Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the book of
Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, chapter 61, Isaiah 61. And the title of the message
is Good News for the Humble. Good News for the Humble. Now,
when our Lord was walking this earth in his public earthly ministry,
he returned to his hometown of Nazareth and he went into the
synagogue. And this is recorded in Luke
chapter 4. And in the synagogue, what they
would do in their worship service, is they'd have the scroll of
the Word of God, a copy of the Word of God. They usually only
had one. Everybody didn't have a Bible back then. And the rabbi,
the leader of the congregation would get up and he would read
from the Word of God. And then they would pray and
he may say a word or two about it. But anyway, when our Lord
returned to his hometown and went into the synagogue, he was
asked to get up and read. People began to understand and
know him because of the miracles that he did. So they asked him
to get up and read from the scripture. And this is the scripture he
turned to in Isaiah 61. And listen to what it says. He
says, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. because the Lord
hath anointed me to preach good tidings, or good news, unto the
meek, or the humble. That's why I titled this message,
Good News for the Humble. So he had anointed me to preach
good tidings unto the meek, He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison
to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn."
And this is what he read. And everybody got silent, and
he stood up and he said, today, this prophecy is fulfilled before
your very eyes. And what was he saying there
in Luke 4? He was telling them that this is talking about him,
this Isaiah 61. And I'm gonna read more through
this chapter. But these verses that the Lord
read to the synagogue of his day, he told them, this is fulfilled
before, I am that Messiah, that's what he was saying. The Messiah
that Isaiah prophesied of here in Isaiah 61. And he realized
that they didn't really accept this, and he went on to talk
about how God is sovereign in salvation. And this whole chapter
here, it talks out also about God has a chosen people, not
only among the Jews, but among the Gentiles. And he talks about
the woman who Christ healed that was a Gentile when there were
many widows in in Israel, he talks about Naaman the leper,
how there were many lepers, but God saved a Gentile, and that
made them angry, and they took him outside, they were gonna
throw him over a cliff, but he just walked on through them.
It wasn't his time to die, and that wasn't his way to die. But
this is what he read, the Spirit of the Lord God is all upon me.
Christ is the second person of the Trinity, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, and he in his humanity, God manifest in the flesh had
the full measure of the Holy Spirit and this is what He said,
the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath
anointed me, the Lord hath appointed Him before the foundation of
the world and anointed Him to preach good tidings, good news
unto the meek, the humble. Now, who are the humble? Well,
first of all, let me make clear. None of us are humble by nature,
that is before God. Now, you know there's people
we know in the world, even who are not believers, who appear
humble to other people as among men, but none of us by nature
before God are humble. That is, we are not meek. We're
so full of pride. And that pride is shown when
any person born of Adam, any sinner, thinks that he can make
the difference between being saved and being lost. because
you can't make the difference. I can't make the difference.
Think about it this way. How would you make the difference?
Well, some people say you make the difference by trying to be
a good person. My friend, that's not humility,
that's pride. The Bible says, there's none
good, no, not one. Whenever a person thinks that
they can attain righteousness, by their efforts in religion,
by sincerity, or by whatever they think works. That's pride,
that's not humility. There's none righteous, no not
one. You see that? You see, we fell
in Adam, by Adam, into a state of spiritual death, darkness,
and depravity. And when we're born into this
world, We're born with a sinful human nature that does not desire
or want the true things of the living God and His glory. We
may want salvation and we may search in religion to find it,
but we want it our way, not God's way. God's way is the way of
grace that shows us that in ourselves we cannot earn or deserve the
least of God's blessings. And I'll tell you one of Satan's
most subtle ways of showing forth the pride of man. People have
changed the scripture so much and they've watered down the
gospel so much today. They'll tell you readily that
God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, now you make the
difference by your believing and your faith and all that.
The thing about it is, if God left us to ourselves, we would
never believe. We don't have faith by nature.
Faith is not natural to us. Over in 1 Corinthians 2, verse
14, which I quote all the time, it says, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God. Neither can he know them,
for they're spiritually discerned. Faith is the gift of God. If I have faith, I can take no
pride in that. that I believed and others didn't?
No, I didn't make the difference between saved and lost. God did,
and He did it before the foundation of the world. Now that's humbling. God chose me before the world
began and gave me to Christ. Now why did He choose me? I don't
know, it's for His glory. It wasn't because of anything
that He foresaw that I would do. That's pride. If you think
that there are people in hell for whom Christ died and the
only reason you're saved is because you separated yourself from them
by accepting Him or believing in Him, that's pride. Now, do
God's people accept Christ and believe in Him? Yes, but not
by their own free will because the will is in bondage to our
nature, our sin. And the Bible says, there's none
that seeketh after God. No, not one. I sought the Lord,
but not because of my goodness or my bent, it was because He
first sought me. He chose me, sent His Son to
redeem me. The Bible says in John 6, 44,
that no man can come to me except the Father, which has sent me,
draw him. and I'll raise him up at the
last day. Christ said before that in verse 37, he said, all
that the father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh
to me, I will in no wise cast out. So understand that. If you're truly saved, you're
not the one that made the difference. Christ made the difference. That's
it. And that's a humbling thought.
