Would You Have Followed Jesus?

Thank you, Shavid. It was beautiful. Elements of the truth that Mr. Rangel was speaking about, the repentance and all the changes that can happen as a result. It was beautiful. Well Happy Sabbath! We're a little thinner today. There's a lot of people who have taken off for Camp Catubik that starts this coming week, and a lot of travel involved there. Our numbers are a little lighter here today, but welcome to any guests that we have. It's a joy to really be here on this Sabbath day. Hello to all of those on the webcast as well.

Would you have followed Jesus? If you had been alive in the first century, would you have followed Jesus Christ? Most people did not, so I think it's probably fair to lump ourselves in with most people and say, realistically, maybe we wouldn't have. But we do like to go back and read the story, and sometimes we think of ourselves in a place where we've already followed Jesus Christ. We've already aligned ourselves with Him, and so we naturally kind of do align ourselves with Him.

But I want to ask the question today, would you have followed Jesus Christ? Would you have done that? Let's go to Luke 4. We're going to start in Luke 4, because there's a very interesting section here where we find Jesus Christ, He's going to a very familiar place to Him. Luke 4 and verse 16. This is at the beginning of Luke's account, relatively. We're in chapter 4.

Now, we're used to the Gospels. Well, sometimes when we read a modern account, we like to think of it as a historical account. Being in chronological order, it's going to walk us through from beginning to end, and it's going to be in sequence. So we want to read our Bibles that way, but often that's not how the authors wrote.

They didn't necessarily think of themselves as giving us a blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute chronological account. Sometimes things are in different sequence. And you'll find this story here is in a different sequence in the other Gospels. But Luke places it here at the beginning because he's using it, I believe, and I think we'll see that today, he's using it to frame a lot of what happens in the rest of the book of Luke. And here, Jesus Christ is coming to Nazareth. Verse 16, where He had been brought up. So He's going to His home church, is what you might say. How many of you are actually from Cincinnati originally?

It's not a lot. Okay. So for a few of you, this is your home church. But for most of you, this is not your home church. Imagine going back to the church that you grew up in, the first congregation that you ever attended, and seeing all of the people that maybe watched you grow up, that knew you then. That's what Jesus Christ is doing here.

He's going to His home church, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and He stood up to read. So He goes back home for this particular Sabbath, and He stands up to read. Now, it's possible that He was standing up to read some of the prescribed readings. It seems likely that there were prescribed readings over the course of the year that they worked through, and this might have been during that portion where He was standing up.

But you notice what day He shows up to read. He picked this particular day that He was going to show up. When He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, He opened the book, and He found the place where it is written. Verse 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 brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives in recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

And He stops mid-verse there in Isaiah 61. He shows up on Isaiah 61 day, and He stops in the middle, and He sits down. He closed the book, and He gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. Now remember, these are the people that know Him.

These are His friends, the family friends. And He began to say to them, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So all these people that have watched Him grow up and knew the boy Jesus, they hear Him make this claim. And of course, they're like, oh yeah, that tracks. No, that's not what they said. So all bore witness to Him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.

Now they're not necessarily saying that these gracious words were His gracious words. They just recognized that the gracious words from the prophet Isaiah. And they said, is this not Joseph's son? Don't we know this guy? This is that kid that grew up here. And he's saying, he's making some pretty bold claims here. He is claiming that he is the fulfillment of this prophecy in Isaiah 61. And he recognizes what's going on. He sees that they're not going to believe Him. He's just, what he's done is he's actually just framed what his ministry is going to do, and what it's going to look like, and what it's going to be.

And they couldn't accept it. They just couldn't accept it. So he recognizes that immediately, and he says to them, you will surely say this proverb to me, physician, feel yourself. Whatever we've heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. They'd heard about the miracles that he had done in Capernaum. It's not that far from Capernaum to Nazareth. So he knows, they're going to be like, all right, if you really mean this, do some signs, you know, show us that you're the real deal. And he comes right out and says, I'm not going to do that.

And then he said, and then he kind of pokes him in the eye a little. Says assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elijah the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. He cites these two incidents where Israel rejected the prophets and they went to other people.

