1. We are told in Luke 4:14 that "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee."
2. Matthew and Mark briefly mention this trip to His hometown, but it is only Luke who records His visit to the synagogue (Luke 4:16ff.).
3. You will notice that it was His "custom" to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath day (4:16). But today many people have developed the terrible habit of skipping church on the Lord’s Day.
4. I am not surprised to see worldly, unsaved people work on Sunday or go to a ball game or sleep in – but it is hard to understand how those that are genuinely saved can behave like that.
5. Here in the Gospel of Luke, we see that our Lord read from Isaiah 61:1,2. Then, He said, "This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (4:21).
6. By making this statement, He was claiming to be their Messiah.
7. I’d like for us to look at this passage and the passage in Isaiah and see three aspects of Gospel preaching.

1. PREACHING GOOD TIDINGS TO THE MEEK (61:1)

1. Some one has wisely said good preaching involves comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable!
2. Right now I would like to start out by comforting the afflicted – I’ll get around to afflicting the comfortable later.
3. As I have just stated, the speaker in Isaiah 61 is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ (Isa.61:1,2).
4. Our Lord says that, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…" (61:1; cf. 42:1).
5. God anointed Christ to preach the Gospel (61:1). Messiah (Jewish) and Christ (Greek) mean "anointed one."
6. If the Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit for service, how much more do we need it?
7. I am not just talking about pastors and Sunday School teachers and soulwinners, but all Christians! Do we want to see more power with God, more souls saved, more lives changed – than we need the anointing and filling of the Holy Spirit.
8. I am not talking about the charismatic nonsense – that is a delusion.
9. In the Old Testament, priests, prophets, and kings were all anointed with oil (cf. Ex.29:7; I Kings 19:16). This all pointed to Christ, who was anointed as our priest, prophet, and king.
10. Christ came to preach the Gospel to the meek (literally, "the poor" – cf. Luke 4:18; 7:22).
11. It is a fact that in every land where the Gospel has been preached it has been largely the poor who have rejoiced in its message. Abraham Lincoln said that God must love the poor because He made so many of them.
12. A rich man was making fun of a poor farmer one day and he started ridiculing the church the farmer belonged to. He said, "In our church we have plenty of money, but in your church you have none – that’s because you are a bunch of beggars." The farmer replied, "Maybe so, but don’t forget the Bible says that the beggar died and went to heaven but the rich man died and went to hell."
13. The problem is that rich people are so taken up with all that this world has to offer that they are not interested in spiritual things.
14. Christ’s ministry was an outreach to the brokenhearted (61:1) and ours should be too. Burdens are lifted at Calvary, Jesus is very near…The brokenhearted are those that are really hurting, shattered in mind and spirit.
15. Jesus came "to proclaim liberty to the captives" (61:1),i.e., to deliver people who are in bondage to sin, to set them free (cf. John 8:32,36), to break the chains of sin and despair, to free men and women from the power of sensuality, from unclean living, from bad attitudes, etc.
16. Jesus came to open the prison "to them that are bound" (61:1), literally to open the eyes of those that are spiritually blind and imprisoned by the devil (cf. Isa.14:17; 42:7; Luke 4:18).
17. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming back – this will be bad news for those who have rejected Him and ignored Him and have not received Him – but it will be good tidings (news) for "all that mourn" (61:2b,3).
18. Christ gives the wedding garment of praise in place of the funeral attire of the mourner (61:3). The picture here is of a funeral and a wedding. At a funeral service, the Jewish mourners put ashes upon their heads – they would mourn and lament. But at a wedding they wore beautiful bridal wreaths and happy garments.
19. The idea here is that the Messiah offers joy and praise to them who are sad, to those who have sought in vain for peace and satisfaction in this world and whose fondest hopes have failed.
20. To these hurting folks, Jesus offers joy and peace, "that they might be called trees of righteousness…" (61:3). Trees speak of strength, firmness, fullness, health, and fruit.
21. What a transformation Christ offers! From poor and broken-hearted and enslaved by the devil to joyous and strong, "the planting of the Lord."