And here's another thing. If I can say it this way, that
there's not one blessing of salvation and eternal life and glory that
I have, all right, that I have because I earned it or deserved
it. No, sir. If I ever receive from
God what I've earned or deserve, it would be death and hell. You
see, salvation and mercy and God's unconditional love is not
about what you and I deserve. It's what God sovereignly chooses
to do. And he makes the difference.
He said, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. I'll
be gracious to whom I will be gracious. And he told Moses,
that's my glory. You understand this. Now he says,
the Lord hath anointed me to preach good news unto the meek. Why is it good news only to the
meek? Because it's only the meek, the humble, that it's good news
too. If I preach to you the truth
of God in all the Bible, what it says about God, if God has
made you humble, and see, that's again now, we're not humble by
nature, we're proud by nature. Again, and that's shown forth,
if you think you made the difference, that's pride. But if God makes
us humble by the power of the Spirit who convicts us of our
sin and convicts us of righteousness and judgment, the gospel then
is good news to us. But it's only good news to the
humble. And it takes God to make us humble, to bring us down.
down, down, down. Remember old Zacchaeus, he was
up in a tree. Christ walked by and He said,
Zacchaeus come down. Well that's what the Holy Spirit
does when He shows us and convicts us of our sin. He brings us down,
down into the dust and when that happens That gospel, it becomes
the greatest news we ever heard. Lord, save me, I cannot save
myself. Lord, give me faith to believe,
I don't have it in myself. For by grace are you saved, through
faith, that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. Not of
works, lest any man should boast, for we are his workmanship. created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, not because of, but unto good
works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. Even our good work, we can't
even take pride in our good works because they're the ordination
and the work and the power and the goodness of God. They're
fruit unto God and they're to the praise of his glory and not
ourselves. And that's the key. It's for
the glory of God. And He brings us down and He
humbles us. That's good tidings, that's good
news. Look at verse one again. It says,
He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. When the Spirit
brings us down off of our pride, He breaks our hearts. He gives
us a new heart. Jeremiah in Jeremiah 17 said,
the heart is desperately wicked. The heart of man, the natural
heart, desperately wicked, evil. Who can know it? We can't even
know our own hearts because we all think we're better than we
are. And here's another test of that. We all think we are
saved before we are saved until we are saved. Do you understand
that? I thought I was saved a long
time before I was actually saved by the grace of God. Because
in my false religion, which I called Christianity, and called it grace,
I thought I made the difference. But this is what happened. He
broke my heart. He showed me what I am. I'm a
sinner, and I don't deserve anything but death and hell. And I cannot
save myself. And I didn't even desire the
things of God. until He changed my heart, till
He birthed me again, the new birth, and gave me a new life,
a new spirit, a new heart. That's spoken of in Ezekiel 36
and Jeremiah 31. So I'll give them a new heart,
a new spirit I'll put within them. But what happens when He
breaks our heart? He binds us up. He binds us up
with His sovereign grace, His sovereign mercy, and His sovereign
love, and His power. And He binds us up for healing. Look at verse, look on it. He
says, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound. Before God, the Holy Spirit
humbles us, brings us down, and breaks our hearts. and binds
us up with the grace and the mercy and the love of God, we're
in a spiritual prison. And that spiritual prison is
our own depraved, even religion now, human nature. And we can't
rise above it. We can't get out of that prison
because we don't want to. If you have a desire to really
believe God, the God of this book, It's because God has given
you that desire and set you free. Paul speaks of that in the book
of Galatians in chapter five and verse one, where he says,
stand fast in the liberty where with Christ have made us free,
set us free. And don't be entangled again
with the yoke of bondage. You know what that bondage, that
jailhouse is? It's salvation by the works and
the wills of men. That'll keep you in jail spiritually. in prison, because if that's
what you desire, you'll never hear the gospel as the good news
that it is. That salvation's of the Lord,
not of you, not of me. It's conditioned on Christ, not
on you and not on me. Christ fulfilled all the conditions
to secure the complete salvation of all whom the Father gave to
him before the world began, and all for whom he died and was
buried and arose again the third day. He goes on in verse two
here as Isaiah pointing towards Christ, to Christ, to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our
God to comfort all that mourn. The acceptable year of the Lord,
that's the year that God has appointed first and foremost
to send his son into the world. Galatians 4 verse 4 says that
in the fullness of the time God sent forth his son made of a
woman, that's his humanity, made under the law, that's our salvation
conditioned on him to redeem them that were under the law.
And you remember Christ, he stood in that synagogue and he said
today this prophecy is fulfilled before your very eyes. You're
looking at the Messiah if you're looking at Jesus of Nazareth.