They went to — Elijah was sent to a Sidonian woman, and Elijah heals Assyrian. He's basically telling them, I know you don't believe me. I know you're not going to hear me. And so I'm going elsewhere. They weren't real happy about that. You read the rest of the passage here, and it turns out they tried to kill him. It says, they were furious with him. Mark's account says they were offended at him. This was not what they expected. They thought they knew who he was, and they were expecting a Messiah.

There was an understanding at that time that the Messiah was coming, and they had expectations of a Messiah. But this was not it. This is not what they were after. This is not what they were looking for. And so they tried to kill him right at the outset of his ministry. They tried to kill him. His ministry — when you look at his ministry, and we'll go through some of it today — it's marked by continual rejection, continual disbelief from the people who misunderstood him, who misidentified him, and just did not expect him.

They didn't expect what he was doing and what he was bringing. He was something different. And so they completely rejected him. They rejected everything that he was doing. He still misunderstood. He still misidentified. And he's still very unexpected, even today, in a lot of ways, by most of the world, and maybe sometimes by you and me. So today I want to look at his ministry and look at how he describes it and look at how he fulfilled it. Because we don't want to be confused about the ministry of Jesus Christ, about the mission of Jesus Christ, about what he came to do and what he was doing. Most of the people of his day rejected him.

If you and I had been there, very likely, if we had been good church kids growing up alongside Jesus, we would not have followed him. We would not have chosen to follow him because he was something totally different. So let's look at his ministry. You'll notice that this is not the only time that the detractors are present.

There are detractors through the whole story. They're always present. But Jesus Christ is coming and sort of... he's kind of breaking their brains a little bit, and showing him what he's actually coming to do and who he is and what he's after. We'll go through six stories today from his ministry, these six little vignettes.

And you'll find each one of these fulfills one of the items in that list where he's quoting Isaiah 61. When he says he's going to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. It's a template, and we're going to walk through six stories where he demonstrates those things. And you'll see that detractors are always there. They're always those who would not believe.

But he's showing what he's doing, and these things that he does that he did, they should change how we think. How we think about other people, how we approach what we do.

Let's start with the first one. Preaching the gospel to the poor.

Let's go over to Luke chapter 7.

Luke chapter 7. Now, poor here does not literally mean...

We think of that word primarily in financial terms today, but that's not specifically what it's talking about, although it could include that. It means beggarly or distressed. Somebody who is who's in such dire need. They're poor.

And he says that at the beginning, he's sent to preach the gospel to the poor. Luke chapter 7 and verse 18. Then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things. They reported to John the Baptist about the things that they had witnessed.

John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to Jesus, saying, are you the coming one, or do we look for another?

Now, it's unclear if John the Baptist himself personally doubts, or if he recognizes some doubt in his disciples. So he's planting this question in their mouth and sending them out to ask Jesus.

It's possible that John the Baptist maybe is actually not even the one who's doubting here, but he wants his disciples to understand something, and so he sends them along with this question.

It's not clear, but somewhere in here there is doubt. His disciples are doubting. Is this Jesus, the one that we're actually looking for? Is he actually the Messiah that John the Baptist said he would be? Verse 20. And when the men had come to him, they said, John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, are you the coming one, or do we look for another?

And it doesn't say he responded to them right away. It says, that very hour he cured many infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits, and to many blind he gave sight. Jesus answered and said to them, go and tell John these things that you have seen and heard, that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. He says this is what he's doing. He's doing all of these things, and in there among all of that, he says the poor have the gospel preached to them. He was there preaching the gospel to the poor. And then in verse 23, and blessed is he who is not offended because of me.

Remember in Luke 4, well in Mark's account of Jesus back at Nazareth, it says many were offended because of him. But here he says, blessed are those who are not offended because of him. Blessed are those who will hear him, and hear his words, and see what he's doing, and accept it.

He didn't match their expectations of what the Messiah was and what the Messiah would do. You know, they thought the Messiah was going to come and throw off the Romans and establish them a physical kingdom and make them a great nation again. They had different expectations. And he was coming and saying, nope, that's not the deal this time. He outlined what he was coming to do.

