Introduction
The three parts of the passage which we studied last week were linked by the idea of sonship. So, when the Lord Jesus was baptised, God the Father said about him: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ And then there was the Lord’s genealogy, which Luke traced all the way back to Adam, the son of God. And in a sense, therefore, the list of names in the Lord’s genealogy was a list of the sons of God, because they all — including the Lord Jesus — came from Adam and therefore they all came from God. And then there was the account of the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness, when he proved himself to be God’s obedient Son.
And I compared his temptation in the wilderness with the temptation of the Israelites in the wilderness in the days of Moses. However, whereas the Israelites gave in to temptation again and again and again, the Lord Jesus remained obedient to God his Father throughout his time in the wilderness and throughout his time on earth as one of us.
I didn’t have time to say so last week, but the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness not only recalls the story of the Israelites in the days of Moses, but it also recalls the story of Adam. When Adam was in the Garden of Eden, the Devil came to him through Eve and tempted him to eat the forbidden fruit. And, as you know, Adam gave in to the Devil’s temptation and he ate the fruit. As a result, sin and death came into the world. Sin came into the world because all who are descended from Adam and Eve in the ordinary manner now inherit Adam’s fallen nature, so that sinning comes naturally to us. And death came into the world because death is the penalty for sin.
And so, as a result of Adam’s sin, sin and death came into the world and spread to all of us. By contrast, the Lord Jesus Christ, when he was in the wilderness and not in a garden, stood up to the Devil’s temptations and he remained obedient. So, he did not sin in the wilderness, but he remained obedient to his Heavenly Father right up to his death on the cross. And as a result of his obedience, all who believe in him are justified, so that we’re pardoned by God for all that we have done wrong; and we’re accepted as righteous in God’s sight so that God regards us as if we’ve done everything right. And since he regards us as if we’ve done everything right, then he gives all who believe in his Son the hope of eternal life in his presence.
And so, the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness recalls, not only the Israelites and their temptation in the wilderness, but Adam’s temptation in the Garden of Eden. And whereas Adam disobeyed, the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed his Heavenly Father and he remained obedient to him even to the point of dying on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins.
Today’s passage can be divided into two main parts: verses 14 to 30 and verses 31 to 44. And both of these parts are linked by the idea of kingship. In the first part of the passage, the Lord announced that he is God’s Spirit-Anointed King who has come to set his people free. And the second part of the passage is all about God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King who set his people free by conquering demons and disease.
And so, both parts are linked by the idea of kingship.
Background
But before we get into the first part, let me provide a little of the Old Testament background to what it’s about. In verses 18 and 19 the Lord is quoting from the prophet Isaiah. And as part of the quotation he refers to the year of the Lord’s favour. And the phrase ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ is another name for the ‘Year of Jubilee’. And that’s what I want to talk about for a few minutes.
God’s instructions for the year of Jubilee are found in Leviticus 25. That chapter begins with the Sabbath year. So, just as the Israelites were to work for six days every week and then they were to rest on the seventh day, so they were to work in their fields for six years and then they were to give their fields a rest in the seventh year. So, every seventh year, they weren’t to sow their fields or prune their vineyards and they weren’t allowed to reap whatever grew in their fields that year. They could eat whatever grew in the wild, but they weren’t to eat anything in their fields. They were to let their fields rest.
That was the Sabbath year. Then they were to count off seven Sabbath years. Seven sevens is 49. So, at the end of 49 years, they were to observe what was known as the Year of Jubilee. The word ‘Jubilee’ is connected to the Hebrew word for a ram’s horn. And the beginning of the Year of Jubilee was announced on the Day of Atonement with the blowing of a trumpet which was made from a ram’s horn.
In the Year of Jubilee, the people were once again to let the land rest. So, as in the Sabbath Year, so in the Year of Jubilee, they were not allowed to work their fields, but they were to live on what they had grown the previous year and what grew in the wild.
