If you have your Bible, please turn to Luke chapter four. What does it mean to be anointed by the Holy Spirit? How can we, as disciples of Christ, sincerely pray and follow Christ as Spirit-filled men of God? Today, I want to explore how the Spirit worked in Jesus’ life at the onset of His ministry. I hope to encourage you to believe for more of His power working in you. The title of my message is “The Holy Spirit Upon You.” Jesus is our exemplar and Teacher, who showed us how to live under the Spirit’s anointing.

Last month I taught on the Holy Spirit’s working in the life of John the Baptist, and the handover of spiritual authority from him to Jesus, the last and greatest prophet under the Old Covenant. Both men were anointed of the Holy Spirit, but Jesus was the Anointed One promised in the Old Testament. Today’s message will focus on how the Holy Spirit led and worked at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry.

Right from the outset of the gospel story we see conflict and danger. Herod the Great sought the life of Jesus as a baby and murdered the boys around Bethlehem. Only the Holy Spirit’s warning to the wise men and to Joseph in dreams protected Him. Then Herod’s son, Antipas, arrested and later beheaded John the Baptist. The Romans under Procurator Pilate murdered those who resisted Roman power and mingled their blood in his pagan sacrifices. And now the Holy Spirit came upon the man Jesus and spiritual warfare took a new turn. Let’s now read Luke 4:1-2.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness ² for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry.

Notice that the first thing the Holy Spirit did with Jesus after He anointed Him with power was to lead Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil under the growing hunger from a forty day fast. The wilderness was a barren, desert place south of the Jordan River. There was little water to be found. So while Jesus was fasting for forty days, we don’t know how many days He also was without water, as the Spirit led Him from place to place. This harsh environment put Jesus at a natural disadvantage in a struggle against God’s adversary, the devil. Thus Jesus was stripped of any natural advantage to resist temptation and had to rely exclusively on God’s word and prayer. So must we when we battle the devil.

I have done a few forty-day fasts, and one on nearly nothing but water. After 28 days, my muscles began to ache, and a good friend encouraged me to drink Pedialyte with Emergen-C’s to replenish lost electrolytes. These alleviated the muscle aches, though not the hunger. But Jesus was given no such recourse. And He was a lot leaner than me when He started fasting; so His muscles undoubtedly ached more than mine before he completed his fast.

After forty days, when he was physically at His weakest and on the edge of real starvation, the Accuser, or devil, came to tempt him. Reading on from v. 3: “And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” ⁴ And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

“⁵ And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. ⁶ And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. ⁷ Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” ⁸ Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”

“⁹ And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; ¹⁰ for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You to guard You,’ ¹¹ and, ‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’” ¹² And Jesus answered and said to him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

¹³ When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.

I’ll not go in depth into these three tests, except to say that they touch on the core areas of temptation that every human faces: physical cravings, materialistic yearning and pride. 1 John 2:15-16 recaps these accurately: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” To each of these temptations, Jesus answered the same way, beginning with “It is written” and quoting the word of God in rebuttal.

The devil’s temptation to turn stones into bread at the height of Jesus’ hunger corresponds to the lust of the flesh. The offer of “all the kingdoms of the world [and their] domain and glory” in exchange for worshipping the devil, appealed to the lust of the eyes, as well as pride. The third test of throwing himself off the temple’s pinnacle to compel the angels to rescue Him, was an appeal to vanity for the Son of God, as well as an act of presumption of God’s protection. All of these tests potentially could have been true; but they were all rooted in lies from the devil that appealed to Jesus’ human nature to act in vanity.

The truth is, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have turned the stones into bread for Jesus; nor would the devil have given his dominion to Jesus if Jesus had worshipped him; nor would God’s angels have to come Jesus’ rescue if He’d thrown Himself off the temple against the Father’s will. Remember that. Nothing that seems expedient in the moment but violates God’s moral law, or the law of love, or serves a primarily self-interested goal is a decision that God can bless. Yet acting in self-interest first is what we are all innately programmed to do.

That’s the essence of our sin nature. We are born incurably selfish – self-centered, self-willed, self-serving, self-righteous and self-indulgent. Being Christ’s disciple means, above all, being Christ-centered and learning how to put God and others before ourselves. Yet when we do, we find our true life in exchange for losing the old, selfish one.

