Bible Study
The Matchless Message
Don’t argue – shine! You cannot conquer darkness by arguing with it. Just switch the light on. The Gospel is power, power for light. Preach it. Then you are plugged in, and the light comes on. God’s power lines draw current from Calvary, from the Resurrection, and from the Throne: “The gospel of Christ … is the power of God,” wrote the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:16. He knew. He proved it. The world in his day could not have been worse. It was cruel, corrupt, and cynical. Yet the Gospel changed it, and it can do the same again today.
How to let the power-Gospel loose on the world
One preacher told me that he wanted a transformer to reduce the emotional appeal of the Gospel, to turn the message from high voltage to low voltage. But converting sinners requires full Gospel power. Preach to convict and convert. Your job is not to entertain, not to make people smile and go home feeling cozy. Salvation is not soothing syrup. Save souls, not stroke them! Smiling happiness will follow.
Read about Philip the evangelist meeting the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8). The Ethiopian “had charge of all [the queen’s] treasury”. He was a man of business, with no time for small talk. Philip did not bother to ask what his needs were, he knew exactly what his needs were – the eunuch needed Christ. Salvation is everyone’s need, and so Philip immediately “preached Jesus to him” (Acts 8:35).
Jesus is the Beginning and the End of every Gospel sermon, the Alpha and the Omega of all witness. We are not doctrine mongers. We are not religion pushers. We are not enthusiasts. We are witnesses to Christ. He is the message.
What did Jesus preach?
He preached about himself. On the Emmaus road, walking with Cleopas and a friend, he explained to them, going throughout the Scriptures, “the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). All his teaching goes back to himself. Take one instance, for example. After he had left Nazareth and begun his wonderful ministry, the Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus returned one day and went into the synagogue. For 20 years he had attended that very synagogue faithfully every week. The custom was to allow men who were known, to read the Scriptures, and perhaps comment on them afterward. Naturally, when Jesus was present at the synagogue again, he was invited to do this.
The Gospel message is found in the Old Testament. In fact, the Old Testament is full of the Gospel. Luke tells us that Jesus read from Isaiah 61: 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 and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19) Nobody in the synagogue would have thought too much about that. They knew the words by heart, and these words had already been read for 800 years. The scroll of the Scripture was handed back. The synagogue leader took it with great reverence, kissed it, and put it away – to be forgotten until the next week. But, suddenly, that scroll seemed to become a stick of dynamite. Jesus told them that the prophecy concerned him. That quickly awakened the drowsy congregation. There are seven distinct statements in that verse and they all apply to him, as well as to the present.
“Today,” he dared to announce, “this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Thus he declared himself to be the Anointed One, the Christ, the One to perform all those promised exploits.
The acceptable year
The first six statements can be summed up in the last one, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” That “acceptable year” is actually the Jubilee year. The word “Jubilee” is a hebrew word. The concept was God’s idea. The Jubilee was instituted to give everybody a holiday for a year, to set free all bondservants and to cancel all debts.
Unfortunately, it appears that the Jubilee trumpet was never blown. The nation had never had a sabbatical year, and that was a failure which God held against them. The Lord would have been delighted with such gladness – God’s style is to promote happiness. Even though the country did not celebrate the Jubilee year, God meant to have it. His Jubilee would be far greater than Moses’, as we shall see. The Jubilee of Moses is described in Leviticus 25:8-17: Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month … and you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you … you shall not oppress one another … for I am the Lord your God.
Proclaim liberty!
Do not preach for effects, for pulpit display, or to charm, excite, or scare people. Do not preach to calm them down. You can preach for all kinds of effects, but Jesus simply announced liberty. That day in the synagogue, he proclaimed the start of the Jubilee! He showed them what a true Jubilee would be – deliverance! It would be a Jubilee, not merely for Israel, but for the whole world. A Jubilee for people like the foreigners he mentioned – Naaman, the Syrian leper, and the widow of Zarephath.
The synagogue congregation marveled at this new teaching. They could not imagine the Shepherd of Israel with foreign sheep and were lost in this unfamiliar landscape of Christ’s prospects for the entire world. The world he loved was too big for them. Their fears were roused, and murderous passions were ignited; feelings, which are never far from the surface of man’s emotions. Jesus’ sermon certainly produced a response – the members of the congregation attempted to throw him over a precipice! Yet, his message was wonderful – freedom, deliverance, healing and no debts! But whatever the reaction, Jesus preached his Gospel. So must we.
