What did Jesus say about preaching the gospel?

"And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias." What a moment! He who is God was become man, and deigns to act as such among men. "And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." It is the man Christ Jesus. The Spirit of the Lord was not upon Him as God, but as man, and so anointed Him to preach the gospel to the poor. How thoroughly suitable to what we have already seen. "He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in you ears." A real man was there and then the vessel of the grace of God upon the earth, and the Scripture designates this most fully. But where could we find this most apt application of the prophet except in Luke, to whom in point of fact it is peculiar? The entire gospel develops or, at least, accords with it.

Verse 18. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor," etc. It was the characteristic of grace to come to such. The great business of Christ was to preach, that is to present God. The Holy Ghost gives the right word at the right time, and in the right way. "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears," v. 21. The Lord does not reason; He says, Here it is. The way of God is to present what we want. You want salvation, there it is; you want mercy, and there it is. God alone can thus come, by grace, into the place of a sinner. They wonder, for His were precious words, but soon they ask, Is not this Joseph's son? Was He ashamed of being the carpenter? Grace goes down to the lowest need. But man will take occasion to despise grace, because it is clothed in humiliation: he cannot but see God, but he steps aside to look at the humiliation, and so shew out the hatred of his heart. God's grace is despised and His sovereignty is hated. God did not despise Nazareth, but man despises Jesus because He came out of Nazareth. Even the guileless Nathaniel asks, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" How little appreciation of the way of grace there is even in the godly! Christ comes into man's misery, and finds him where he is. Could an angel? No: he stays in his proper position, doing the Lord's commandments, and hearkening to the voice of His word. An angel ought not to come down to me in my sins: God only can in His grace. And man despised the lowliness to which grace brought Him - wretched man!

Whether the Lord came to Nazareth again before or after this Jerusalem visit we cannot say, for Luke is not interested in fixing the time of events, but in their moral significance and order. In the Lord's home city He entered the synagogue and stood up to read the Word of God. It is not said that He asked for the book of Isaiah, but this was handed to Him, certainly by divine guidance. He opened the book to Chapter 61:1-2, a most lovely prophecy of the Messiah (vs.17-19). It was in Judea that the Spirit of God had publicly come upon Him, anointing Him for the marvelous service of grace: now when He returned it was the perfect time to read this Scripture. He was first to preach the gospel to the poor, and "the common people heard Him gladly." He manifestly came for the help of those in need, not to seek the patronage of the rich. The broken hearted, the captives, the blind, those who were bruised -- these were the subjects of His gracious ministry. The bruised speak of those suffering under oppression.

(1) This part begins with a foreshadow at Nazareth of what is soon to be fulfilled in Israel's history. The Lord is seen in the place where He was brought, up and according to His custom He enters the synagogue on the sabbath day. There He stands up to read, and the book of Isaiah being given Him, He opens at the sixty-first chapter, and applies the words of the Man anointed with the Spirit of Jehovah to Himself. It is clear how accordant with the character of Luke the quotation is. It is the "Mediator between God and man; the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5), whose voice is heard here; and it is as come up out of Jordan; where He has pledged Himself to a baptism to death far different, that the Spirit has come upon Him for His work. He declares here in the first words of His ministry, as Luke gives it to us, the purport of that anointing. The preaching of glad tidings to the poor comes first, and gives character to all the rest. When man is in the place of need he can receive the gospel. When he is consciously a sinner, captive to the sin which he cannot, when he will, renounce, the gospel brings him release. The blind receive their sight. Those bruised in fetters liberty. It is in fact "the acceptable year of the Lord"; the jubilee of God; fuller and more blessed than the law ever proclaimed in Israel.

The first verse of our chapter describes the mission of our Lord to this world, about that there can be no question. The first time that He preached in the Synagogue of Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He opened the Book at these very words and read them. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the meek [the poor]; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord .” And He told His hearers that that very day these words were fulfilled in their ears. It is equally certain that the great blessings of His mission were to run in no narrow channel, for while His words were addressed to a crowd of Jews, He showed them how the grace that was in Him would work, it would flow out and on to sinners of the Gentiles, like the Zidonian widow and the Syrian leper. His mission was to the world; He came for the blessing of men, to seek and save the lost, to preach the gospel to the poor.

The first verse of our chapter describes the mission of our Lord to this world, about that there can be no question. The first time that He preached in the Synagogue of Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He opened the Book at these very words and read them. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the meek [the poor]; He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And He told His hearers that that very day these words were fulfilled in their ears. It is equally certain that the great blessings of His mission were to run in no narrow channel, for while His words were addressed to a crowd of Jews, He showed them how the grace that was in Him would work, it would flow out and on to sinners of the Gentiles, like the Zidonian widow and the Syrian leper. His mission was to the world; He came for the blessing of men, to seek and save the lost, to preach the gospel to the poor.

“He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor”

Preaching glad tidings to the poor was part of the mission for which the Lord was anointed, and how perfectly was this carried out. It was not yet His time to “reprove with equity for the meek of the earth,” or to judge the poor with righteousness, as He will in the coming day; but He preached to them God’s disposition of grace, and a great salvation, not from the Roman yoke, but from the power of sin and Satan. His words to Simon the Pharisee about the creditor and the two debtors, manifest the character of His message, as do also His words to the poor woman who came uninvited to Simon’s house, “Thy sins are forgiven,” and “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace.”

He inaugurated the day of glad tidings. He sounded the joyful news on the mountain side and in the city street; by the shore of the lake and in the synagogue of the Jews; to the lonely sinner at the well and to the crushing crowd along the way; to the fallen and low, to the publicans and sinners, to the poor, to the meek, He made known the glad tidings of good things; and the common people heard Him gladly as He told of the grace and goodness of the heart of God, of forgiveness and salvation and blessing. It is still the day of salvation. The acceptable time has not yet run its course. The day of vengeance is not yet here. Grant to us then, O Lord, more grace and strength to spread abroad the tidings which first began to be spoken by Thyself, Thou divinely appointed and anointed Preacher of glad tidings to the poor.

Take first the prophecy in which the Spirit of Christ speaks concerning Himself as Jehovah-Messiah Who was coming. In the synagogue of Nazareth, the Lord read aloud from this part of Isaiah, declaring to the audience, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:16-21). Then the Lord with apparent abruptness rolled up the book and sat down. He had ended His reading in the middle of a clause. Why? The prophecy declared that His mission was twofold: “to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah and the day of vengeance of our God.” In the prophecy the proclamation of the “acceptable year and the gloomy “day” are united as a single service of Christ. But the Lord, by His own lips, showed that the fulfilment of the second half of the clause has been deferred, and that in His Advent to this world a wide interval of time separates the “acceptable year” from the “day of vengeance,” though the announcement of both events appears in the prophetic utterance of Isaiah as a single phrase, only one half of which was fulfilled by the First Advent of Christ.

He presents Himself in this character: "The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, … to preach the acceptable year of Jehovah." Here He stops. That which follows in the prophet, respecting the deliverance of Israel by the judgment which avenges them of their enemies, is omitted by the Lord. Now Jesus does not announce promises, but their fulfilment in grace by His own presence. The Spirit is upon this man, full of grace; and the God of grace in Him manifests His goodness. The time of deliverance is come; the vessel of His favour to Israel is there in their midst.