The passage portrays God’s plan and Jesus’ role in it.

1. Who is Jesus?  The Spirit-Anointed Servant Messiah, as prophesied in Isaiah.
2. What has Jesus come to do? To proclaim the arrival of a new epoch of salvation, an era of fulfillment that is tied to his person. Jesus is saying to his hometown audience, “The time that all people faithful to God have been waiting for is now here and it is found in me.”

             (note the “speaking” words!)

• Jesus proclaims good news to the poor
• Jesus proclaims freedom for prisoners
• Jesus proclaims sight to the blind
• Jesus sets the oppressed free
• Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor (the year of Jubilee)

2. How does Jesus do this? Through his death for sin and resurrection
3. Why does Jesus do this? To fulfill Old Testament scripture
4. For whom does Jesus do this? Jews and gentiles alike. There is no ethnocentrism in Messiah’s kingdom.