After His baptism by John in the Jordan, and His temptation and testing in the wilderness by the devil, Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. There, He taught in the synagogues, until one day, He came to Nazareth, the city where He had been raised for the previous 30 years, living a perfect, normal human life. On that day, a Sabbath, He entered into the synagogue, and stood up to read:
And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And 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 announce the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to send away in release those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee"
Luke 4:17-19
What is jubilee? In the Old Testament, when the children of Israel came up out of the wilderness and entered into the good land that God had promised them, each tribe and each person was assigned a portion of that land as their possession. The land was rich, and yielded food abundantly; yet not all the Israelites were good farmers, whether they lacked the skill or were simply lazy. Eventually, some ran out of money, and were forced to sell their land in exchange for food and money. Of course, that would then eventually run out, and they had to sell themselves as slaves. Yet God made provision for even these - every 50th year, a year of jubilee was declared, and all the slaves were to be freed, and everyone was to be restored to their original possession.
What does this mean then to the New Testament believers? The good land symbolises Christ, Who by right is our rich portion and eternal inheritance. However, due to the fall, we were disenfranchised, removed from the enjoyment of Christ, and sold into the slavery of sin. So after a period of time, the Lord came to the earth to announce the jubilee, accomplishing redemption for us so that we could be restored to what we had lost. Hallelujah! We have been restored to our lost possession, our full enjoyment of the unsearchable rich Christ!
Can you imagine how one such slave would have looked forward to the year of jubilee? No matter how low your situation, you still had a hope for the future, when you would return rejoicing to your restored possession. A Christian's life should be one full of constant rejoicing (1 Thessalonians 5:16) for the return of our enjoyment of Christ. The low gospel is that Jesus loves you and died for you, so that you won't go to hell. The full gospel is the proclamation of the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee!
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