Exeter Temple Message notes
Sunday 7th
September 2014Theme: The Heart of Service
Bible Readings: Isaiah 61:1-3 and Luke 4: 14-21
Between chapter 40 and chapter 55 of Isaiah are four prophecies which are known as the Servant Songs. God calls this servant to lead the nations, but the servant is horribly abused. The servant sacrifices himself, accepting the punishment due others. In the end, he is victorious.
Traditionally, many Jews see the identity of the servant as a personification of the nation of Israel, in the same way as we might talk about Britannia when referring to the UK. Others saw the Servant as an individual whom God would raise up to save Israel and restore its glories, a Messiah.
Christians have always seen Jesus as the fulfillment of these prophecies, Some scholars also link in Isaiah 61:1-3 which we read earlier to the Servant songs, because even though the word servant is not there, it speaks of an “anointed one who has been sent."
700 years after Isaiah, in Luke 4:18 -21 Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1-3 and applies it to himself as the anointed Servant who will bring the Jubilee.
1. Anointing v 18
To anoint means: to rub on or to smear oil on. Used symbolically the rubbing in of oil, onto a person indicated that a person was being set apart and given authority for for a specific role or for a specific task. Anointing was also about being equipped with ability to do fulfil the role.
Prior to this event in Luke 3:21 the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and a voice from heaven said, “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased.”
This was God’s endorsement upon Jesus. True anointing is the power and influence of the Holy Spirit saturating and permeating a person. The anointing of the Holy Spirit makes ministry and service effective. In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus effectively declared that he accepted the role of being the One to bring in the jubilee.
When we become disciples of Jesus we take on
his mandate of ministry. We are also called to preach good news to the poor, to
bind the broken hearted, open the eyes of the blind and set the captive free.
Jesus said to his disciples, “As the father
has sent me I am sending you.” (John
20:21)
At Pentecost the Spirit came to us so that we
could be enabled to continue Jesus’ work in the world. It is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that
takes the ordinary things we do and makes them ministry.
Oswald J Smith wrote that, "self- sufficiency
is the great obstacle and lack of desire for the Spirit’s anointing."
"Do I want the power of the Spirit more than anything else in the world?
Am I in earnest about it? Is there a real thirst? Would I be will to part with
all I possess if only I might be a Spirit –anointed worker? How great is my
hunger? How strong is my desire?
As soon as I give up in despair and refuse to be denied, just so soon
will He (the Holy Spirit) satisfy the hunger and thirst of my heart.”
2. TO v 18-19
The prophecy of Isaiah is about a servant who
would come with a purpose. He came “to” a particular kind of people and to do
something particular for them. He was taking action to bring the liberty and
freedom of jubilee to the world.
Some Christians will argue that when Jesus
used these words he was speaking about spiritual poverty, spiritual blindness
and spiritual oppression and spiritual freedom, recovery and release.
Others use this passage and Isaiah 61 to
support their stance that Jesus didn’t just come to get people ready for heaven
but that the building of God’s kingdom on earth is about changing society. At the polarised ends of this debate you have
those who decry a social gospel which improves a person physically and
materially but doesn’t address the issue of personal salvation from sin and at
the other end those who say to see people as “souls who need to be made ready
for heaven but to do nothing to address their physical, material and emotional
needs is to misunderstand the humanity for whom Jesus died.
William Booth saw proclaiming the message of
personal salvation and reaching out in living service to others as so mixed up
he said they were like Siamese twins to divide them is to slay them.
Mission, evangelism and social action for the
Salvationist go hand in hand,
Transformed people transform their environment.
People who know Jesus take hold of the command to love the Lord their God with
all their heart, all their mind and all their soul and they love their
neighbour as themselves. They therefore have to stand against unloving things
that cause their neighbour to feel unloved.
“Evangelism and social action are
more than ways in which the church carries out its mission in the world. The
mission is the external expression and sharing of what is happening
internally. When nurturing and growth
takes place within a fellowship there is an overflow that occurs and the
overflow is the mission of the church.
Otherwise it is merely charitable works on behalf of outsiders.
Evangelism and social action are the refreshing and renewing overflow of the
life of the Church. In carrying out its mission the Church is actually
embodying not so much what it thinks it should do but what it is.” Commissioner Phil Needham
If the Servant comes to liberate can we who
share his task enslave one another? If his Jubilee doesn’t extend into our own
patterns of living, it’s good for nothing. Jubilee, means that the citizens we
must live out of generosity that transforms the way they deal with one another
The idea that prophecy was
going to be fulfilled was news. At first Jesus impressed them with this news
and the way he delivered it. They could
even have thought that Jesus might be the one to bring it about.
The problem started when
Jesus began to preach about Elijah and how God went out of his way to show
special favour to a pagan widow in Zarapheth and a Syrian called Naaman. Here was Jesus effectively saying that Jubilee
was not just for them.
William Barclay
says that “It was beginning to dawn on
them that there were things in this new message the like of which they had
never dreamed.”
What is the point at which
the message of Jesus is too hard for us?
nI the world it is the
rich and powerful who have servants but Jesus came to be the servant of people
who were usually the servants. Jesus says it clearly, He has sent me to………the
poor, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed.
Although serving the rich
and the powerful can be an oppressive thing because our life would be in their
hands, at the same time they have the ability to give in exchange for our
service, food, lodging, wages, and possibly a place of respectability. But when you are sent to be the servant of
the poor, the broken and the oppressed, they have nothing to give you back but
their mess.
And that is why many of us
walk away from service to the messiest people because we thought they would at
least be grateful. What is the heart of
true service? Isn’t it to love and go on
loving where love is not returned?
4. Today v 21
We are living in the now
of the kingdom of God, the now of Jubilee.
Not
yesterday or someday, but now is the time. We do not need to wait to proclaim
the good news. We have the go ahead to reach out as Servants to those who are
broken-hearted or under oppression, whatever form that takes now.
And Jesus speaking to the people of Nazareth had already begun. He had
already transformed the lives of people in Capernaum, through bringing miracles
of healing .
We
are not called to live in the past and remember the good old days and only sing
the good old hymns and be imprisoned by the way things used to be. And we are not called to live in the future
either, dreaming of an ideal tomorrow when one day we will have a building that
doesn’t need fixing and our own car park.
Someday our church will have the money and the volunteers to do
everything we ought to be doing.
At
the heart of service is being sent by Jesus, it is being empowered by the
Spirit, it is serving through evangelism and social action, it loving where
love is not returned and it is a heart that beats now.
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