Our relationship with the word of God
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).
As Jesus emerged from the waters of baptism at the end of Matthew 3, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on Him. Then God the Father speaks from heaven, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (v. 17). We have a wonderful glimpse of the Trinity at the beginning of the Lord Jesus’ public ministry. In the next chapter, the Lord is led by the Holy Spirit, not to meet the needs of those whose lives He would transform, but to meet the enemy of our souls and confront his power and deception. Satan attacks the Lord as he attacked our first parents by doubting what God said, “If You are the Son of God…” By reference to the word of God, the Lord repels every attempt of Satan to question His Person, until finally Satan had to walk away, defeated. The Lord teaches us about the power of God’s word to resist the devil, the world and the flesh. The Son of God is the Word: as the Son of Man, He had the word of God in His heart.
In Luke 4, He returned in the power of the Spirit to begin His Galilean ministry. He visits Nazareth where He had been brought up. His custom was to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath day to hear God’s word – what grace! On this occasion, He stood up to read, and He was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He could have recited the prophet’s writings by heart without hesitation or stumbling, for He breathed those words. But He patiently unrolls the scroll to find the place He wanted to read:
“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…” (v. 18).
Then He rolled up the scroll. (The Lord conveys to us a respect for the Holy Scriptures and how we should handle and read them.) In doing so, He caused every eye to be fixed on Him before He began to expound God’s word.
His expounding of the word of God, at the start of His ministry, was consistent with how He taught His disciples about the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms in Luke 24: 27 and 44-45, at the end of His ministry on earth. He did not focus on creation or the blessings and failures of the patriarchs and Israel. He spoke of Himself against the background of that history. In Nazareth, He was rejected; in Emmaus, the disciples’ hearts burned; and in Jerusalem, their spiritual understanding was opened.
It should never be a struggle or a weary duty to open the pages of the Bible. We can find a spiritual oasis in one verse of Scripture, and single words can generate both worship and service. Scripture protects us from sin. It heals us when we are injured. It guides when we are lost. It feeds us when we are hungry and comforts us when we sorrow. Above all, it brings us to the feet of the Saviour to learn of Him and find peace and the power to trust and follow Him. As at the beginning of each day the children of Israel found manna, we need to take that morning journey and allow the Lord to break the bread of life and interpret His word to our hearts. We need to start every new day, with all that lies before us, in the presence of our living Saviour, and with burning hearts and clear minds follow Him.
