Jesus' Manifesto Part 1

Luke 4:18-19

The UK news media is buzzing at present with speculation as to when the next UK general election will take place.

Once the date is announced the politicians will be delivering their manifestos to entice the electorate to vote for them and their party.

The manifesto contains the promises of what the politician intends to perform If the people elects them.

In a sense that is what Jesus did in in the scripture Luke 4:18-19 which you could say was his manifesto, or his mission, or his agenda, or his platform, or even as his job description but please note his manifesto was based exclusively on the will of Father God as described in the Holy Scriptures.

A what a wonderful manifesto it was, no one has before or since gave such wonderful promises to humankind as Jesus did in his manifesto.

And unlike many politicians, Jesus delivered, then and now, each and every promise in his manifesto. PTL.

Context of Luke 4:18-19

Luke 4:16 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. 17 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:

                                                       Jesus’ Manifesto

18    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 broken-hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed.

19    To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Jesus was anointed (saturated) with the Holy Spirit to fulfil the specific purposes for which the Father God had sent him.

Each point Jesus makes is part of the wonderful news in his manifesto.

1.To preach the Gospel the good news of salvation to the poor. The poor* being everyone who was as sinner and had no way of obtaining forgiveness of their sins and

receiving God’s salvation. * biblically =dependent on others i.e. spiritually speaking to us all.

2. To heal the broken hearted- one of the Teen Challenge (addiction recovery) leaders explained to me that everyone who has addiction problems has had a broken heart in their relationships in life.

 Many other people have had their hearts broken too in their life relationships and experiences but without addiction.

Jesus came specifically to bind up the broken hearts to restore meaning, purpose, and wholeness to our lives.

Remember Matthew 12:20 A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory; (Isa 42:3) when we feel that we are hanging by a thread or that our candle flame is going to go out. Jesus binds up our strands and breathes his oxygen onto our flames.

The wonderful news in Jesus’ manifesto continues.

3. Jesus came to set people free from the bondage and slavery of sin which takes them captive at will.

The believer no longer is at the whim of sin but can stand against it in using the full panoply of armour of God and the weapons Jesus has given us.

Jesus came to remove all our guilt, and shame-these are often Satan’s weapons to hold us back from serving God.

4. Not only did Jesus often heal the physical blindness in his earthly ministry but more importantly took away the blindness of the unbelievers when we were saved into God’s Kingdom. Remember the hymn line from ‘Amazing grace’: ‘I once was blind but now I see.’

That was you and I until we became believers.

5. Jesus came to set at liberty those who are oppressed by the devil, those held down from living their lives to the full by demonic oppression in its various manifestations.

v19 The acceptable year of the Lord refers to the Jubilee year (50th) of the Lord in which land was returned to the original owner, all debts were forgiven, slaves were released- these are good parallels in the life of the believers when we are first saved.

The Jubilee year was the year of redemption, Jesus announced that He was bringing full scale redemption to humankind in his manifesto.

Amen

Personal Prayer

In part 2 we consider the words that Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2