THURSDAY October 24th
Luke 4:18-19
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
As we continue to consider his manifesto that Jesus read out from the prophet Isaiah, the next two phrases which I will combine together are ‘He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. . . to set at liberty those who are oppressed’
There is a double sense to this and to the rest of what follows, for we see as Jesus went about the various towns and villages that he did bring liberty to the captive.
First, we can say it wasn’t perhaps quite what they were expecting, for they thought he had come to deliver them from the rule of the Roman Empire, but he had come to deliver them from something that was far more debilitating to them. He had come to set those who were oppressed or possessed by the devil and demons free. We can see this on several occasions in the gospels, in Mark 1:34 it says ‘He healed many . . . and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.’ But we will just highlight one of the occasions, found again in Mark’s gospel and it is concerning the man who lived in the tombs who could not be controlled because of an unclean, evil spirit that had gotten hold of him. He was bound by the devil, and he was bound by chains and shackles because the people could do nothing about it. But Jesus met him, and Jesus challenged the unclean spirit, which turned out to be many and at the command of Jesus the unclean spirits left the man. He was set free, a fulfilment of the manifesto of Jesus that he had come to set the captive free. A song I mentioned recently, ‘When Jesus comes the tempters’ power is broken!’
But there is an even more powerful application, for each one of us are bound in sin, we are born that way, and we needed to be set free, and because of the precious blood of Jesus being shed at Calvary for each one of us, we can know what it is as captives of Satan to be set free. In the words of another song, ‘It’s your blood that sets me free!’ I was a captive to Satan and sin, but Jesus has set me free, he has given to me a living and a permanent hope, what about you?
And in the gospel of John 8:36, we read ‘So if the Son (that is Jesus) sets you free you will be free indeed’! And Paul wrote in Romans 8:1 ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death’.