We've taken a small excursion
from our time in Song of Solomon as we came to that remarkable
verse where the Shulamite, the Bride, the Bride of the Beloved
says, what will you see in the Shulamite? What does the Beloved
see in the Shulamite? What does the Shulamite see in
the Shulamite? It's but the company of two armies,
these whirling forces of two armies. And we saw that all of
God's people, all of God's redeemed spirit indwelt people, have within
them these two natures. And like the Shulamite, it's
often a private struggle. And like the Shulmite, and like
Paul in Romans 7, it's a struggle that's only brought to the Lord's
people. The Lord's people alone have
two natures. And we saw that this is for their
good. The struggles they go through
are for their good. And at the end of Romans 7, Paul
acknowledges, as much as he sees the struggle and as much as he
is thankful to God, he comes to this realisation and this
reality which is in his life, isn't it? He thanks God through
Jesus Christ. And then he says in verse 25,
So then with my mind I myself serve the law of God, but with
the flesh the law of sin. And then what does he immediately
say? There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. The struggles are there, the
sins are there, they are really there, and there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. It's a beautiful consolation
to the saints of God. It's a beautiful consolation
to know that the struggles that we have are the struggles that
all of God's redeemed people, from Abel until the last one
that walks on this planet, are going to have. So much for triumphalistic. Christianity, so much for progressive
sanctification, so much for this growing and growing and growing
to be more holy. As we say so often, as the scriptures
affirm so often, is that to grow in grace is to grow down and
down and down. And to grow in the knowledge
of God is to grow up and up into the knowledge of Him who is our
shield and is our defender. As we saw in Psalm 84, we ask
the Lord and we ask each other when we preach the Gospel that
people might look not to themselves, not to their good deeds and not
to their bad deeds, but they would look to the Lord Jesus. Fix your eyes on Him who is the
author and perfecter of faith. I'd like us to turn in our Bibles
to Luke chapter 4 and look upon Him with this congregation at
Nazareth. What a day this must have been.
There He was. this son of this town, grown
up in this town, what a remarkable privilege Nazareth had. For 25 plus years, God in human
flesh lived in their town. Not a sinful word, not a sinful
action, not a sinful thought. before their eyes. And in Luke
chapter 4, it comes after he has been led by the Spirit, led
by the Spirit into the desert, into the wilderness, and tempted
after 40 days of fasting, and he defeats Satan's temptations. He does it for us. He does it for himself and the
glory of his God. But then he comes back. Satan
departed from him for a season and he returned, in verse 14,
he returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee and there
went out a fame of him through all the region about. He was
the one topic of conversation in all of Israel for three whole
years. And he came to Nazareth where
he'd been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into
the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he'd opened the book,
he found the place where it was written. And then he spoke. This is the only recorded instance
of the Lord Jesus reading publicly in all of the scriptures. What
wonderful words he reads. What amazing providence that
this was the passage that was before them on that day. 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 preach deliverance to the captives and the recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
to preach the acceptable ear of the Lord. We've been talking about the pains that we suffer. It's good
to be reminded, and that's what I'm hoping today will be about,
that we'll see the healing and the recovery and the binding
up and the deliverance and the liberty that our Lord Jesus brings
to those who are downcast in this world. What a remarkable thing he says.
The Lord Jesus, at the beginning of the Gospels and the beginning
of his ministry, you will find, if you look closely, he says
to the people around him, in no uncertain terms, he says,
I am God. I am your Messiah. All of the scriptures point to
me. All of the scriptures are about
me. All the promises of God are yes and amen in me." And they
had three and a half years where he never wavered a minute from
declaring that. He laid a foundation that was
so clear, so unequivocal, that you cannot doubt. And they didn't
doubt. They had no doubt about what
he was claiming for himself. In verse 18, he talks about his
qualification, his qualification for this ministry. He says, the
Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Spirit of the Lord was upon
him at his birth. The Spirit of the Lord was upon
him at his baptism. And in verse 14 we saw that he
returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. He was full of the Holy Spirit
and he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. And now
he has overcome those temptations of Satan. He now begins his work. And he was not only qualified,
but he is commissioned. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because the Lord has anointed me. The Lord has anointed me. The Lord has made me Messiah,
is what he's saying. If you can make it a verb, he's
saying to those people in Nazareth, the Lord has made me the Messiah. I am your Messiah standing before
you. Anointed is to be consecrated,
to be set apart, to be sanctified, to be set apart for sacred purposes
in a particular way. He's anointed of God. He is the Anointed One. In Psalm 89 verse 19, God says of him, I have laid
help upon one that is mighty. I have exalted one chosen out
of the people. I have found David my servant. With my holy oil I have anointed
him. David typified the Lord Jesus. Aaron typified the Lord Jesus
as a priest. As we read in Psalm 84, Behold
our God, our shield. Look upon the face of thine anointed. The Lord Jesus is anointed. But something remarkable the
scriptures say to us, that the whole church, the whole church
is anointed in Him and anointed with Him. We are one with Him. We are united to Him in eternity. We are united to Him in all the
things that pertain to His life. We are united. We are one with
Him. We are his anointed. And he says in Psalm 23, you
prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. You anoint my head with oil,
and my cup runneth over. It was a beautiful ceremony,
that anointing ceremony. They took a ram's horn. They
took a big horn and filled it up with oil. And when they were
anointed, they were covered in oil from head to foot. Beautiful picture of what the
Lord does in his anointing his people. The apostles declared his anointing.