So the acceptable year of the Lord, the day of vengeance of
our God, the day that God gets vengeance on justice satisfied
by Christ for his people. See, that's what salvation is
all about. How God can be just to justify the ungodly. How can
God be both a loving, merciful father, as well as a righteous,
truthful judge? He has to be both. He's gotta
be both a just God and a savior. How can he do both? Only by the
blood of Jesus Christ. Only by Christ's righteousness
imputed, charged, accounted to his people. And so when we see
that, he gives to comfort all that mourn. You know, when Christ
was on his way to the cross, going down the streets of Jerusalem,
he noticed some women crying. And he turned to him, he said,
don't cry for me. Cry for yourselves and your children. But we do
mourn. But think about it. Out of that
mourning comes joy. Because salvation, look at verse
three of Isaiah 61. To appoint unto them that mourn
in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes. Ashes speaks of death. Beauty speaks of life. Ashes
speaks of sin and depravity. Beauty speaks of righteousness
and mercy. And that's what we get in Christ. He gives unto us beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning. Rejoice in the Lord. Again, I
say rejoice. In Philippians chapter three,
Verse three, Paul writes, for we are the circumcision, that's
spiritually circumcised, the new birth, we're born again.
We worship God in truth and in spirit and rejoice in Christ
Jesus. That means we boast in Christ
and have no confidence in the flesh. So here he gives us joy,
happiness for our mourning. looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. And he says, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness. Praise God from whom all blessings
flow. Praise him, praise him. That's
what we do as we look to Christ and worship God, that they might
be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that
he might be glorified. His people are called trees of
righteousness. And how did they become trees
of righteousness? Because in ourselves, we're not
righteous. In ourselves, we're sinners, even though we're sinners
saved by grace. Well, our righteousness is Christ,
the merits of His obedience unto death as our surety, our substitute,
our redeemer. I stand before God, not in my
own works, but in His work. You see, God's gonna judge the
world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, in
that he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead. I must be righteous to enter
heaven's glory. I have no righteousness by my
works, but I do have righteousness because Christ has made me so
by imputing His righteousness, the merits of His obedience unto
death and resurrection to me. Now, what does that mean? It
means He charged the merit of His work unto me. And that's
a very important concept. God does not impute or charge
sin to me. Who shall anything to the charge
of God's elect? It's God that justifies. David
said in Psalm 32, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth
not iniquity. But God has imputed righteousness
unto me. Romans four and verse six. The
blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth charges, accounted
righteousness without works. And that's the righteousness
of Christ. So I'm planted by the Lord. I didn't plant myself.
See, that's what people who think that they make the difference
between saved and lost, they think they plant themselves.
Because they don't think much of Christ's death or his blood. You say, well, what do you mean
preach? Well, they'll tell you multitudes are in hell for whom
Christ died. Hell anyway. See, they don't
think much of it. They don't think anything of
it, really. They count it an unholy thing. And it's all this
that he might be glorified. Salvation is to the praise of
God's glory. Christ is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, redemption, that he that gloryeth,
let him glory in the Lord. Salvation does not give us any
room to glory. That's the good news for the
humble, the meek. See? Paul wrote in Galatians
6, 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross, except
in the person and work of Christ. for whom I've suffered all things.
And he says in Philippians three, do count them but done that I
may win him and be found in his righteousness. Well, the rest
of this chapter describes the future blessings that will come
upon God's elect, both Jew and Gentile. And he tells them, look
at verse nine, I won't read the whole chapter, but he says, their
seed shall be known among the Gentiles. and their offspring
among the people, and all that see them shall acknowledge them,
that they are the seed which the Lord has blessed." The seed
there speaks of the offspring of Christ. Isaiah 53 says, he
shall see his seed and be satisfied. What does that mean? That means
all whom God the Father gave to him in sovereign electing
grace before the world began, all whose names were written
in the Lamb's Book of Life, that Lamb slain, and all whom Christ
came to save, all that the Father giveth me, He said, died on that
cross, was buried in a rose again, all of them, they're His seed,
they shall be saved. They're the elect of God. They're
His sheep. The Good Shepherd gives His life
for the sheep. And He says in verse 10, I will
greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my
God, for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, all
blessing, and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.
That's our justification before God. As a bridegroom decketh
himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with
her jewels. The marriage union between Christ
and his church. And that's who he shed his blood
for. he redeemed his people from their
sins. And he says in verse 11, for
as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth
the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord
God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before
all the nations. You see, God has a people out
of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. They're the elect
of God. Now, election is not preached
to shut you out. Because when we preach the election,
the elect of God, we're talking about the fact that God does
save his people. And so don't look at that and
say, well, doesn't matter what I do, if I'm not one of his elect,
I could seek him and plead with him and want his way of salvation,
but he wouldn't give it to me. That's not true. because anybody
who's one of God's elect, at some point in time, the Spirit's
gonna bring you under the gospel, calls you to seek the Lord and
give you life and faith to believe. That's the way it works. Who
are the elect? They're those who believe in
Christ and trust in Him and plead His blood and righteousness alone
for all of salvation. And that's good news to the humble,
to those whom God has brought down off their pride. and brought
them to Christ. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
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today and may the Lord be with you.