we are all one in Jesus Christ.

4.  To  claim to be divine as the New Age speaks is to ruin the word  divine.  But when we speak of Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God we are talking about  real Divinity.  Only the Son of God can be a Savior.  If  you are your own savior, this becomes the most pessimistic view around.

ll. Bind up the Broken-hearted,  Isa. 61:1-2

1. This quote is omitted by Luke, but it is in the KJV following the quote in Isaiah. The quote still fits the character of the life of Jesus. There is a lot of brokenness around.    We all face losing loved ones. Our hearts are pierced as with an arrow going thru them.  Sadness is all around us.  How do we come to have healing in the heart?  A fractured limb takes time to heal, but it does and it is painful.  A broken heart is the same way.  It takes time and time is one of the healing aspect s of God’s mercy.

2. But there are some other things. A few years  a remarkable woman who attended Marble Collegiate Church died.  Few people would know her name, for she was a “bag lady,” one who had no real home, who seemed to carry all her earthy possessions with them in a paper bag.  Spent most of her time in coffee shops near the church.  Some consider her a bit eccentric, but she had a gift.  She understood people with problems, and she knew how to listen.  Occasionally people would come to church and after the service would tell the pastor they were there because of a woman with two shopping bags whom they met in a coffee shop.  When the woman was admitted to the hospital where she died, a member of the church visited her.  “Aren’t you afraid and lonely? “ the friend asked, knowing the woman had no family or close friends and was facing surgery the next day.  “No, I’m not afraid,”  the old woman said,  “I have Jesus.”   Despite all of her difficulties somewhere along the way the woman had developed a deep and lasting friendship with Jesus, and she was neither alone nor lonely.  The presence of Jesus fills up the heart.

3. Another experience may help.  About 15 years ago, a young veteran of the Vietnam War, Nick Row, spoke in New York about his experiences as a prisoner of the Vietcong for years.  One of these years was spent in solitary confinement in a hole in the ground, best described as a hell-hole.  All around him men were dying, but Nick wanted to survive.   Before his incarceration, Nick was not religious. In fact, he thought of himself as an atheist.  He was, however, familiar  with some passages of the Bible because his family had forced him to go to Sunday School.  He couldn’t remember most of them in detail, but he had memorized  and still remembered the Lord’s Prayer and the twenty-third Psalm.
As Nick crouched in his hell-hole, he did two things to keep himself alive.  First, he visualized himself in a perfect place.  He pictured himself as being on a beach, looking out at the water as the warm sun shone upon him.  Breezes were blowing.  He imagined this so intensely that he could feel the breeze on his body and his toes digging into the sand.  In his mind the scene was real.
The second thing he did was to repeat over and over the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.  After repeating these several thousand times, he reached the point where he realized that Jesus was with him and that he was not alone.  The deeper he dug into these spiritual resources, the more certain his survival became.

4. Jesus talked about binding up the broken-hearted and many have found this true for their lives. Our problem is not in the theology of it, but in the receiving of it.

III.  Release the Captives

1.The captivity referred to here is evidently moral and spiritual. These words are not moving on the plane of opening of physical jails, but rather of setting people free from the invisible but terribly real imprisonment into which their souls may fall.  There are various forms of captivity.  There is a captivity in which men are slowly and gradually drawn and the existence of which they will try to deny. Captivity to various vices fit into this category…denied by the people who caught in them.

2.  Christian freedom is paradoxical.  To understand this, let us think of a person who graduates from high school and is now free to enjoy the world.  It is not difficult to think of this person drifting from place to place, living in various conditions, living with various people, male and female. This kind of drifting has an  appeal to it, there is little responsibility except for a place to stay and a meal to eat.  College can wait because this is the real education.  This life appears to be free, but it is not. There is no real freedom per se.  If one choses to drift, one has chosen to  reject certain other things, like a college education, a stable family life, a commitment to community and friends.  I am free to make a decision to be married, but  once I choose this, I give up other possibilities.
The same holds for ideologies.  Once we were free to make choices, but once the choices are made, we are servants or slaves until we decide for a different system.

3.  There is a captivity that is liberating….that is being held captive by Jesus Christ.  Being held captive by Jesus is liberating…there is liberation from sin.  There is liberation from self-destructive vices, from influence in the world that destroys us.  There is liberty in love.  There is liberty in doing good.
                Keith Miller wrote about his life:   “Three months after my high school graduation and 15 days before WW2 ended  we received word that my only brother, whom I idolized, had been killed in a plane crash while serving in the Air Force.  That night I sat there on the back steps, terrible alone.  I felt that I had to find the meaning of life. I felt that I had to pour myself into it twice as much since Earle would not get a chance to live it at all.
                After graduating from college he worked for an oil company in the Rio Grande valley. In those months as I drove through the vast desert land near  the Mexican border I came to love the silence, the stillness and the vastness very much.  The magnificent sunsets hinted at something wonderful and very real beyond the horizon.  As I drove thru that desert country alone, I began to sense something of the majesty and silent power of God in the world.  There awoke in me a realization that I must somehow learn more about  God and find out about Jesus Christ—who was supposed to be God.
That restlessness grew until one night at home in the middle of the night he woke his wife and said, 
“Honey, I’ve got to go back to school to find out about God.”  He studied hard but sensed something terribly wrong. After four terms he came to realize that he could not in good conscience be ordained.  He returned to the oil company.  He had a family, two babies, and there seemed to be no hope, no ultimate purpose.
                “I used to walk down the streets, I remember, and suddenly would break out in a cold sweat.  I thought I might be losing my mind.  One day it was so bad that I got in my company car and took off on a field trip alone.  As I was driving thru the tall pine woods of East Texas I suddenly pulled up beside the road and stopped.  I remember sitting there in complete despair.  I had always been an optimistic person, and had always had the feeling there was “one more bounce in the ball.  After  a good night’s sleep, one could always start again tomorrow.  But now there was  no tomorrow in my situation.  I was like a man on a treadmill going no place, in a world that was made up of black, black clouds all around me.

As I sat there I began to weep like a little boy which I suddenly realized I was inside.  I looked up toward the sky. There was nothing I wanted to do with my life.  And I said, “God, if there’s anything you want in this stinking soul, take it.”

Something came into my life that day which has never left.  There wasn’t any ringing of bells, or flashing of lights or vision, but it was a deep intuitive realization of what it is God wants from a man, which I had never known before.  And the peace which came with this understanding was not an experience in itself, but rather  a cessation of the conflict of a lifetime.  I realized that  God did not want my money, nor my time: he wanted my will.

It is like being born again. I saw that I had not seen Christ at seminary because I had never known  God personally.  As I sat there I continued to cry, only now the tears were a release of a lifetime of being bound by myself,  by the terrific drive to prove that I am something—what I had never quite understood.  Although I could not articulate for many months  what had happened to me, I knew to the core of my soul that I had somehow made personal contact with the very Meaning of Life.”

To be delivered from ourselves into a relationship with Jesus is the meaning of being released.

Oct. 10,1986