And even today, people have expectations of what Jesus is or what he's doing. And often, those expectations, you know, people sort of shoehorn Jesus into expectations. They shoehorn God and God's plan into their expectations of what the future should be and should look like.

And Jesus Christ came with a whole different plan than what anybody was expecting.

John's disciples here, you'll notice, they're the detractors. They're coming, and they aren't approaching Jesus Christ as the poor. They're coming and approaching Him as the elevated.

They're coming and saying, you need to give an account to us. Are you really what you say you are? Are you something else? And instead of giving them a whole talking to, he just demonstrates what He's doing and what He's about. He shows them.

This is the same that we see happening today, right? God continues to draw and to work with the poor. I want you to think about when you were first drawn into this way. Did God draw you into this way in some elevated, wonderful, rich state? Or did God draw you in in some poor state?

You know, I think all of us, as we approach baptism, we recognize there's a spiritual poverty there. We are poor, and that's when God reaches us.

There are things that we are supposed to grow in, right, along the way as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ. But as those who are poor in spirit, we are to continually have that attitude and that element of being poor in spirit, of being needy. Mr. Rangel talked about this earlier, right? We need to approach God's word as those who are needy, who hunger and thirst for it, right? And God will feed that. But if we approach as those who already are full and content, there's nothing He can feed. So we need to continually be those who are poor, who hunger and thirst, right? But we also need to be able to identify those who are poor, to be able to see when somebody is in that state of poverty and be able to connect with them, to reach with them, to help them, right? Whether it's those who are around us, right? Or those on the outside.

Number two, second thing Jesus Christ said He was going to come and do was heal the brokenhearted.

We see this a little later in chapter seven.

The brokenhearted are those who are... the word literally means crushed, right?

It's crushed or shattered is really what the word is at. And it just means those who are really just kind of ground down. Luke 7 and verse 36.

So one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with Him, and He went to the Pharisee's house and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil.

So here's a woman who lives in this city, and it's known, it's publicly known, this woman... it doesn't say what she is. There's speculation about what this woman is.

It doesn't say, and that's really not the point. But it is known this woman has a pretty bad reputation. She's a sinner. This is the kind of person you want to stay away from.

We see here, verse 38, She stood at His feet, behind Him, weeping, and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and she kissed His feet, and anointed them with the fragrant oil. And when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, He spoke to Himself so in His heart. Notice what He says. This man, if he were a prophet, if he were really what we thought he was, he would know who and what manner of woman this is who touches him, for she's a sinner. He recognizes. So there was a tradition there in their day where the poor could come to some of these banquets that would be held by the rich, and they could come and they would sort of eat from the scraps, it seems like, but they'd be there and sort of able to attend to some of the people there. And so that's what this woman was doing. She's there attending to Him.

But the Pharisee seems to be embarrassed that she's even in His house, and he knows that this woman, well, you shouldn't even let her touch you.

That's His approach to her.

But we see, and it's true, right? If you look later, so He gives Simon the Pharisee, He gives him a parable and says, who do you think appreciates more when they're forgiven? The people who send a little are those who've sent a lot. And Simon says, I suppose the one whom He forgave more. And Jesus Christ says in verse 47, I say to you, her sins, which are many, right? Jesus Christ didn't, He didn't deny that this woman had a lot of sin hanging over her head.

He says her sins are many, but they were forgiven.

Her, she wasn't coming in as a sinner flaunting her sin, right? She was coming in as a sinner who is broken. And Jesus Christ, He recognizes that, and He forgives. He forgives her.

Verse 50, He says to the woman, your faith is saved, you go in peace.

And even those who sat at the table in verse 49, they sat at the table with and began to say to themselves, who is this even who forgives sins? Again, the skeptics and the critics are sitting there thinking, this guy can't do that. That's not His, right? But Jesus Christ, it was His, right?

He's surprised in many instances, and this is one of them. But here, here we see that He He's healing the brokenhearted in that way. This woman is coming as one who's broken, right? Who's crushed. And He offers healing and forgiveness to that woman. His harshest words, right, are not for the woman whose sins are many, right? But His harshest words are for the Pharisee, right? His harshest words throughout Scripture are always for the ones who should know better, right? His critiques are very heavy for those, but towards sinners who repent, He's just endlessly compassionate. And you see that here. That's, you know, that's a part of His ministry that has not changed, right? It's the same today.