But more importantly, the Year of Jubilee was about liberty. It was about freedom. So, imagine you had fallen on hard times and you were forced to sell the family farm to pay off your debts. However, when the Year of Jubilee came along, the person who bought your family farm was to release it and give it back to you. And it wasn’t just about freeing land, but it was also about freeing people. If someone became poor, he might have to sell himself as a labourer in order to pay off his debts or to make a living. Instead of working for himself on the family farm, he had to go and work for someone else. But when the Year of Jubilee came around, that person had to be released. And so, the Year of Jubilee was about setting land free and it was about setting people free. It was about cancelling debts and giving people their freedom. The poor, who were weighed down by debt, were released from the burden of their debt. They were set free from their debts and were allowed to start again with a clean slate. On the Day of Atonement, which was the beginning of the Year of Jubilee, God forgave them their debt of sin. And afterwards the people were to forgive one another their financial debts. That’s the Year of Jubilee.
And the Lord used the image of the Year of Jubilee in Isaiah 61 to foretell a time when he would send his Spirit-Anointed King to set his people free again. But he wasn’t setting them free from debt. He was going to set them free from their captivity in Babylon. So, because of their persistent unbelief and rebellion, God sent his people away into exile. But instead of abandoning them there, he promised that the time would come when they would return to the Promised Land and rebuild the fallen city of Jerusalem. God promised to set his people free from their oppression in the land of Babylon. And sure enough, when the time was right, the Persian King Cyrus set God’s people free and they were allowed to return in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.
However, many years after their return from exile, the Lord Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth and he read from Isaiah about God’s Spirit-Anointed King who was going to set God’s people free again. And the Lord Jesus explained that Isaiah was talking about him. He is God’s Spirit-Anointed King.
Verses 14 to 21
That’s the background. Let’s turn to verse 14 now. Having successfully stood up to Satan’s temptations, the Lord Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. He had received the Spirit without measure or limit from the moment of his conception and the Holy Spirit enabled him to be and to do everything necessary in order to save his people from our sin and misery and to give us eternal life in the presence of God.
And news about him spread throughout the whole countryside. Luke doesn’t say so, but presumably people were talking about the great things he was doing and how he could heal the sick and drive out demons. Luke does tell us, however, that he taught in their synagogues, where the Jews used to gather for worship and instruction. And everyone praised him. Elsewhere we read that they were impressed by his authority. There was something about the way he taught that showed he was different from the teachers of the law.
On one particular Sabbath Day, he was in his home town of Nazareth and he went into the synagogue. And during the service, he stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him and he unrolled the scroll until he found the place he wanted, which was Isaiah 61. And he read the following:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
And after reading those words, he rolled up the scroll and sat down. In those days, teachers sat down to teach. And so, now that he had sat down, all the people fastened their eyes on him and waited for him to teach them.
And he began by saying that the words of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah have been fulfilled in their hearing. In other words, those words from Isaiah are about him. He is the one who has been anointed with the Spirit of the Lord. And he’s been anointed with the Spirit of the Lord to preach good news to the poor and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. That is to say, he has come to proclaim the Year of Jubilee. The Year of Jubilee was about freedom; and he had come to free God’s people. He had come to free them, not from financial debt, which is what the original Year of Jubilee was about; and not from captivity in Babylon, which is what Isaiah’s Year of Jubilee was about. He has come to set his people free from their sin and misery in this world. Sin is like a cruel master, who bosses us around and makes us do what we don’t want to do and what we know is wrong. ‘Why did I do that?’ people ask themselves. ‘Why did I say that?’ We do things we don’t want to do; and we do things we know are wrong. And sin leads to misery, because we cause misery to others by our sinful words and deeds; and we cause misery to ourselves because of the foolish and harmful things we do; and people cause misery to us because of what they do; and our sins makes us all justly liable to all the punishments of God in this life and in the next.
But Christ came into the world as God’s Spirit-Anointed King to set his people free from their sin and misery. And so, when he was on the earth, he set his people free from their misery by driving our demons; and by healing the sick; and by giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf; and by setting people free from evil spirits; and by reviving the dead and returning them to their families. People came to him with their sorrows, and he helped them. He set them free from what was oppressing them. And then, when the time was right, he gave up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and for all that we have done wrong. In other words, he paid the penalty for our sins, which is death.