He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, with power, and he went
about doing good, healing all those who were oppressed of the
devil, for God was with him. And God's children, if you turn
to 1 John 2, you'll see that God's children are anointed children. To be a Christian is to be an
anointed one. It's to receive an anointing
from Him, verse 27. But the anointing which you have
received of Him abides, remains in you, and you need not that
any man teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you of
all things and is the truth and is no lie, and even as it has
taught you, you shall abide in him." You see, at the end of the day,
God is fulfilling His promise. He's promised to be the teacher
of His people. He's promised to bring the Spirit
into the lives of His people. He's promised to anoint them. It's anointing that we receive. The true anointing is anointing
that comes from Him. And a true anointing is an anointing
that remains in you. And you will be taught by God,
brothers and sisters. If God does not teach you, you
will not learn the lessons of God. God does appoint teachers
to His Church, but our teaching is to point you to the Lord Jesus,
and to entrust the lessons will be learned as He brings those
lessons into your lives. He's anointed. He's qualified.
The Spirit of the Lord is anointed me, and He is a sent one. and
he sent him. He's anointed me and he's a sent
one. At the end of, halfway through
to verse 1. A sent one is simply an apostle. The Lord Jesus claims to be the
one who chose the apostles, but also remarkably in Hebrews chapter
3 he says, Therefore my holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly
calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession,
Jesus Christ. He was sent by God the Father. He was sent as the Anointed One. He was sent as the Messiah. And
what does the anointing bring? So much talked about anointing. The anointing is the power to
do the things the Lord Jesus did. But what did He do? What
was the focus of His ministry? He came to preach. He came to preach. Three times in these verses He
says that He came to preach. He came to preach the Gospel. He came to preach deliverance. He came to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord. In fact, in the beginning of
verse 1 it means He came to gospelize them. He came to bring them the Gospel. He came to bring them the Gospel
which is the Gospel about Him. We preach what He did. And He, as we see in these verses,
preached who He was and what He Himself performed. It's wonderful, isn't it? We
have the same message as him. He preached himself. We preach
him. We preach the Lord Jesus Christ. He brought the Gospel. He preached
himself. You see, the Gospel is the balm
that you need for every situation in your life. The Gospel is the
answer to all of your soul's troubles, all of your heart's
problems. Everything is bound up in the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus. It's a declaration, isn't it?
It's simply a declaration of who He is and what He achieved. The Gospel is the answer. We
call ourselves, when we began, Shelhaven Gospel Church, because
we exist because of the Gospel. We exist to hear the Gospel. We are here to proclaim the Gospel
to each other. We are raised up to support the
Gospel throughout the world. We're just raised up for that
purpose. Just one purpose, isn't it? One purpose, if God would
allow us to faithfully proclaim the Gospel of His dear and precious
Son, and what He achieved, and what He did, and what He is doing,
and how the Scriptures are perfectly fulfilled in Him, then we can
be at rest, brothers and sisters. cause us to be faithful, faithful
witnesses to His Son. May we say what this book says
about His Son. May we say what all the prophets
said about Him. May we say what all the apostles
said about Him. May we say what the Holy Spirit
and God the Father say about Him. We just bear witness to
what He said. We simply bear witness to who
He is. It is remarkable, isn't it? God has ordained, through the
foolishness of preaching, to save those who are His. The foolishness of preaching. just raising up Him. When He is lifted up, He will
draw all men to Himself. And what does He proclaim? What
does He do in this Gospel? What does this Gospel do? The
Gospel heals the brokenhearted. The Gospel is a proclamation
of deliverance to the captives. proclamation of recovering sight
to the blind, the setting at liberty of them that are bruised. It's a proclamation that there
is an acceptable year of the Lord. He came to proclaim liberty. Just like Israel from Egypt,
And Israel again from Babylon. The sin, the world, and the devil. What a captivity, what a captivity
we brought ourselves into when we fell in our father Adam. People who were made in the image
of God, are poor, they are broken hearted, they are captive, they
are blind, they are bound and they are bruised. And only God's children acknowledge
those things. The world does not see itself
in those ways at all. If you turn in your Bibles to
Psalm 119, You see, like the Roman seven
sinner and like the Shulamite, God's children in this world
are afflicted children. And God's children know that
the hand that brings the brokenheartedness and the poverty and all of the struggles In Psalm
119, verse 75, the Holy Spirit says to us, I know, O Lord, that
thy judgments are right and that thou in faithfulness has afflicted
me. What a remarkable thing to say. The child of God will say that. because he looks to God as the
author of all things. Why? Verse 67 of the same chapter. Before I was afflicted I went
astray, but now I have kept your word. Verse 71 he says, It is
good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn
your statutes." This is just such a constant
theme throughout the scriptures. It's remarkable that we don't
see it more clearly. And it's a constant theme throughout
the scriptures, so that when times of affliction and times
of trouble come upon us, we look in the right place. We look to
the right person. We look to Him and not to ourselves. And we don't look to men and
we don't look necessarily to the circumstances. It's a cause
for us to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus. All through the scriptures,
God describes himself in these ways. In Deuteronomy 32, 39,