There’s something else that’s really important that I want you to grasp from Jesus’ temptation. I am more prone to act or react to others selfishly when I’m under pressure at work, or exhausted, as a I was on July 5^th at the end of a grueling hike. In those moments, I act for self-comfort or self-preservation rather than caring for those around me. Jesus faced the pressure of hunger, heat and thirst and the unrelenting probes of the Adversary. Yet he overcame temptation by relying unreservedly on scriptural truth and his trust in God. So should we.

And don’t ignore the implicit warning in Luke 4:13: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.” When you speak and act in accord with Scripture, and put loving God and others ahead of self, you will defeat the devil every time. Revelation 12:11 says, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony…” But that won’t stop the devil from planning another subtler attack against you in the future.

So be aware of what’s going around you, and your inner responses, and don’t give into your selfish will. The way of love is the way of victory, blessing and peace in God’s kingdom. Now let’s turn to that strategy of victorious living that guided our Savior. Reading v.14-15:

And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district. ¹⁵ And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all.

The immediate fruit of Jesus’ baptism and forty days of testing in the wilderness is that He returned to society in the power of the Spirit. When he laid hands on the sick, they were healed. He could detect and cast out demons. Consequently, His message carried divine, prophetic authority; and the news about Him spread everywhere. Being anointed by the Holy Spirit gives a preacher authority that seminary degrees cannot confer. The Holy Spirit’s anointing comes through seeking God’s face, and meditating on God’s word, the way Jesus had all His life, but especially in the wilderness. Reading on:

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

Jesus read the passage from Isaiah 61 that gave His prophetic mission statement. They are the reason the Holy Spirit anointed Him. They’re also the mission statement of Christ’s Church. It is our blueprint as disciples of Christ. No matter what else you may do, your service as Christ’s disciple must in some way reflect those words. I’ll get back to Luke 4:18-19 later. Now reading vv.20-21:

And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. ²¹ And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²² And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”

When Jesus said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”, He was announcing that He was the Anointed One, the Messiah – for that is what moshiach in Hebrew means. This was a stunning announcement to his listeners; but they were oblivious of its implications, and approved His gracious speech.

In their minds, they just heard a young preacher giving an idyllic statement about God’s coming kingdom. Jesus was announcing this, but not in the way they envisioned. They downplayed Jesus’ prophetic authority by asking “is this not Joseph’s son?” They patronized Him, until Jesus turned their expectations upside down and insulted their religious sensibilities. Reading from v. 23-30:

And He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” ²⁴ And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. ²⁵ But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; ²⁶ and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. ²⁷ And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” ²⁸ And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; ²⁹ and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, He went His way.

In less than a minute, Jesus turned a synagogue congregation that was favorably disposed toward him into an enraged mob that sought to kill him! How did this happen so suddenly, and why would Jesus intentionally offend his hometown Jews? There is strange, but profound, wisdom in Jesus’ sudden pivot from popular preacher to searing prophet, whose words were like a winnowing fork.

First, Jesus repudiated their expectation that He would favor His hometown of Nazareth over other cities. Quoting their proverb, “Physician, heal yourself!” meant that since Jesus was their homeboy, he was expected to do miracles in, and patronize, his hometown. That’s how people had always acted in the Near East. They patronized their families, clans and hometowns before others. Jesus’ rebuke shattered that self-serving notion, saying, “no prophet is welcome in his hometown.”

Jesus’ words stung the Nazarene Jews pride. He clearly implied that He was a prophet. That was an enormously emotive statement to His Jewish listeners: the Jews hadn’t had a recognized prophet for over four centuries since the time of Malachi. But then to follow that emotive statement with an explicit rebuke of his hometown of Nazareth must have stung their sense of Jewish respectability.

Their natural minds cried out, “Who do you think you are? How dare you insult the community that raised you!” Yes, it would be arrogant, if someone less than Messiah was speaking. But that was the point they had missed. Jesus had just told them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” But instead of humbling themselves before Messiah, they patronized Him, and then got offended by Him. Sadly, if they had just listened with humility, Jesus likely would have done the very miracles for them that He’d done in Capernaum. But their pride and indignation blinded them. It stifled the Spirit’s working, as it did the next time Jesus visited Nazareth.

Jesus isn’t constrained by our sensibilities. By offending them, He exposed the selfish pride upon which Nazareth’s social order was built in order to humble them. The Nazarene Jews were neither arrogant nor wicked compared to those around them. Outwardly, these were ordinary, working class, God-fearing Jews living under both Roman and Herodian political domination. Their Jewish heritage and faith were the only things giving them a sense of dignity in an oppressive world. But Jesus detected the pride lying beneath the religious surface, and rebuked it fiercely, because He knew their pride would stifle the Holy Spirit’s anointing. He lived up to Malachi’s prophecy about Him, “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.”

