Anchor My Faith

The Official Beginning of Ministry

Scripture: Luke 4:16-19

This section in our journey along the gospel path, draws material for the single narrative from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. However, most of the material comes from Luke with four small additions from Mark and two very small additions from Matthew.

We begin with: “[Now Jesus] 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” (Luke 4:16 ESV). Jesus came to Nazareth, but where did he come from? If you look back several verses in Luke you will find that he came from being tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, but if you look back in our study you will find that we covered 65 lessons to get to this lesson. Those lessons came from the gospel of John and describes the activities of Jesus prior to coming to Nazareth at this time.

Coming from the wilderness, Jesus again meets with John the Baptist, who calls him the Lamb of God. Jesus gathers to himself four unofficial disciples named Andrew, John, Simon (who Jesus named Peter), Philip and Nathanael. Nathanael was added after traveling to Cana for a wedding. After the wedding we find Jesus in Jerusalem where he cleanses the temple for the first time and later has conversation with Nicodemus about being born again. Jesus leaves Jerusalem and heads back to Galilee by way of Samaria, where he encounters the woman from Sychar at Jacob’s well. After spending two days teaching at Sychar, Jesus and his disciples (how many and who they are is not known) travel on to Galilee to his home town of Nazareth.

As was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. On this particular day 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” (Luke 4:17 ESV). Jesus was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, which we know speaks about his coming. Jesus unrolled the scroll to that prophecy found in Isaiah 61 and reads: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news 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” (Luke 4:18 – 19 ESV). Jesus knows that the anointing of the Spirit is upon him for ministry and that he is the messianic servant of the Lord who is speaking in this passage. This passage lists several things that Jesus would do; things that we will cover at the beginning of our next lesson.

Prayer

Father, how exciting it is to see Jesus identify himself with an ancient prophecy and declare that he at that reading fulfills it. It is clear that this is officially the beginning of his ministry to fulfill the things he just read about. Father, I look forward to seeing this accomplished from a single narrative of the four gospels.