Today, the broken still need your compassion. They still need your mercy, right? And it's our job to reflect that.

Let's go to the third thing He said He would do, which is to proclaim liberty to the captive.

Proclaim liberty to the captives. Let's go to Luke 13.

In verse 10.

Luke 13 and verse 10. Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, like He did.

And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And He laid His hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. But here's the, okay, so here's the detractor, right? Here's the critic. Which in our time, right, if we saw that, it would be incredible for us. So it's a little hard for us to even understand His reaction here, right? Because we would think, wow, somebody's healed. This is incredible. But they had very strict laws, strict rules around what you did and did not do on the Sabbath day, right? And especially in the synagogue, there were very strict rules around all of that. And so He was very concerned with making sure that those traditions that they had were intact and in force. And so here He does this amazing thing and heals this woman who's been infirm for 18 years. And the rule of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. And He said to the crowd, there are six days on which men ought to work, therefore come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day. Which feels crazy to us, right? But in their time, that's how entrenched the thinking and the tradition was around what they could or could not do on the Sabbath day, right? And those were traditions that were established humanly, right? Those are not things that God had put in place about the Sabbath. We understand the Sabbath as a tremendous blessing. Jesus Christ did too. But they had there all of these hedges they had built around the Sabbath. And this tradition was one they held to so much that He couldn't even see this miracle that had been done and glorify God over it.

Then the Lord answered and said to Him, Hypocrite, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead it away to water?

So what not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, right? Remember, He's proclaiming liberty to the captives. That's one of the things He said He's going to do. Those who are held, who Satan has bound—think of it—for 18 years, be loosed from this bond.

And verse 17, when He had said these things, all these adversaries were put to shame.

And notice it doesn't just say the the leader, the ruler of the synagogue. It says all his adversaries. It seems like there were multiple people there who were thinking the same thing.

You can't do this on the Sabbath. He says, of course you can do this on the Sabbath.

You know, what the Sabbath really even points to in pictures, which they clearly didn't understand.

He doesn't undercut the Sabbath. He undercuts their sort of bogus rules and traditions that do.

It's very easy for us to confuse tradition with truth.

We need to not do that.

I'll give you—here's sort of a light example. You can think of other ways that we do this sometimes, but one year here at for GCE, one of our elders from the Philippines showed up and he brought his nicest, his finest things to wear at Sabbath. In the Philippines, that's a barang. If you've ever seen a barang, it does not look like this. There's no tie. But it is the nicest and finest apparel that he would wear in any circumstance. He didn't realize that—I don't know the full details of his side of the story. I've heard the second part of the story.

One of our other elders here from the States, he realized that he's going to feel a little embarrassed if he shows up in his barang. This other elder, he had a barang also. He's served in the Philippines before. He wore his barang to church, too. They show up to services, and they're both wearing their barangs. He got a few weird glances, and he got a few comments about, this isn't what we wear to church. He was able to help set some people straight that, no, it's not what we typically wear to church, but their tradition, this is the nicest thing. This is absolutely the nicest thing. Sometimes in various ways, we can get in these places where we can fuse tradition and truth. We need to avoid doing that, but even larger, those who are held captive, whether it's by tradition, whether it's by some circumstance or situation, by some addiction, by anything that holds us captive in Satan's world.

In this case, this woman who's held captive by an affliction. Those who are held captive, they need hope. They need healing. They need to not be brushed aside. It can be very easy for us to see somebody who's held captive in some way by something. Often when somebody is held captive in a way, it makes them a little bit hard to be around. It can make them a little bit difficult to approach.

This woman here who's hunched over, we can do this sometimes, where we see people who know that there's something broken or wrong. We want to even approach them, but we don't quite know how. It's a little awkward. We don't want to offend them by approaching them and saying something, but it's just a whole lot easier to just not. So we don't. But those who are held captive by something, they need to not be brushed aside. They need hope. They need healing. You see Jesus Christ constantly engaging with those people.

