The Spirit
Posted by Jeffrey Smith September 23rd, 2015 1,872 View 0 Comments
Luke 4:18-21: 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 Lords favor.
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened to him, and he began by saying to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
Jesus had just spent 40 days in the desert without any food, and the devil came to Him to tempt Jesus into three distinct temptations we all are confronted with at one time or another. Jesus does not fall for the temptations and uses scripture against the devil to put an end to the devils schemes. The scripture tells us that Jesus was filled with the Spirit and was returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14) to preach in Nazareth on the Sabbath. Jesus reads the scripture from Isaiah (61:1,2) and then tells the congregation that what was prophesied by Isaiah is now fulfilled by Him (Jesus). There are two very important points I want to make here. There are probably far more than two, but for our purpose today, I want to point out that whenever we go through a massive temptation, we will always be given a way out by our Father. When we use the word of the Lord against the temptation, the devil has no way of getting to you. When you get through a temptation like Jesus did, you will be moved by the power of the Spirit just like Jesus. The scripture doesn’t say, Jesus walked to Galilee, it says He returned to Galilee IN THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT, which means that He was whisked away and dropped in Galilee. When we go through tests, the Spirit will go to work and move you wherever God wants you next. This is important to realize in our lives. If we can hold on to the truth and stay steadfast to the word in the midst of a temptation, we will see so many amazing miracles in our lives. The Spirit will place us where we need to be in an instant.
The second point is that after this experience, Jesus is placed in a position to fulfill a prophecy and He does it! What I find amazing is that for all of us, He defines who we all are in this scripture. We are all the poor, we are all prisoners, and we are all blind. He is reading this to the congregation. Surely not everyone in that room was poor, blind, or in prison, but Jesus fulfilled the prophecy by giving them the good news. How can that be? The reason is we all have a picture in our minds of what a poor person looks like, a blind person is easy to spot, and a prisoner is even easier to see if you go to the jailhouse. Here Jesus is at the synagogue though, not a poor house, an infirmary, or a jail. How could He be talking to the same picture of those groups of people that you have in your head this second? He cannot, we are all these things, but the good news is Jesus Christ! We must put out of our minds who is poor, who is blind, and who is oppressed. We all have each of those afflictions in some area of our lives, and so it takes Jesus Christ to cleanse us all of those things. Receive the good news today brothers and sisters. Let the power of Jesus Christ fill every place in your body, in your life, and be moved by the power of the Spirit to where God wants you to fulfill His call on your life today.