What Jesus implied to his hometown audience, He says to Christians who may take Him for granted today. “My goodness and power do not guarantee you favorable results. You cannot presume to know how I will act in the moment. Only as you trust Me throughout your life will you see my goodness working all things for your ultimate good. You can’t take Me for granted.” That was only Jesus’ first salvo against their religious pride. The next one made them mad enough to kill Him.

Jesus cited two miracles by the greatest miracle-working prophets before Him, Elijah and Elisha. In both cases, he observed, God showed favor to Gentiles while passing by hungry Israelite widows or lepers inside. These two stories of God favoring Gentiles, along with declaring He was the anointed prophet, proved too much for His indignant listeners. They became enraged and led him outside the town to a cliff, intending to hurl him to his death as a false prophet.

No doubt they pushed Him roughly along; and Jesus let them, right until they reached the brow of the hill. He knew they couldn’t kill Him, because His time to die on the cross as the Lamb of God hadn’t come. So right when they reached the cliff’s edge, Jesus turned around and walked right through their midst, untouched!

Notice the counterpoint to refusing to throw Himself off the temple shortly before in Luke’s narrative. Here’s something else I want you to lock onto. When you are doing the will of God, you are indestructible. Nothing will harm you or kill you until your life’s work is done. Only God knows when that will be. Sometimes martyrdom happens to God’s faithful servants. But when you die doing God’s will, you have glorified God as He intended. Then you’re off to heaven for your full eternal reward! You will die victorious!

So if you’re ever facing someone threatening to harm you, say these words, “In Jesus’ Name, I rebuke you!” Repeat these words after me, “In Jesus’ Name, I rebuke you!” You have Holy Spirit authority to speak those words and expect God’s angels to protect you from danger when you’re about the Father’s business. You only walk into danger when you abandon God’s kingdom to build your own.

By alienating His hometown Jews, Jesus severed any claim that they might make over his life. He was saying that from now on, people were accountable to Him, not the other way around. He responded similarly to his mother and brothers when they thought he’d lost his senses and tried to separate Him from His disciples. He asked his audience, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” ⁴⁹ And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.”

Now let’s return to Jesus’ mission statement, found in Luke 4:18-19. As I said, His mission statement is a blueprint for our ministry.

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, ¹⁹ To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

Jesus’ ministry began with being baptized in water and by the Holy Spirit. The same is true with you and me. Jesus allowed Himself to be baptized by John, because it was needed to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus had to set the example for all His disciples who would follow after Him. Years later, after His resurrection and right before His ascension to heaven Jesus commissioned His disciples to baptize future disciples in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But He also promised that they themselves would also be baptized in the Holy Spirit, which happened on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after His resurrection.

God commands us to be baptized in water as one of two ordinances that connect us with Jesus’ gospel. Baptism in water signifies vicarious entry into Jesus’ Passion: His death, burial and resurrection, which redeemed us from our sins. But baptism also opens us to be immersed in the life and character of God – the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Only as we take on the character qualities of our holy God do we become fit servants of God.

It is immersion in the Holy Spirit that imparts that nature, or Name, of God to us. The Holy Spirit comes into the life of every believer who surrenders their life to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He seals Himself within us, letting every angel and demon know that we are Christ’s. And He seals us within Christ, mystically joining our life to God’s. It is the most powerful and intimate union between the Creator and His creation possible.

Jesus read Isaiah’s writing of the Spirit of the Lord being upon Him. In truth, the Holy Spirit immersed Jesus in His power, and He indwells every believer with the same potential to express God’s power. Jesus was filled with the Spirit without measure, as John wrote. That we are not imbued with the same miracle-working power as Jesus was attests to our sinfulness.

Nevertheless, Jesus promised His disciples, in John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” Collectively, the Body of Christ worldwide, empowered by the Holy Spirit, are doing far more miracles and winning far more souls, than Jesus ever did on earth. This was God’s intent from the beginning. As a Father, God takes more pleasure in working with His children than working separately on their behalf.

If you’re a believer in Jesus, the Spirit of the Lord lives in you and is upon you! Paul wrote, in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.”

The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jesus, and fills us, to accomplish four things: (1) preach good news to the poor, (2) proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, (3) set free the oppressed, and (4) proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Let’s look at each goal and see how they connect to our life.

