A Year And A Day.

A YEAR AND A DAY.

(1) The Acceptable Year of the Lord (Luke 4:16-21).

This is thought to be earliest record which we have of a synagogue service.

Perhaps Isaiah 61:1-2 was the reading of the day, but Jesus deliberately chose where to end the reading. Luke 4:18-19 stops short of ‘the day of vengeance of our God’ (Isaiah 61:2). If such a thing happened in our churches today, we might see such an omission as political correctness: but in first century Nazareth it was the very epitome of political incorrectness!

‘Surely Jesus realizes that when Messiah comes the enemies of His people must be made to pay,’ reasoned the people. What they failed to recognize was that the Lord was not yet come to fulfil that part of the Messianic agenda.

According to Isaiah 61:1-2, the Spirit anointed the speaker “to announce glad tidings: to heal the broken in heart; to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and the recovery of sight to the blind; to send forth the crushed in deliverance; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).

“The acceptable year of the Lord” is a reference to the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:10). It is a year of release, when indentured servants are restored to their inheritance, families are reunited, and an opportunity is given to start again.

As Jesus sat down to preach, all eyes were upon Him (Luke 4:20). Whatever was He going to say? His voice echoed forth as clear as any Jubilee trumpet: “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21).

Isaiah’s “acceptable year” began when Jesus preached that sermon, which Luke places not long after His baptism. It is the year of the LORD’s favour, and stands for the whole Christian era right through to the coming of the Lord in judgment at the end of the age. What Israel had failed to grasp was that Messiah was first coming to wash away the sins of His people, then at a later date would return to judge: the time in between is a day of opportunity for sinners to repent (2 Corinthians 6:2).

(2) The Day of Vengeance (Isaiah 63:1-6).

This passage is about Jesus. His appearance is sudden, and both wonderful and terrible. His apparel is glorious, but evidently bespattered with blood. He is returning in triumph after doing battle with the enemies of God’s people. Jesus identifies Himself to Isaiah as ‘I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save’ (Isaiah 63:1).

Jesus emphasises that He has “trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me” (Isaiah 63:3). He “looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold” (Isaiah 63:5). We cannot imagine how alone Jesus was in His sufferings and His death, and in all that He had to do to secure our salvation.

On the mount of Transfiguration, Jesus went forward from His disciples, and prayed alone as they slept. Alone He vowed to take that cup of suffering, and to drink it down to the very dregs. Betrayed by a friend, denied by another, deserted by His followers, He bore our sins on the Cross of Calvary. He alone prevailed to open the book of history (Revelation 5:5).

He fought a great spiritual battle, and vanquished the foe. Even death could not hold Him (Acts 2:24), He is risen triumphant from the grave (Matthew 28:6), and led captivity captive (Ephesians 4:8). He holds the keys of death and Hades (Revelation 1:18).

He ascended into heaven, and is even now seated at the right hand of God. And the place of His people today, spiritually, is ‘seated with Him in the heavenlies’ (Ephesians 2:6). Yet here upon the earth there is to be another manifestation of Jesus when He shall return with glory (Mark 13:26) to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42).

The victory has already been won for God’s people at the Cross, but there will remain one more battle. As in Isaiah 63:1-2, John, too, sees Jesus with His ‘vesture dipped in blood’ (Revelation 19:13). And as in Isaiah 63:3 and Isaiah 63:6, John sees Jesus treading ‘the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God’ (Revelation 19:15).

The Lord tells the prophet ‘the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come’ (Isaiah 63:4; cf. Isaiah 61:2). The seeming delay in the Lord’s second coming is a token of His longsuffering, or patience (2 Peter 3:9).

However, the sands of time will eventually pass through the hourglass, and the season of grace will be over. What lies beyond for those who fail to take advantage of the offered salvation is unthinkable (Hebrews 2:3).