And so, the Lord Jesus is God’s Spirit-Anointed King. And he came into the world, not only came to proclaim freedom, but to provide it. He came to do everything that was necessary to set us free.
Verses 22 to 30
And in verses 22 to 30 we see the reaction of the people. At first they spoke well of him. That’s in verse 22. And they were amazed by his gracious words.
However, their attitude changed. They asked: ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ And I think we’re to take it that while they were amazed, they were also sceptical. As one of the commentators (Morris on Matthew) puts it, they thought he had no business teaching them, because he was only a villager like the rest of them.
And the Lord seemed to be aware of their scepticism, because he quotes a proverb which summed up what they were thinking: ‘Physician, heal yourself’. The point of the proverb is that just as we might be sceptical of a doctor who is himself unwell and in need of healing, so they were sceptical of the Lord Jesus. And from the Lord’s next words, it seems that they were thinking that they’ve heard about the great things the Lord Jesus did in Capernaum, but let’s see him do those great things here as well. In other words: Do here in Nazareth what you did in Capernaum and then we might believe in you. That seems to be what they’re thinking.
And the Lord went on to say in verse 23 that no prophet is accepted in his home town. Other places will welcome a prophet and the people will accept him and will honour him. But the people from the prophet’s home town are unwilling to accept him. Their attitude is: We knew him when he was a nobody and who does he now think he is to tell us what to do? And the point the Lord is making is that the people of Nazareth, where he grew up, were unwilling to accept him. They did not believe in him, even though he is God’s Spirit-Anointed King who had come to set them free from their sin and misery in this life and to give them eternal life in the presence of God.
And then he went on to mention Elijah and Elisha from the Old Testament. And the point of mentioning them seems to be that this is what happens when people reject a prophet. The people of Israel rejected Elijah. And so, instead of helping them, Elijah went to a village outside Israel, where he helped a widow. And the people of Israel rejected Elisha. And so, instead of helping them, Elisha helped Naaman the Syrian. When people reject a prophet, the prophet, in a sense, rejects them and helps others. And the Lord Jesus had come to Nazareth. And he had come to set them free from their sin and misery. But since they had rejected him, then he would not help them. They would remain in their sin and misery, because they rejected him.
And you see, though he is a King, he does not take people by force. He does not force people to submit to him and he does not draw them to himself against their will. He does not bring people into his kingdom by force, but by persuasion. But the people in his home town where unwilling to be persuaded and they would not believe.
But when we believe in him, when we submit to him as our King, then he does what he says he will do: he sets us free. He sets us free from our sin, because he paid for our sins with his life; and through faith in him we receive forgiveness from God. Just as the Israelites cancelled each other’s debts in the Year of Jubilee, so God cancels the debt of our sin because of Christ. Once we confess our sins and ask for his forgiveness, he covers them over and blots them out and remembers them no more. And he will never ever hold them against us.
And then, he also begins in this life to free us from our misery. And what he begins to do in this life, he will bring to completion in the life to come. But we’ll hear more about that in the next part of today’s passage.
Background
But before we move to it, let me once again provide a little of the Old Testament background to what is says.
Think for a moment about David in the Old Testament, who was God’s Spirit-Anointed King in his day. Think of how he fought fearlessly against Goliath, who was the champion of the Philistines. The rest of the Israelites were afraid of Goliath. And they were helpless. There was nothing they could do against Goliath. But, with the help of the Lord, David conquered Goliath and the rest of the Philistines and he won a great victory for God’s people. By themselves, the people were helpless. But God’s Spirit-Anointed King conquered on their behalf and gave them peace.
And throughout his reign, David did the same again and again: when their enemies invaded the land, David conquered them and drove them out of the land. He was God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King.
Verses 31 to 44
That’s the background to keep in mind as we turn to verses 31 to 44. What are these verses about? They’re about God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King.
So, the Lord Jesus went down to Capernaum and began to teach the people in the synagogue. And there was a man who was possessed by an evil spirit. But the Lord Jesus conquered the evil spirit and drove him out of the man, just as David conquered the Philistines and drove them out of Israel.