First, the Spirit anoints us to share good news to the poor. The word used here is a Greek verb, euangelesthai, or evangelize. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the best news that has ever been given the human race. The good news is offered to the poor. The truth is, every human being is spiritually poor, but many do not own it. They think they’re living a respectable life, but don’t realize that in the light of God’s infinite holiness, they’re all like the Laodicean church: “poor, blind, wretched and naked.” Only as we recognize the radical corruption or depravity of our souls, can we be the recipients of God’s mercy and salvation. That’s why Jesus began His Sermon on the Mount this way, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

So what is the good news that brings salvation to the poor? Jesus couldn’t explain it to the Jews of Nazareth, but today we know that the good news is the salvation that Jesus purchased for us on the cross. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians it was the most important thing in his teaching: “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, ² by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

There is nothing more important than this simple message of the gospel, which was the first creed of the faith, formulated shortly after Pentecost in 30 AD. As Paul wrote, in Romans 1:16, “the gospel… is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Whatever else we may do with our lives, sharing the good news to people who don’t know Jesus is our highest duty and privilege. And it is the Spirit of God within who makes us brave enough to share Christ, and gives us wisdom to do so graciously and winsomely.

Sharing the gospel then leads to the second mandate of Jesus’ mission and our blueprint as disciples. “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind.” In Isaiah 61 it says, “to heal the brokenhearted.” These three combined affirm the liberating power of salvation from bondage to the enemy through the gospel. Every soul that is not firmly in Christ’s kingdom is by default in Satan’s camp, whether they acknowledge him or not.

Most people would abhor being subject to a malevolent fallen angel who is utterly indifferent to and contemptuous of them, as Satan is. But Satan hides his presence and cloaks his deadly dominion in deceptive garments of light and false truths that appeal to the sinful mind. Without the exposure of God’s word, illuminated by the Spirit, our natural mind easily falls for the lures the enemy uses to ensnare us. We’re so easily deceived, because Satan appeals to what is pleasurable to our thinking or feeling. He knows our vulnerabilities, and what levers to pull to gain our willing agreement.

Salvation is a process of liberating people from captivity to Satan, their sinful selves and a surrounding culture that reinforces unbelief. The Bible calls this surrounding, sinful culture, the cosmos, or world. Yes, God loves the world, and sent Jesus to die for fallen humanity; but He is at enmity with the sinful cultures we create that shut Him out.

Jesus validated his ministry of proclaiming recovery of sight by literally giving sight to the blind. These were signs of His bringing insight to those who are spiritually blind. For we can only believe God as far as the “eyes of our heart [are] enlightened,” or perception of divine truth will let us. The verb proclaim, kerusso, means that liberation of captives and recovery of sight comes from hearing the good news. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” People need to hear the gospel clearly taught and understand how to appropriate Jesus Christ into their hearts through faith.

Setting free the oppressed, however, is expressed with an action verb, apostelai, which means literally “to send away” or release or liberate. This verb implies that we should accompany the gospel with action to help people be free from whatever oppresses them. Good works amplify the love in the gospel message and validate that God cares about more than just our immortal souls. There are multitudes of human needs that hurt or oppress people – physically, economically, socially, morally and politically. Alleviating suffering in any these areas is a liberating act. There are plenty of opportunities for every one of us to invest our time and resources to build God’s kingdom in the hearts and lives of people. Liberating the oppressed has always been an implicit command of the gospel. The history of the faith over the past two thousand years is one of helping people find freedom in this life in preparation for eternal freedom in the next.

The culminating work of Jesus ministry was to announce “the year of the Lord’s favor.” He stopped in mid-sentence in reading Isaiah 61:2, because the next phrase says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus did NOT come to proclaim vengeance upon the Roman Empire, or sinful humanity, but to save people from their sins. We are still living two thousand years later in the favorable year of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit who changed your inner man from sin and death to righteousness and life wants to empower you today. Unlike the Jews of Nazareth, He wants people who are humble and yielded to God’s word – even if sometimes He must reprove you, as Jesus did them. Humility is the gateway to grace. If you want to be used by God, you must clothe yourselves with humility toward others, as it says in 1 Peter 5:5-6, “for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.”

The Holy Spirit doesn’t work through perfect hearts, but yielded ones, who depend on Him to do the works of Jesus and are courageous enough to step out in faith. When you act in faith, following Jesus’ blueprint in Luke 4:18-19, you can expect the anointing of the Holy Spirit to be on your words and on your life. Let us pray.