We also need to be that kind of people. That's reflective of his ministry, reflective of what he's doing. Okay, number four. Recovery of sight to the blind. Let's go to Luke 18, a couple pages over. Here's a fascinating story. Again, it's just this little vignette, but there's so much, there's just so much packed into this. Luke 18 and verse 35. Then it happened as he was coming near Jericho. So Jericho is, Jericho's a little ways east of Jerusalem, and he's actually on his approach to Jerusalem, but he's coming through Jericho. So he's going up to Jericho, or going down to Jericho. Jericho is actually like 800 feet below sea level. It's like one of the lowest cities in the world, maybe the lowest. So he's going to Jericho, and he's coming near, and a certain blind man sat by the road begging. And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant.

And so they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.

And we don't get any background on this guy. It'd be really nice to know this guy's backstory.

But he immediately recognizes the name. He cries out saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Son of David is a messianic title. So it's like he hears the name and immediately knows who this is.

And he, the blind guy, he's the one who recognizes Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

And so he cries out, have mercy on me. And those who went before him, they warned him that he should be quiet. Now, it doesn't say why they think he should be quiet, but it's... he's calling him the Messiah. Maybe they're worried about him sort of blaspheming.

Jesus Christ gets in trouble for calling himself certain things with Pharisees. And so they're shushing him. They're shushing this guy. Don't say that. Don't say that.

But the blind man is the one who saw the identity of Jesus Christ.

He heard the name. He knew immediately, this is him. The blind man sees it.

And the crowds, they want to shush him.

But he cried out all the more, son of David, have mercy on me.

So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he had come near him, he asked, saying, what do you want me to do for you? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said to him, receive your sight. Your faith has made you well. And immediately, he received his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, give praise to God. So the people have a change of heart here. The people who have been shushing him say, no, maybe don't bother the guy. Or you can't say that. You can't call him the son of David. You can't call him the Messiah. That's blasphemous. Jesus Christ gives sight to the blind, and not just to the one man who's blind. All of them have a change of heart. They recognize that Jesus is the Messiah, and now they're giving glory to God. So who is really the blind here, and who really received their sight? That's sort of a question mark.

The physical man received physical sight, but the crowds, they received spiritual sight.

You know, today, as his disciples, we shouldn't be ashamed to identify him, in a world that really wants to shush us. That would rather not talk about Jesus Christ. That would rather not hear about God and his way. We just need to be those who are willing to share that, who are willing to say it, who are willing to talk about it, who are willing to give glory to God. Not to browbeat people with Jesus Christ and with our beliefs and whatever, but really, in the ways that give hope, that give people encouragement, that ultimately bring glory to God.

Okay, number five. Number five, the fifth thing in that list that he said he would do is to set at liberty those who are oppressed. Set at liberty those who are oppressed. And this is similar to the captives, but you'll see in this example that there's a little bit of a different type of oppression that happens here. We're going to keep going in Luke, Luke 19 and verse 1. It's right at the same spot.

Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. So now he's into Jericho.

And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the chief tax collector, and he was rich.

And he sought to see who Jesus was, but he could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So, a pretty cool guy. And so he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. So the tax collectors in that day were, they were ostracized, right? These were not people that the Jews respected.

These were seen as collaborators with the Romans. These were people who were known to, I mean, even when they were doing their best, right? Even when they were being honest about it, they were still seen to be on the side of the Romans, right? Not Jews, not good people. I, my dad worked for the IRS for a little over 40 years, and so I understand the oppression that comes from, you know, to those who are tax collectors and, no, I'm kidding. Although we did, we do like to joke that we had, we would often have dinner with tax collectors, and that made us a little more Christ-like, so.

