Holy Boldness

(21) And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In this passage, Jesus goes to the synagogue, as was His custom, and reads a portion of scripture from the scroll of Isaiah, a messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 61. Jesus then boldly asserted that the passage was finding its fulfillment through His ministry. In reading this passage and applying it to Himself Jesus did several things. 1. First of all and typically, Jesus found His identity in the context of the prophetic destiny of Israel. Jesus was a Jew and felt His first obligation was to His own people. He found His own story foretold and initiated in the pages of the Old Tes tament Scriptures. He was the fulfillment of prophetic hope long anticipated by many in the nation. 2. Jesus chose to read from among the Messianic passages of Isa iah. This set His ministry in the heart of the most provocative prophetic passages of the entire Old Testament. Furthermore, Isaiah 61 is the last of the Messianic passages of Isaiah and serves as the culmination of them all. 3. Jesus also did something he rarely did and that was publicly declare His ministry as the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy. This was not his normal way. He usually refer enced himself only casually or not at all. But this time He was explicit. He was purposely provocative in His hometown. It almost felt like He wanted to provoke controversy. Why? Because He had to shake His relatives hard because familiarity dulls people’s ears from hearing and observing the truth. 4. Messiah means “anointed one” which refers to someone under the influence of the Spirit of God. Jesus declared himself to be one who lived under the influence of God’s Spirit. Once again, Jesus revealed himself to be one who was under author ity. In this case, He was submitted to the prophetic word over His life. 5. The announcement that Jesus was fulfilling a critical Old Tes tament prophecy represented an announcement of the emer gence of the Kingdom of God in history. His words signaled a transition from prophetic promise to apostolic reality. This

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