Pastor's Podium: Jubilee Preaching

By Pastor Harold Warner

It was a no-brainer from the start. The year 2023 marks the Golden Anniversary of Door Church Tucson. Clearly, this milestone would flavor much our plans for the year, and so the theme resonated instantly: Fifty Years of Celebrating and Proclaiming the Good News!

To be exact, our first service was December 16, 1973.

To be biblically correct, this would be our Jubilee Year, a year dedicated to the Lord.

Even though there is no record to show the Jews ever celebrated or embraced God’s outline for the Year of Jubilee in their cultural and spiritual life, Leviticus chapter 25 reveals the fascinating, purposeful, and illuminating history attached to it.

Every seven years was a Sabbath year. The Year of Jubilee was the culmination of seven Sabbath years. The 50th year was to be a year of redemption: “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; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family” (Leviticus 25:10).
The Year of Jubilee was never embraced and celebrated by the Jews because it could only be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Harold Warner

We see a glimpse of Jubilee in His official mission statement delivered in His own hometown: “And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor may also be translated, “to announce the time when the Lord will show kindness to His people.” This passage foreshadowed Jesus as our Jubilee!

He is the Lord of Second Chances who provides freedom and redemption to all who would come and surrender their lives to Him. He forgives and restores all that sin has damaged.

This passage reminds us that our purpose is to know Him and to make Him known.

One pastor said, “In my pastoral experience I have observed that the longer a person is a Christian, the less evangelistic he tends to be. This is obviously not a mark of growth or Christ-likeness, but of spiritual stagnancy.” I believe that the remedy for this malady is to focus on the magnificent news that is ours!

I’m interested that revival has become newsworthy, given all the news reports on the Asbury University outpouring in Wilmore, Kentucky and on the other college campuses that have produced various knockoffs.

How fortuitous that this outpouring coincided with the release of the unexpected box office hit, The Jesus Revolution, a film which describes the times in which I came to Christ – and for me and so many others, things have never been the same.

I rejoice in these kinds of reports. They give me hope that God can do it again. He can pour out His Spirit just like He did in the Jesus People Movement. 

Taken alone, each factor may not amount to much, but when taken all together, it is exciting to anticipate what they are pointing toward.

It reminds me of Elijah sending his servant up to the top of Mount Carmel seven times, asking him to tell him what he saw. Six times, the servant saw nothing. But on the seventh trip, he reported, “There is a cloud, as small as a man’s hand, rising out of the sea” (1 Kings 18:44).

With that news, Elijah shouted, “We need to get moving because a downpour is going to come!”  The tendency of so many Christians, when these outpourings occur, is to be hyper-critical. Instead of rejoicing over what these events portend, they try to pick them apart.

I do allow, however, that what has been conspicuous by its absence in the Asbury outpouring is any kind of preaching. There has been a lot of singing and worship, and I love to do both.

People are praying, repenting, and taking their relationship with Jesus seriously, and that certainly needs to happen.

But… no preaching?

Matthew tells us of the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry: “From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 4:17).

Luke tells us that Jesus taught in all their synagogues, and at Nazareth He read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim (preach) good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).

When John the Baptist was in prison and his faith briefly faltered, he sent his servants to ask Jesus, “Are you the One?” Jesus sends them back to tell John about “all you have seen and heard, the miraculous works,” and then, to accentuate, He reminded him, “and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Luke 7:22).

The last words of the Book of Acts are: preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is why I have a hard time labeling something a revival when there is no Gospel message being preached. I am not being critical; I am making an important distinction.

The Apostle Paul made this same distinction very plain: “Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21).

We are in the news business; expressly, the Good News business.

The English word Gospel comes from the Anglo-Saxon godspell, which means glad tidings.

The meaning of the Greek word is good message. The Gospel is the Good News because it contains the exceedingly wonderful message of God’s redemption of sinful humanity through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

The Gospel is the heart, the central core of Christian preaching.

Jerry Bridges wrote, “The Gospel is not only the most important message of history; it is the only essential message in all of history!”

Let me make a few key observations about the preaching of Jesus, or Jubilee Preaching.

First, Jubilee Preaching is Christ-centered. Jesus preached Himself. Luke 4:20 tells us that “the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.” Good preaching always focuses people’s eyes on Jesus.

Second, Jubilee Preaching is application oriented. Jesus did not just get up in front of the congregation for the dissemination of information. As He said in verse 21, “Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The answer was right there before them. The question was what were they going to do with it?

Jubilee Preaching is also grace empowered. Verse 22 says that “all… marveled at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth.”

Finally, Jubilee Preaching is aimed directly and revealingly at the human condition. It is spelled out so beautifully in Isaiah’s prophecy that Jesus read from and personified: He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted.

You can feel it sometimes. We live in such a fallen world filled with broken people. The emphasis on individualism has simply contributed to the well-chronicled epidemic of loneliness. Jesus was sent to “proclaim liberty to the captives.” What Good News for anyone living in any kind of bondage: you can be free!

In that same proclamation is “recovery of sight to the blind.” The depth to which the devil has blinded the minds of them that believe not goes beyond our natural comprehension.

Creation’s miracle, Let there be light! is mirrored in the Good News of Jesus Christ. “For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could now know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Finally, Jesus is anointed to “set at liberty those who are oppressed.” This speaks of people who have been crushed and bruised by life; by other people. The Good News is that you can be healed and overcome these things.

If there was ever a time to recommit ourselves to the Celebration and Proclamation of the Good News, it is now. On our 50th anniversary, we don’t have to go searching for some new gimmick to make us relevant.

Pastor Harold and Mona Warner

We need to take up with renewed vigor and confidence the telling of the Old, Old Story.

For me, having been a pastor for most of my adult life, here is the stuff nightmares are made of:  I’ve thought how awful it would be if someone who’s been gone from the church for 15, 20, 25 years has an encounter with God and returns – only to find that we’ve changed.

That somehow we are preaching a different Jesus; possessing another spirit; ministering a different Gospel. Lord, help us and keep us on track, doing Your will and proclaiming the Good News of our Jubilee!

How is this track record of consistency possible? Certainly not because of our own wits or our own strength. Only by God’s grace.

This is why the Good News of the Jubilee proclamation in Luke chapter 4 is prefaced by this declaration: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon because He has anointed me.”

God’s commands and callings always carry with them His anointing and enabling. Do we have biblical grounds to pray for a Jubilee anointing in our church’s 50th year? I believe so.

Remember, the Year of Jubilee follows seven cycles of seven Sabbath years. Psalm 92 is titled A Song for the Sabbath Day. Psalm 92:10 acknowledges, “You have made me as strong as a wild ox, I have been anointed with fresh oil.”

My prayer for my life and marriage, for our church and the families represented, and for our baby churches around the world is Lord, anoint us with fresh oil, that we might truly celebrate and proclaim the Good News.

I leave you with the words of an old hymn that captures the essence of this prayer:

Come, Holy Spirit! Fall afresh on me! Fill me with Your power! Satisfy my need!

Only You can make me whole; Give me strength to make me grow!

Come, Holy Spirit! Fall afresh on me!