But they were, they were considered to be an oppressive class, and as we'll see about Zacchaeus here, Zacchaeus is somebody who has been especially oppressive of his own people. He has not been a good guy, but you also see that it's weighed on him quite a bit. He knows it. So he's, he's run ahead, he's gone up into this tree to make sure that he can see Jesus, and when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him and said, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house. So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully, but when the people saw it, here's the detractors, here's the crowd, they all complained, saying he's going to be a guest or the man who is a sinner. They said, that guy? They said, you know, you can, it's, it's the same kind of thing that Simon said, right? If, if Jesus knew who that woman was, he wouldn't let her touch him, and here there, it's that, that same idea, right? If Jesus knew who this guy was, if he was, you can, you can almost imagine it, right? If he was really a prophet, if he was really what he says he is, he's not going to go dying with that guy, because he would know, he would know that that guy has been stealing from us, has been oppressing us, he's, he's just the worst guy, and he's short. So he's going to be the guest of a sinner. What we see here is reciprocal oppression, right? He's been oppressing them, and so they've ostracized him. They've, they've oppressed him in that sense and said, no, you're out, you're not one of us. You are no longer a part of us.

Verse 8. Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Look, Lord, and he's, the way that it might read in your translation, here's New King James, for example, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold. The way it reads is like, is like he always does this, but it's not. What he's saying is this is something I'm, I will commit to doing.

This, I'm going to change who I am. I give half of my, I'm going to give half of my goods to the poor, and if I've taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold. It seems like, and we don't have proof of this, right, but it seems like he understood the commands in the Old Testament. If you go back and you look in Exodus 22, and we see, we see evidence elsewhere that if somebody stole something from another person, they were to restore fourfold. When Nathan the prophet goes to David about his sin with Bathsheba, and he gives his whole story about this man who stole the poor man's lamb and whatever, one of the things that David says is, is that man, he's going to restore that lamb fourfold. David understood the law. It seems like Zacchaeus understood the law here, that if you've stolen, you restore fourfold. Zacchaeus knows he's stolen.

It's almost a confession, right? If I've stolen whatever I've stolen, I'm going to restore that fourfold. So you can, there's evidence here that this has been weighing on him.

It's almost like he has been self-oppressed. It's been heavy on him.

Verse 9.

Verse 9, Jesus said to him, today's salvation has come to this house because he is also a son of Abraham.

That's, he's not just, he's not just making a statement about this guy's lineage. He's restoring him and saying, this person is part of the community. He is a Jew. You've ostracized him, you've oppressed him, you've put him on the outside. But he is one of you. That's, that's essentially what he's doing. He's restoring him. Today's salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham. For the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. This is clearly a person who was lost, who was lost, who recognized the sin in their life, the change that they needed to make, and just didn't know how to come back from it. That's really, that's really what it was. He just didn't know how to come back from it. And here Jesus Christ restores him. He frees him, right? We're talking about setting at liberty those who are oppressed. There's so much oppression in this example, right? And it's, he's, he's freeing.

He's setting at liberty this man from his sins and restoring him to his people.

You know, today, people, you and I, we do this sometimes where we do something that creates a rift, right? Maybe we're not, you know, stealing taxes from each other or whatever. But, you know, we do things that create rifts between us, right? But our human reaction is going to be to, to reciprocate that sort of oppression. To sort of, well, they did something to me, they oppressed me, I'm going to oppress back or however that works. But Jesus Christ, he does the opposite thing. He restores, right? He sees that, that he doesn't keep Zacchaeus in this box of, well, you're, you've been this sinner, you've been this thief, and you're just, you're gonna, you can just hang out in that tree up there, right? He calls him down and he restores him to his people. We need to be the kind of people that set at liberty when we have the power to, just set at liberty those who are oppressed, oppressed by their own conscience, oppressed by their past mistakes, whatever it is. We need to be able to set them at liberty if we can, to restore, restore relationships. That would reflect the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Number six. Number six. The sixth thing he said he was going to do is proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. So remember, he's been going through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. And well, proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. There's, there's so much that we could talk about there. There's just a sermon there. It's jubilee language, right? Talking about the acceptable year of the Lord is really talking about that jubilee year, what was supposed to be that 50th year in every cycle that pointed to all of this liberation, right? The freedom, right? The freedom from oppression, the restoring of land, the forgiveness of debt, right? That, all of this in Isaiah 61 is jubilee language. And when it talks about proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, it's jubilee language.

Luke 19 and verse 37.