2. PROCLAIMING THE ACCEPTABLE YEAR OF THE LORD (61:2a)

1. The acceptable year of the Lord is the day of salvation (cf. Isa.49:8; II Cor.6:2).
2. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. My friend, if you are not saved, now is the accepted time – tomorrow could be too late.
3. "Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb.3:7,8).
4. Today is the day of salvation but tomorrow could be "the day of vengeance of our God" (61:2).
5. God is merciful and gracious. It is significant that the word year is used to refer to God’s extended time of grace. God is giving men time to repent. But the word day is used for time of God’s judgment.
6. Jesus said in His Olivet Discourse, "And except those days be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened" (Matt.24:22).
7. God is long-suffering, God is patient, God is merciful, God is gracious. In Isaiah 63:1, it says that God is "mighty to save."
8. A man in China was saved and his neighbor asked him to explain the difference between Christianity and all of the other religions. The Chinese man described it like this: "A man had fallen into a deep, dark pit, and lay in its miry bottom groaning and utterly unable to move. Confucius walked by, approached the edge of the pit, and said, `Poor fellow, I am sorry for you; why were you such a fool to fall in there? Let me give you some good advice: if you ever get out, be more careful and don’t fall in again.’ The man groaned, `I can’t get out.’ That is Confucianism.
9. "A Buddhist priest came by next and said, `Poor fellow, I am very sorry to see you down there. I think that if you could crawl up two-thirds of the way, or even half-way, I could reach you and lift you up out of the pit.’ But the man in the pit was completely helpless and unable to get up. That is Buddhism.
10. "Next the Lord Jesus Christ came by, and hearing his cries for help, went to the very brink of the pit, stretched down and laid hold of the poor man, brought him up out of the miry pit and said: `Go and sin no more.’ That is Christianity."

3. PROCLAIMING THE DAY OF VENGEANCE OF OUR GOD (61:2b)

1. It is significant that our Lord closed the book after "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:19). It wasn’t yet the day of vengeance; the day of vengeance still has not arrived – but it will.
2. Our Lord did not refer to it that day in the synagogue, but later on He did (Luke 21:20-28).
3. Today we are drawing close to the day of God’s vengeance. How much longer will He endure such apostasy, such unbelief, such arrogance, such idolatry? How long will He put up with all of the abortions, the drugs, the drinking, the pornography, the sex perversion, and all of the other filth that keeps getting worse every day?
4. We need to sound a warning – Jesus is coming back – people need to repent (cf. Isa.63:1-6).
5. This is still the day of salvation and the day of grace; but soon, Jesus Christ will get up out of His throne up yonder in heaven, and He will open the book with the seven seals, and He will loose the seven seals, and the wrath of God will be poured out upon this wicked sin-cursed, Satanic, Christ-rejecting world.
6. And after God shakes this world upside down for at least seven years, the Lord Jesus Christ will return (Rev.19:11-16).

 CONCLUSION:

1. I read that when the Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen was looking for the North Pole, his ship entered into deep waters. Each day he gathered up rope and let down the plummet to measure the depth of the ocean at a given point.
2. One day he came to a place where he knew the water must have been exceptionally deep. So he let down the plummet but it was not able to hit the bottom.
3. The next day he gathered up all the available rope that was on board the ship and attached it to the line – down, down, all the way down went the plummet, but it never reached the bottom.
4. In his report he wrote the exact length of the line, and regarding the depth, he wrote: "Deeper Than That."
5. That’s the way God’s love is – that’s the way God’s grace is – that’s the way salvation is – "Deeper Than That." No matter what you have done, no matter where you have been, remember that Jesus came to preach good tidings (the gospel) to those who were hurting.
6. He died on the cross for you and me – does that mean anything to you?