Special Series, Day 11: What is Jesus doing today?
Monday – Quotations
11. Jesus ministers to the “poor” and downcast.
In Luke 4:16-19 (AKJV*) when Jesus read from Scripture in His hometown of Nazareth, He revealed specifics about His own ministry, then and now, and who the recipients of it are.
He [Jesus] 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 for to read.
And there was delivered to him the book of the prophet [Isaiah]. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
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Jesus preaches the gospel to the spiritually “poor,” heals the brokenhearted, preaches deliverance to captives [of fear, sorrow, the enemy’s enticements, sin, etc.], gives sight to the “blind” [who don’t see the glories of God or the way of escape from their own distress], sets at liberty those who have been “crushed,”1 and proclaims that God is willing to be reconciled to us2 (through faith in His Son). Jesus is doing these things today, for us.
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*American King James Version. Public Domain.
1. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary, quoted in Larry Pierce, The Online Bible, CD-ROM (Winterbourne, Ontario: Larry Pierce, 2007), Luke 4:18.
2. Matthew Henry, Revised Matthew Henry Commentary, quoted in Larry Pierce, The Online Bible, CD-ROM (Winterbourne, Ontario: Larry Pierce, 2007), Luke 4:19.