Debt in those days was tragic. Fathers and their families became slaves and could never get free. Only the Jubilee could release them. The debtors could go home. If anyone did not go home, it was his own fault. The law said, “Go!” Any slave, following the Jubilee, was a slave by his own choice.
Jesus Christ has proclaimed the Jubilee for the whole human race. All that Israel knew about Jubilees now became only a poor image of the real Jubilee of the kingdom of God. Lives set free, sins’ debts wiped out, deliverance for spirit, soul, and body. There are no sweating slaves in that Kingdom. No fetters. Nobody devil-driven. Hallelujah! What a Jubilee! Isaiah describes it: To give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness … They shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities … eat the riches of the Gentiles … Everlasting joy shall be theirs … no longer be termed Forsaken … Salvation is coming … and they shall call them The Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord. (Isaiah 61 and 62) In Nazareth, the Lord turned these old Scriptures into a royal proclamation of a new dispensation. He announced an amnesty for all prisoners of the devil. “He led captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8). “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” explains Paul in Romans 6:14, because, “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” (Galatians 4:4-5).
The jubilee is now
This is “the acceptable year of the Lord.” High technology has not made deliverance unnecessary. In every nation, the enslaved abound – slaves to every contemptible habit, slaves to fear, slaves to doubt, slaves to depression. The devil never lets anyone out on parole. Everywhere people are failure-prone, sin‑prone, morally defective, spiritually bound. How ridiculous. The Jubilee trumpet has already sounded. The slaves have been freed.
Preach it! People have forgotten it. They have forgotten that Christ has come. This is not the pre-Christian era. We are not waiting for Christ to come and conquer. The war is over. Freedom is ours. Jesus opened the kingdom of liberty and blew the trumpet of emancipation when he cried on the Cross, “It is finished!”
People who should know better are calling this the “post‑Christian” era. As if the work of Christ was only for a past age! That certainly is not true. Christ opened prison doors forever, not just for a certain period in the past. The work of Jesus cannot be exhausted or undone. It is the greatest redemptive force at work on earth today. Never again can prison doors be bolted on human beings. When Jesus opens a door, no man can shut it. “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). So why do millions needlessly languish in the devil’s concentration camp?
Today is the day of pardon
The Conqueror has crashed through the gates, relief has arrived. The most famous escape artist of all was Houdini, a show business notable. Police would lock him up in a cell and, as they walked away, he would follow them – already loose within seconds. Except once. Half an hour went by and Houdini still was fuming over the lock. Then a policeman came and simply pushed the door open. The door had never been locked! Houdini was fooled trying to unlock a door which had already been unlocked.
Christ has gone right through the castle of Giant Despair. He has the keys of death and hell, and he has opened the gates. So why are millions sweating, trying every trick to get out of their evil habits and bondages? They join new cults or old heathen religions, hear new theories, go to psychiatrists. But why? Jesus sets men free. He does it all the time.
A proclamation of deliverance
That is the Gospel! You do not preach about it, or offer its contents for discussion. The Gospel is not a discussion point. It is a proclamation of deliverance. Dialogue? The Gospel is not open to modification. It is mandatory, a royal and divine edict. Some systems and theories of deliverance are bondages in themselves, full of lifelong duties and demands. Only Jesus saves.
I remember a man who told me that he also was a “spiritual counselor.” However, he did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, nor that the Bible is the Word of God. I wondered, therefore, how this “counselor” counseled anybody. “Do they come to you, and then go away with broken hearts?” I asked. “Oh no,” he assured me, “I just calm them down.” I looked him in the eye and said, “Mister, a man on a sinking ship needs more than a tranquilizer. Don’t calm him down. He is going down already. When Jesus comes to a man in a shipwreck, he doesn’t throw him a Valium pill and say, ‘Perish in peace.’ he reaches down his nail-scarred Hand, grips him, lifts him, and says to him, ‘Because I live, you will live also’” (John 14:19).
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that must be preached. Jesus is the Savior of our world. This message is life, peace, and health for spirit, soul, and body.
Excerpt from ‘Evangelism by Fire’ by Reinhard Bonnke