Afterwards, the Lord Jesus went to the home of Simon Peter. And Simon’s mother-in-law was very ill because of a fever. And they asked the Lord to help her. And the Lord Jesus rebuked her illness so that it left her. In other words, he conquered the fever and drove it away, just as David conquered the Philistines and drove them out of Israel.
When the sun was setting at the end of the Sabbath Day, the people brought to him all who have various kinds of sickness. And he healed them. As God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King, he conquered all of their illnesses. He also rebuked the demons, who knew that he was the Christ, which is the name for God’s Spirit-Anointed King.
And then, at daybreak, he went off to a solitary place. The people came to him and they wanted him to stay with them, because they realised they were helpless without their Conquering King in their midst. But he told them that he had to go on from there, because he had to preach the good news of the kingdom in the other towns. Since he is God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King, he had to go and proclaim and provide freedom to other people. He had to set them free from their misery in this life by conquering their diseases and by casting out their demons. And then, when the time was right, he had to lay down his life on the cross in order to set his people free from their sin as well. So, God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King conquered their sin when he gave up his life for them.
And from his throne in heaven, God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King continues to set his people free from their misery in this life by conquering their diseases and by casting out their demons. Have you ever thought about this? While we still hear reports from time to time of demon-possessions in places around the world, we’re not as familiar with such things in our country. And they are not very common in countries like our own which have been influenced by Christianity. Why is that? It’s not because the demons have done away. It’s not that they no longer exist. It’s because God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King has conquered them and he’s able to restrain them and to restrict their activity in those countries which have been influenced by Christianity and where Christ’s power is felt. The Devil and his demons are still active in the world, but they’re not free to do whatever they like; and they are restrained by Christ our King who has conquered them. And while the Devil and his demons may blind the minds of unbelievers to keep them from acknowledging the truth, he’s not able to blind all of them; and Christ enables his people to see and believe.
And Christ our King continues to heal us from his throne in heaven, but he does so now by providing us with doctors and nurses and consultants and other health professionals who have the knowledge and expertise and the desire to help us. Where did these people get their knowledge and skill? Where did they get their desire to heal and to help? They got it from our Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King whose power and authority extends over all things in heaven and on earth. And so, he continues to set his people free from our misery in this life by providing us with the people who can help us. And when we’re not made well, but remain sick, we know that God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King is able to bring good out of our adversity. And so, even in the midst of illness, he makes us more than conquerers.
And what our Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King has begun to do in this life, he will complete when he comes again with glory and power to cast the devil and his demons into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever; and to renew the heavens and the earth; and to raise his people from the dead and to renew them throughout in body and soul; and to give them everlasting life in the new creation to come, where there will be no Devil or demons to hurt us and where disease and death will be no more.
This is what God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King has in store for us. And while we wait for him to come again, he fills us with his Spirit to help us to conquer the power of sin in our own lives. So, by his death on the cross, he has once-and-for-all saved us from the penalty of sin. We might say that he has conquered the guilt of our sin by his self-sacrifice on the cross. But then he also conquers the power of sin in our lives by giving us his Spirit to renew us inwardly and to help us more and more to obey God’s laws and to do his will here on earth. And what he has begun to do in us, he will complete in us, when he comes again.
Conclusion
And so, who is the Lord Jesus Christ? He is God’s Spirit-Anointed and Conquering King. He came into the world to proclaim and to provide freedom for his people. And he frees us from our sin and misery and gives us everlasting life in the new heavens and earth where we’ll enjoy the presence of God forever.
And so, we should give thanks to God the Father for loving us so much that he gave us such a great King. And since he is our King, we should seek to obey him in our daily lives and to honour him at church and at home and in school and college and in the workplace and in the community. And when we do wrong, we should pray to God the Father to forgive us our sins for the sake of Christ our King, who gave up his life to free us from our guilt. And when we’re tempted to sin, we should pray to God our Father to give us the strength we need through Christ our King to resist it. And when we’re in trouble, and when there are things which make us weep, and when we feel our own weakness, then we should pray to God the Father to set us free from our misery through Christ our King who strengthens us. And in all of this, we should look forward to the coming of Christ our King, because when he comes we will reign with him over the new heavens and earth to the glory of God our Father.
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