For hundreds of years men lived under the law of Moses looking forward to the time when a Messiah would come and rescue them from whatever human conditions they were facing during their particular life time. They understood that once the Messiah came, things would suddenly become a lot different than what they were experiencing!
Now its good for us to understand that not everyone in the world who lived during that time were born under the law of Moses! The law of Moses was only given to the children of Israel! So that brings up the question, who were the children of Israel?
The children of Israel were the descendants of Abraham's grandson, Jacob! Jacob's name was changed to Israel after an incident happened that we find recorded in the Old Testament! Prior to that incident, God had already made a promise to Abraham that all nations would be blessed because of His seed!
The Apostle Paul explains to us in the New Testament that God was talking about a singular seed, not seeds (plural). I'm not sure that people who lived in Old Testament times knew that even if they knew that God had made a promise to Abraham that was already made unconditional by the time Jacob came on the scene! However, everyone apparently knew that the promise to Abraham was passed down to his son, Isaac, and grandson Jacob, and on to all their descendants who became known as the children of Israel or house of Israel!
Anyway, we know now that the singular seed that was spoken of was none other than Jesus Christ, the Messiah!
As I began to say, for many hundreds of years those who lived under the law of Moses looked forward to the time when the Messiah would come and make everything better! But when the Messiah came, even though they were looking forward to His coming, they didn't recognize Him for who He was! Because of that, we read in John 1:11 that He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him! Was that good news? Its only good news when we understand that it all happened according to God's plan that He had in place from the very beginning! So let's get on with the story!
The real good news is that the Messiah did finally come and His coming changed everything! Today we even count time from the event of His coming!
The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 4:4, 5 that, "when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." (NKJV)
There at the end, Paul uses the pronoun "we" because he being of the house of Israel was also born under the law and in need of being redeemed!
You see, it really didn't make any difference whether a person was born under the law or not as far as the need to be redeemed was concerned. Those who were of the house of Israel needed to be redeemed and Gentiles who were not members of the house of Israel needed to be redeemed! The word redeem simply means to pay a ransom! Here's an example: If a child is kidnapped, a ransom may be required in order for his or her rightful parents to have the child back.
All of us who are humans have been held hostage by sin ever since our first parents, Adam and Eve, initiated sin into the world in the garden of Eden so whether or not we are of the house of Israel or a Gentile who had no knowledge of the law we are all in need of being rescued from sin which is what we mean by being redeemed. The only redeemer any of us have is Jesus Christ, the true Messiah.
Now back to how good the good news is!
Not only did those who lived under the law look forward to the time when the Messiah would come, they also looked forward to a particular time they called the year of jubilee! It was part of the law that they were to let their land rest every seventh year and seven times seven is forty-nine so the seventh of the seven sabbatical year was the forty-ninth year from the time that they came into the land to possess it. But even though they took possession of the land, the land was not theirs to do with as they pleased because God told them in Leviticus 25:23 that, "The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me."
And so it was that at the end of forty-nine sabbatical years that they were to declare a year of jubilee on the fiftieth year! But where do we find any record of there ever being a year of jubilee?
Please open your Bible with me, if you will, to the fourth chapter of Luke and see what Jesus the Messiah has to say!
Luke 4:16
"So He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.
17 "And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
19 "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
20 "Then He closed the book, and gave it to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
21 "And He began to say to them, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'"
So just how good is the good news?
I admit that this is only part of the good news, there is truly much, much more but this proclamation of the acceptable year of the Lord can only be fully realized when you turn in your own Bible and read the verses that Dr. Luke apparently only quoted a small part of.
My reference Bible references Isaiah 49:8, 9; 61:1, 2
If you are anything like me, you will be greatly encouraged to read those passages and know that here are some of the things Jesus has already accomplished for us! Talk about good news---wow!
