Series: Jesus Model – P1 – Helping Others

Message Aim:  Jesus didn’t come to just tell us what to do, but to model how to serve others.

 Sermon Title:    “Helping Others Like Jesus”

 Scripture:   Luke 4:14-21

¹⁴ Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵ He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. ¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Message Synopsis:

Today I’m starting a new series that I’m calling “The Jesus Model.”  God’s wants you to learn how to follow Him, how to serve him by serving other people.  That’s called Ministry.  Jesus didn’t just tell us what to do.  Jesus gave us a model.

After Jesus was baptized He began His ministry when He read this out of the OT Bible the words of Luke 4:18-19.  Jesus said in this scripture the Messiah is coming to do five things.  What I want to do this morning as we start this series on “The Jesus Model” is, I want us to look at first who Jesus came to help, and then I want us to look at how he came to help them.

1. First, Jesus said I came for the poor.

To preach good news to the poor.  Now, there are actually three different types of poverty.  First is material poverty.  Second, there’s moral poverty.  The third kind of poverty is spiritual poverty.

2. The second group Jesus said he came for is the brokenhearted.

People who have been let down in life.  We’ve all had broken hearts.  What causes broken hearts?  A lot of different things, but let me just give you three things.  First is disappointment.  Second, you can be broken by rejection.  That’s one that hurts more than almost anything.  The third is resentment.

3. A third group that Jesus came for is the imprisoned.

The locked up are the people who are shut out in life.  The Bible tells about the kinds of prison that we put ourselves in.  Let me give you three or four things that cause people to get imprisoned personally. One of them is addictions.  Another thing that imprisons you are secrets.  Another thing is ignorance.  But the number one thing that imprisons people today and it can imprison you is fear.

5. The fourth kind of people Jesus came for is he came for the blind. When you’re blind you’re shut out of life.  There are many types of blindness.  The first is physical.  There is relational blindness.  There’s another kind of blindness and that’s spiritual blindness.

5. Then the fifth group Jesus said he came to help is the oppressed. The oppressed are put down.  They’re played upon.  They’re taken advantage of.   There’s all kinds of oppression in our world today that Jesus cares about and wants us to stop.  Let me give you three kinds. First is political oppression.  Then cultural oppression.  There’s one other. Spiritual oppression.

So let’s real quickly go through what Jesus came to do.  First, we saw who he came for.  Now look at what he came to do.  If you want to help the people in your life, if you want to be Christ like, if you want to be like Jesus, then you must do the five things that Jesus did.

First thing Jesus said he came to do is to preach Good News. The second thing Jesus said he came to do is “to heal, help, comfort the brokenhearted.” The third thing Jesus said I came to do is to proclaim freedom to those who feel imprisoned.Then number four, he says “I came to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind.” The fifth people.  He said I want you to release the oppressed. 

(1) To bring the good news to the spiritually poor and to heal the broken hearted, we need to promote reconciliation; get right with God, get right with other people.  That brings healing to broken heartedness and it brings spiritual bounty to spiritually poor people.  Promoting reconciliation. (2) To release the oppressed and to empower the kicked around and offer insight to the blind and confused, we need to equip servant leaders who don’t abuse or oppress and don’t distress. (3) To bring good news to the materially poor we need to assist the poor.  (4) To heal the hurting both physically and emotionally we are to care for the sick. (5) And to release those who are oppressed by ignorance and imprisoned by a lack of education we need to educate the next generation.