Anticipating Freedom

We're going to turn with anticipation and hope to God's word.

Reading from Luke 4, beginning in verse 14, you'll find the text in your bulletin.

And Jesus returned the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country, caught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim 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 favor.

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

And he began to say to them, Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?

He said to them, Doubtless you'll quote to me this proverb, physician, heal thyself.

What we have heard you do at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.

And he said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

But in truth I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up for three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land.

And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.

And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian.

When he heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.

And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so they could throw him down the cliff.

But passing through their midst, he went away.

Holy Spirit, would you impart to our hearts and minds what you would have us to understand about this word?

And Jesus, you are the word.

So thank you for coming to earth to proclaim liberty.

May we have our hearts set at liberty even today, I ask.

In your name, Jesus.

Amen.

So anticipating freedom is the title of this message.

Three questions I'm going to try to address.

Who is Jesus saying he has come to help?

What problems did Jesus come to fix?

And what does Jesus ask of us?

So who did Jesus come to help?

As we just said, as we just read, he says something bold in verse 21.

He said scripture was fulfilled the day he read it.

He said those things were happening because he himself, the living word, had come to preach good news to the poor, to the prisoners, to the blind and oppressed.

But who did he mean?

My question is, was he talking about physical poverty or spiritual poverty?

Was he referring to physical blindness or the spiritual blindness that many of us have experienced, all of us have experienced until the Holy Spirit opens our eyes?

Is he talking about physical or spiritual matters here?

Imagine if you were in the synagogue that day and you were someone who had experienced oppression by dictators, that you had been enslaved or tortured or abused, if you were blind or crippled, how would Jesus' promises sound to you?

Would you take them purely to be spiritual?

After years of crying out and praying for physical help, wondering if God is real, wondering if he cares?

These same questions are asked by millions of people on the planet today.

People who are dying simply because they can't turn on a faucet and get clean water.

People who bury their children because they can't get penicillin or sufficient food.

People who fled persecution, like our brother Emmanuel who prayed for the offering, fled persecution in Sudan, like those who have fled political persecution in Congo, who have been persecuted in Jordan, or who have fled a civil war in Syria, like some of our guests today, who fled persecution in Syria, or in Cote d'Ivoire.

Do you think when Jesus said in verse 18 that he came to proclaim freedom to captives, do you think he would include a couple named Gowri and her husband?

Gowrie and Kumar are a young couple in India.

Gowri and Kumar needed money for medical expenses.

When Gowrie was pregnant with their second child, so they went to Kumar's boss, who ran a brick factory where Kumar worked, and they asked him to borrow 25,000 rupees.

Sounds like a lot of money, but it's$370.

And the young couple worked, promised to work at the business until they could pay off the$370.

Their boss was cruel, verbally and physically abusing them.

No matter how hard they worked, their debt did not decrease.

They were trapped.

Gowrie was once tied up to a shed all day and watched her husband being beaten.

Their two-year-old daughter was beaten for playing with a water faucet.

Gowrie tried to protect her daughter and was kicked until she was so badly hurt she could not stand for days.

And she said, no one would stand up for me, and no one will.

But then, ten years after Gowrie and Kumar were enslaved in a brick factory for a$370 debt, they were freed.

They were freed because Jesus helped them by sending some of his people.

Staff from International Justice Mission began investigating reports of slavery at that brick factory, and the IJM staff, Indian police, rescued Gowri and Kumar and 22 others enslaved at that brick factory.

International Justice Mission is the largest anti-slavery organization in the world, and it is staffed by followers of Jesus.

They exist because over 40 million people in the world are held in slavery today.

10 million of them are children.

Just in India, a child goes missing every 12 minutes.

Slavery is illegal throughout the world today.

And more people are enslaved today than in any point in human history.

How can that be?

In 1850, a slave held in the United States in the American South cost about$40,000 in today's money.

Today children are sold for$250 to harvest cocoa beans on chocolate farms in West Africa, which ends up in our milkshakes and chocolate chips.

You see, if you sell cocaine or you sell guns or you sell any other thing, you can only sell it once.

But a human being can be sold, can be used, can be abused over and over.

Human trafficking generates$150 billion a year globally.

And because the profit is so great, slave owners are relentless and very motivated to escape justice.

But International Justice Mission is also relentless and motivated to bring them to justice.

Members of our church work at IJM, among other brothers and sisters in Christ, who left successful, well-paying careers in law, in business, in law enforcement, in order to work at IJM.

They followed Christ into this work.