Verse 37. It says, so this is the, this is the triumphal entry. Jesus Christ is now on his approach to Jerusalem. He's going to enter into Jerusalem.

Then, as he was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, so he's coming down the Mount of Olives is on the east side of Jerusalem, and he's going to come down that valley, and then he's going to come up into Jerusalem. He's, he's nearing the descent of the Mount of Olives, and the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen. All these things that he had done, right? The healing and the restoring of sight and just all that he has done, all the mighty works that they've witnessed, they're giving, they're giving praise to him. Saying, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. So here his, his disciples are actually almost sort of crying out and saying, it's here. It's, it's, he's coming. This is, this is symbolic of the King returning in, into his city, right? This is the same thing. Jesus Christ, when he returns, is returning to that same mountain, and it says he's going to enter into the east side of that city. This is foreshadowing all of that, that acceptable day, and, and all of the freedom that it will bring to the world. Here he's just, he's foreshadowing that, right? In this, in this small way, in his final descent, or final ascent into the city of Jerusalem. This is just before he's going to be crucified. This is, this is the last time, right? But notice there are detractors here, as there always were. Verse 39, and some of the Pharisees called to him from the crowd, saying, teacher, rebuke your disciples. They can't talk like that.

But Jesus Christ responds in verse 40, he answers and says to them, there's, there's no sense in that. I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out. He's, he's saying that this, this is such a momentous thing that's about to happen, that somebody has to proclaim it. This, this acceptable year of the Lord, this thing that is, is about to happen, the freedom that's about to come, right? For him, it was obviously horrible, and he'd be tortured and killed. But, but what was about to happen there was that acceptable time, right, that was going to enable freedom for all people, right? It was, it was a jubilee in that sense. It's, all of this is a type of his second coming, of the restoration that's going to happen in the kingdom. That, proclaiming that acceptable year of the Lord, that's, that's still on every one of us as we have opportunity to point people toward the hope of the kingdom, to point people toward what is to come. That means encouraging each other about this, right, to, to remind each other. We talk a lot about the kingdom of God come feast of tabernacles, right, and what it will be like and what it pictures. But this is on us more than just then, right? This is on us constantly to be able to proclaim the acceptable year, to remind people what's, what's going to happen, to point people toward the hope that that is, that that brings, right? This is, this is part of, part of the ministry of Jesus Christ. It was then, it is still now, it's the thing that we're to reflect in our lives. So would you have followed Jesus Christ? Would I? I don't know, we weren't alive then, so we really can't answer the question. But you did follow Jesus Christ.

You did. He called you, and you're here because you responded to that. You did follow Jesus Christ.

But you probably did it from, you know, a poor or a broken or a captive or a blind or a pressed place, right? That's probably where you were at, I'm gonna guess. When, when Jesus Christ, when Jesus Christ, when that gospel message really reached you and really sunk in and really took root, it was in that place. Because Jesus Christ's mission in his ministry have, they haven't changed. It's the same thing. He's still trying to do that, right, to bring a glorious church. Are we reflecting that? Are we those people that, that are part of that? Are we, if we're not careful, we can become the contrary voices. Because there are still contrary voices, right? There's still those both outside and inside who are, who want to be contrary to what Jesus Christ is doing. God tells us that, you know, yes, there's Satan on the outside challenging and in the world you'll have persecution and there are terrors in the church. There's, there's always going to be challenge from, from all angles, right? And it's very easy in this world. Our world champions contrary views. We just, it is everywhere, right? All the, the voices that you can hear out there, there's very few voices that are promoting solutions. It's about opposition. It's about repudiation. It's about, it's about these detractors. The world is full of detractors and if we're not careful, we can become the detractors. We can become those people. But that's not what we're called to. That's not who we are. We need to remember, you and I, we were once, we were the broken, we were the captive, we were the oppressed. But we can recognize and we can internalize, really that's what it has to be. We have to internalize what Jesus Christ came to do.

This has to change our thinking. It will change our doing, but it has to change our thinking first. We have to understand what Jesus Christ came to do, internalize it. And then let's be those that reach all of those out there who are poor, who are broken, who are captive, who are blind, who are oppressed. And let's live as reflections of the ministry of Jesus Christ.