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-- THE MISSION OF JESUS
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. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book [scroll], He found the place where it was written:
"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel [good news] to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
John's message had been a very simple one, namely the need for people to repent and turn to God -- but now, in the synagogues of Galile, Jesus begins to proclaim are far more detailed gospel, the good news of the coming Kingdom of God on Earth.
Once again Luke's account builds on the historical foundation of the Hebrew scriptures as Jesus stands up in the synagogue to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah -- identifying himself as the Christ, the Messiah, the one anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to preach the gospel to the poor (Isaiah 61:1).
Even after thousands of years of human management of this Earth and the development of incredible technologies, material poverty remains the lot of the vast majority of mankind, and it is the poor, generally speaking, who appear to be the most receptive to the gospel -- and such, for the most part, are the kind of people that God has called to salvation at this time (1 Corinthians 1:27, James 2:5).
The three-point mission statement that follows then explains just what is wrong with the world, and why it needs a Messiah and the Kingdom of God:
1)
To heal the brokenhearted
Despite the glamour of the rich and famous, and despite the explosion
of knowledge predicted by the prophet Daniel (Daniel 12:4) and the resultant
development of incredible technologies, the world is a desperately unhappy
and dangerous place, racked by war, pollution and pornography, by sickness
and disease, both physical and mental, by divorce, broken homes and crime,
and all getting worse by the day as our news media demonstrate. One day,
all this will change.
2)
To proclaim liberty to the captives
Millions are in captivity due to war, in prison due to crime, and even
in slavery, both to other human beings and to drugs -- and also to their
own human weaknesses and perversions. Many, if not most, human beings
even in wealthy nations are in mental and emotional bondage, restrained
by false beliefs, a variety of fears and a lack of confidence that drastically
limits their ability to fulfill their innate God-like potential for personal
growth and creative achievement.
3)
To proclaim recovery of sight to the blind.
Although Jesus did heal some of the unfortunate but tiny
minority of people who were literally blind, the fact is that the vast
majority of mankind were and still are spiritually blind, as Paul explains
(2 Corinthians 4:4, 3:15) and also spiritually deaf -- which is why Jesus
frequently speaks of those called out by God at this time as having "eyes
to see" and "ears to hear".
That world-wide blindness, also referred to metaphorically as a "veil", will be removed when Christ returns to establish the Kingdom of God, as the prophet Isaiah also explains (Isaiah 24:23, 25;7).
Jesus' mission is in fact summed up in the final statement from Isaiah which says: To proclaim the acceptable Year of the LORD -- a phrase which refers to the year of Jubilee established under Moses (Leviticus 25:8-17). According to the law of Jubilee, which occurred every 50 years, following a seventh sabbatical year, all debts were cancelled, slaves were set free, and land that may have been sold off due to personal hardship or profligacy was returned to its original owners.
The phrase "To set at liberty those who are oppressed" does not actually occur in the section of Isaiah Jesus is quoting and is apparently injected to explain the true implication of the ancient Jubilee, namely that mankind as a whole have been oppressed by other men, by the devil and by their own stupidity and weaknesses. The good news is that true liberty is coming, even liberty from death and the grave, and nothing can stop it.