They understand that Jesus was in fact talking about physical slavery in these verses, physical blindness, physical poverty.

But they also know there is a deeper root cause to slavery, and Jesus came to attack that root cause.

So point two, what problems did Jesus come to fix?

John 8.34, Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Have you ever tried to stop a bad habit?

Doesn't it sometimes feel like chains?

As you battle the same sin over and over?

Our sin promises us freedom and slaps chains on us instead.

In fact, it's our desire for freedom.

It's our desire to do whatever we want that traps us, traps us in our own desires.

Have you seen the Virginia license plates that are bright yellow and say, Don't tread on me?

Have the rattlesnake?

As you may know, that was a slogan in the Revolutionary War.

Flags were carried into battle warning the British not to step on the freedom of the American colonists, or we would bite back.

Well, we haven't been at war with Great Britain in 200 years, by my count.

So who are we saying that to?

Eating the fruit in the garden was Adam and Eve's way of saying, Don't step on me.

We don't need you, they said to God.

And God said, Oh my children, you don't even know how much you need me.

And as soon you will see, the world is going to fall into decay.

And you are going to see the effect in the world of what happens when people say to their creator, don't tell us what to do.

Poverty, disease, slavery, starvation, prejudice, pain, all of the suffering in the world today exists because of human beings saying, I can do whatever I want, no matter who it hurts.

So why is there slavery in the world today?

Because people enslaved to their own desires will enslave others to meet those desires.

Gowri and Kumar were held in bondage by a man who did not see them made in the image of God.

His heart was blind to the God who made him and who made them and who would judge him.

You see, sin is internal rebellion doing external damage.

It's a spiritual problem with physical effect.

That's why Jesus' mission and the church's mission is to address both the physical suffering and the spiritual cause of all suffering.

He enlists us in this mission.

He made a surprising promise the night before he died in John 14.

He said, Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and greater works will he do.

How could you and I do greater works than Jesus?

I can't heal blindness.

I can't raise the dead.

But Jesus knew that the physical death of one man would bring spiritual life to millions throughout generations.

And so Jesus gives you and me freedom from our spiritual blindness and savory and slavery, and then sends us out on a mission.

In John 20, Jesus said, Just as the Father sent me, I am sending you.

So three things to remember as we go.

The physical pain in the world has a spiritual root.

Number two, our motivation to bring physical healing to the world flows from our own spiritual healing.

And number three, therefore, we must offer both physical and spiritual healing.

One girl that IJM rescued in the Philippines said, now I know that God cares about me because he sent you to rescue me.

She saw the connection.

Jesus was a prophet mighty in word and deed.

Let me just read a few of the things other prophets have said about injustice and oppression.

Jeremiah confronted kings of both Israel and Babylon because, quote, their clothes are soaked with the lifeblood of the innocent poor.

They do not seek justice or defend the cause of the poor.

The prophet Amos called on the kings of Judah, calling them to account for debt slavery, just like Kumar and Gowri experienced.

Nehemiah raised his prophetic voice to stop the Jewish nobles and officials who were allowing the rape and enslavement of the weak in their own community.

And that is just a sample.

Two thousand years ago, another prophet came, John the Baptist.

He began by preaching the same indictment of those in power preying upon the weak and the poor.

And then John saw Jesus one day walking down to the river, and John prophesized: this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus came to live and die to cure the spiritual sickness that plagued everyone on earth.

And his ministry began there in his hometown, but has since spread planet wide.

But let's go back to Nazareth there.

Did you notice how quickly the mood changed among the crowd?

In verse 22, everyone spoke well of him, marveled at the gracious words coming from his mouth.

They loved the idea of someone coming to bring physical freedom from the Roman oppressors.

But then Jesus went too far.

He took the conversation outside of Israel.

He reminds them in verse 26 that God sent Elijah to help a widow from a Gentile city north of Samaria, right next to Syria.

And then in verse 27, Jesus says, there were many lepers in Israel, but none of them was cleansed, only Naaman, the Syrian.

Naaman was a powerful general in Syria, a country that had fought in wars against Israel, and God used the oppression of leprosy, a sickness in Naaman's body, to reveal to that Syrian general his need to surrender to the one true God.

So after Jesus reminds his neighbors of these two stories, they try to throw them off a cliff.

They don't like that message.

We see already in the beginning of his ministry that those in power would hate Jesus for two reasons.

Because he proclaimed healing and forgiveness for everyone on the earth, even Gentiles, people from any culture and tribe, and because he proclaimed that he was that instrument of salvation, he was the Messiah, one who could even forgive sins.

