Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Freedom Looks Like | New Testament | Luke 4

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

What does freedom mean to you? True freedom is different from what culture says freedom is. In today's episode, Patrick shares how to walk in true freedom according to Luke 4. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 4

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to do a archaeological tour of Israel. One of my favorite places we visited was a town called Magdalya. The name might sound a little bit familiar to you if you've ever heard of Jesus' disciple, Mary Magdalene, or we could have just called her Mary of Magdalene, because that's what that means. This small town, it's on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and it was almost certainly among the town.

that Jesus visited during his ministry as an itinerant preacher. Luke writes that after Jesus's temptation, this is Luke 4, verse 14, Jesus returned to Galilee and the power of the spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everybody praised him. I couldn't help but think of this passage and others like it when I was in Magdala, especially when we visited the site of a first century synagogue. It was a surreal experience standing in a synagogue that Jesus probably preached in. In many ways, it was different than what I expected. Most synagogues in Galilee were built with basalt. It's kind of this black volcanic stone. And they vary in size, but the one in Magdalas was about the size of two high school classrooms. So it wasn't very big. There were columns and

benches for people to sit on with mosaics in the center part of the floor where people read and preached and led singing. The scripture scrolls would have been stored in large chest, and they would have been handled with great care. So sitting in Magdalya, I imagined Mary Magdalene, hearing the stories of this spirit-empowered teacher, healing the sick, and proclaiming the good news that his healings were signs that God's kingdom had finally arrived on earth as in heaven. She'd be thinking, could he be the one, the Messiah, the king come to rescue Israel from exile, the promised one who would set them free from pagan rule, from sin and death? She was probably eagerly awaiting for the day that Jesus would arrive and come to the synagogue and he'd convene everybody and they would

see his acts of power and healing and his words of freedom. Of course, Mary Magdalene was a lot like many poor Jews in Galilee. She was a peasant. Most of the people she knew were probably farmers or fishermen. They were barely making it. They were taxed within an inch of their lives and they were longing for freedom from Rome, longing for the freedom that would come when God finally returned to Israel and fulfilled all of his promises. Freedom, after all, is something that we all long for. In the modern era, we tend to think about freedom as freedom to be or do what I want. Freedom means a complete lock of strictures and regulations. But the Jewish concept of freedom was different. On the one hand, it meant freedom from their pagan oppressors. But on the other hand,

it meant the freedom to obey God. Here's what I mean. They understood that they were oppressed and even controlled by sin. They needed to be set free from the power of sin and idolatry so that they could follow God so they could be free to follow God so that they could be free to be the humans that God made them to be. Or we can put it differently. Freedom wasn't the freedom to do what they wanted. Freedom was the freedom to live out their true human calling, to reflect an image God into the world. It was the freedom to be what they were made to be. Maybe an illustration makes a point. I want you to imagine a lamp. Now, what would make that lamp, quote-unquote, free? By the modern definition, freedom means letting the lamp do what it wants. It can cut its own power cord. It has no strictures

or limits. It means the lamp should be free to do whatever it wants to do. So if it wants to shatter its bulb, let it shatter its bulb. If it wants to fold its lampshade in half, let it fold its lampshade in half. Let it break off its power switch. Let it bend into a whole new shape. For us, real freedom is the freedom to do whatever that lamp. wants to do, well, as long as it doesn't harm any other lamps, of course. But you see a problem. A lamp with a folded lamp shade, a cut power line, a shattered bulb, a broken switch, and a bent frame. Well, it may still be a lamp, I guess, but it's not a functional lamp. It can no longer give light. That lamp may be free to do what it wants to do, but it's not free to do what it's

designed to do. True freedom for a lamp is not freedom to do whatever it wants as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. True freedom for a lamp is the freedom to be a light, to fill a dark room with its electric glow. Yes, this means there will be limitations on the lamp. It needs a cord, a bulb, a switch. But the lamp that lights is genuinely free, free to be what it was made to be. So the Jews in Magdalah, and throughout Nazareth, were waiting for a day when God would return to bend their broken frames back into shape, to restore their shattered light bulbs, to mend their broken off switches and set them free to be the humans they were made to be. This was always God's plan through Israel, that through them he would mend everything Adam broke,

that through them he would mend people from all nations. So can you imagine the excitement that a powerful healer and preacher was whispering the truth that God was finally returning to rule his kingdom? Can you imagine the buzz in places like Nazareth when this happened? Let's pick up the story in verse 16 of Luke 4. He, this is Jesus, went up 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, that was normal.

You stood up when you read and when you preached. Verse 17, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it has written. 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 in recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. 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. He began by saying to them, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus came to announce a day of freedom. Freedom from the rule of pagan kings. freedom from the rule of sin and idolatry, freedom for all of those who are broken bodily and broken in their hearts, freedom to be what they were made to be, to be the humans that God designed them to be. But it's the last verse that's the most surprising. Jesus says, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus is telling us that this is his own mission statement. His mission is to set us free for our mission. what makes his claim that he was fulfilling this passage so shocking is that the passage he's reading from comes from Isaiah 61. This is a passage that looks forward to a day when God himself would come as an anointed conqueror to defeat the powers of idolatry, sin and death.

And Jesus says, I am the conqueror. I am the freedom fighter. I am the kingdom of God and I am the king of the kingdom. Do you believe that truth? Have you let Jesus mend you? Has he set you free from sin and idolatry and death? Set you free to be fully human, to do what you were designed to do. The fact is that this will always involve limitations in your life.

You can't do whatever you want to do. Even if you don't think it will hurt anybody else, true freedom means that you are not your own. True freedom means submitting to God's calling on your life to His Holiness, to speak like him, to treat others as he would, to be patient and merciful and servant-hearted like him, to image him, and to reflect him. Today, I want you to pray that God would set you free to be genuinely human. Jesus died and rose again in your place so that you could be set free.

Pray to God to mend all the ways and all the places that you've been bent by sin, shattered by idolatry, and broken by the powers of this world. Pray for freedom to reflect his image into the world and receive that freedom by kneeling before him as your king. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.