But to remove the evil, to remove the injustice, Jesus had to become a victim of injustice.

International Justice Mission goes into courtrooms around the world fighting for justice and enforcement of the laws.

Do you know Jesus was the victim of an unjust trial?

Jesus' trial occurred in the middle of the night during Passover, both of which were illegal.

The charges that were brought against him were filed by the judges themselves, which is not fair.

They're supposed to be impartial.

A death sentence was supposed to be unanimous, and this one was not.

Also, executions were supposed to be carried out three days after the sentencing, in case other witnesses came forward.

But he was rushed to the cross to hide the injustice of it.

To defeat justice, to defeat injustice, Jesus became a victim of injustice.

But he walked willingly with his eyes wide open to the cross.

And he submitted to the will of his father.

He did it because he loves you.

He did it because he hates injustice.

And he knew the only way to defeat the power of pride and rebellion in our hearts, the sin that chains us in slavery to our own agendas and our own pride and our own desires.

Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, died for unjust people, including you and me, that we might receive grace.

I like grace as an acronym.

Have you heard this?

God's riches at Christ's expense.

We receive grace, God's riches at Christ's expense.

Christ paid with his own blood that we might receive all of God's goodness, forgiveness, love, and security.

Have you received it?

Have you made it yours?

By bowing the knee, by asking Jesus to cure the blindness in your heart so that you can see your Savior.

That when you see him, you can say, Jesus, take these chains off of me.

That chain me to my own desires, my own motivations.

Set me free, Jesus, proclaim the year of the Lord's favor in my life.

Have you begged him to break the chains?

When he does, we get down off the throne that we all place ourselves upon thinking we are Lord over our own life and that we have a right to rule over other people's lives.

You see, freedom only comes when we kneel in submission to Jesus our Lord.

And then he sends us out.

He sends us out to proclaim freedom to captives wherever we are.

So, what does Jesus ask of us?

He asks us to help children like Foley.

Foley grew up in a poor family in Ghana, in West Africa.

Foley's mother left when he was young, his father died before he was born.

An uncle came to take care of him.

Instead of going to school, Foley was taken to work on a fishing boat.

He was forced to work 19 hours a day, starting at 1 a.m.

Foley didn't know how to swim when he arrived at the lake, but he was ordered to dive into the dark water to untangle the fishing nets that frequently caught on branches beneath the water.

Foley knew boys who had dove into the water and never came back to the surface.

Fifty thousand children work in Ghana's fishing industry.

Thousands of them are slaves like Foley.

Foley, who was nine years old when he was taken into slavery.

IJM has rescued many there.

The youngest they've rescued on that lake was four years old.

Foley was trapped on that lake for two years until a boat with IJM staff and Ghanaian police found him and nine other boys, rescued them, and took them home.

And when he came home, his grandmother exclaimed, People are celebrating all over the community because Foley was lost and now is found.

Just like us and the IJM staff who came to save him.

And there are children in the United States who need saving too, who need God's people.

Did you know that in the United States, children in the foster care system are at the highest risk of ending up in human trafficking?

That's one reason that there were 33 foster children in this building last night.

Members of our church provided a night out for foster parents in our community so they could have a night out and we could support those 13 families in their service to these foster kids.

The FBI recently reported that of the human trafficking victims they have rescued in the United States, 60% of them have been in the foster care system.

Do you think Jesus wants his people to do something?

Jesus sees this kind of suffering.

When Jesus frees us from the suffering and the bondage of sin in our own hearts, you need to know that your salvation is not ultimately about you.

It's about the kingdom.

Human beings are never the property of another person, with one exception.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6, you are not your own.

You were bought with a price.

And so everything you have, your time, your talent, your treasure, it's a gift.

And they are to be used for his glory and the good of others to help the vulnerable and oppressed out of gratitude for him saving us from oppression.

And so I'll close with a paraphrase of Luke 4, verse 18.

Luke 4:18

Because we do his ministry as his hands and feet, we can say, the Lord has anointed us, the body of Christ, to preach good news to the poor.

Today he sends us the body of Christ to proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and the year of the Lord's favor.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, the gospel promises freedom from the spiritual bonds of our sin, a sin problem that causes physible effect, illness and bondage and oppression, but our spiritual freedom also has visible effect.

Jesus, would you use us, use us to speak the words of truth and hope of salvation in your name?

Use us, Jesus, your hands and feet, to bring healing and help to those who suffer, that they might know with us that there is a Redeemer, a Savior, and a Lord.

In the mighty name of King Jesus we pray.

Amen.