he says, See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God
with me. There are no other gods in sight
of this God. There are none. And then he says,
I kill and I make alive, I wound And I feel there is none that
can deliver out of my hand." Job lived the most remarkable
life before God, had the most remarkable trials. And he says,
Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. What amazing correction Job had
to suffer. And yet, he said in chapter 13,
even if he slay me, yet will I trust him. You see, for he makes sore, and
he binds up, and he wounds, and his hands make whole. again and again. It's just all
through the scriptures. He talks of himself in that magnificent
verses in Isaiah 57. He says, thus says, the high
and lofty one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. Then he says,
I dwell in a high and holy place with him. also that is of a contrite
and humble spirit." He makes them contrite. He makes them
humble and then what does he say? To revive the spirit of
the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. He goes on in that same chapter
to say, I've seen His ways and I will heal Him. I will also
lead Him and restore comforts unto Him and to His mourners. Hosea in 6.1 says, Come, let
us return to the Lord, for He has torn and He will heal, He
has smitten, and He will bind us up. Blessed are those, says the Lord
Jesus, who mourn, for they will be comforted. In so many ways
the scriptures are giving us a picture but what it is to live
as spirit indwelt, as anointed people in this world. Again and again we read in the
scriptures these things that when we go through the trials
that they have gone through, and I don't know of all the trials
that are happening in your life, There are obvious ones that we
all see, but there are deep ones which are hidden from the world,
and rightly so. But God sees our hearts and He
knows, He knows the wounds that His beloved ones suffer. and he proportions them perfectly
for our good and perfectly for his glory. You see, he binds
up the broken hearted in Psalm 34, 18. He says, the Lord is
near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. So not only is there a reality
of our feeling crushed, not only is there the reality of our brokenheartedness,
there must, in the lives of God's people, according to the promises
that I've just read out, There must be a commensurate healing. There must be a commensurate
comforting. There must be, in this way of
the Spirit's dealing with His people, there is both the wounding
and the healing. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. He has sent me to preach deliverance
to the captives. What things we are in our flesh
captive to. As we saw in Romans 7, we're
captive to that war that is in our flesh. We are captive, in
a sense, to the entanglements and the enticements of the world. Satan dangles his little baubles
in front of us and they seem extraordinarily appealing. And
the Lord is in the business of taking away those props and those
other things that we cling to. You see, only God's children
know of their captivity. The world proclaims its freedom. Its freedom from any obligation. to the God who made them and
the God who has the right to rule over them. Is that not the
great cry of Western civilization? Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. We've got God out of
the picture and now we're free. We don't have to bother about
the entanglements of His demands upon people to live in holiness
and to regard His presence and to regard His judgments on them. God's children know their captivity
and He proclaims liberty. What great liberty He proclaims. Perfect freedom. No sin No guilt. Nothing between my
Saviour and me. Boldness of access into the course
of God. Perfect communion with Him. What liberty. What eyes we need
to have opened. the recovery of sight to the
blind. This, of course, is the one messianic
miracle. The prophets and the priests
and the kings of old did great and mighty deeds, but there was
one miracle reserved for Messiah, the one precious miracle which
speaks of what He does in the most remarkable way. the recovery
of sight to the blind. There are two necessities, aren't
there, for sight. There is light by which to see,
and there are eyes given to see. What light, what great light
was brought when the Lord Jesus came. No wonder at his birth
the glory of God shone around. There was light from heaven in
chapter 1, verse 77. He says he's come to give the
knowledge. This is Zachariah. praying that
amazing prayer to give the knowledge of salvation to His people by
the remission of their sins. Through the tender mercy of our
God, wherefore, whereby, the day spring, that morning light
from on high has visited us to give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into
the way of peace. In chapter 2 he's described again,
in verse 32, he's a light. A light to lighten the Gentiles
and the glory of thy people Israel. There is in our Adam nature,
isn't it, until the light of the Gospel shines in our hearts,
as 2 Corinthians chapter 4 says, we are captive and blind. So captive and blind, that we
don't know that we're captive and that we think that we see.
We think that we can see such that we can make judgements on
God and people, and we don't realise that Satan, the God of
this world, has blinded the minds of them that do not believe,
lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the
image of God, should shine upon them. And how does it happen? It happens through a sovereign
act of God. For we preach, not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves, your servants for
Jesus' sake, for God. who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God." Where do you see the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God? You see it in the
face of Jesus Christ. He is God's glory. That is a
sight that only God can bring. He comes to preach deliverance. He comes to bring sight. He comes
as the great physician. to heal the broken-hearted. He's close to the broken-hearted
and He heals them, to heal the broken-hearted, to give peace,
the Prince of Peace. He has, as Luke 1.53 said, He's
filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away
empty. He does know how to heal the
brokenhearted, brothers and sisters, and He does. And of course, He
comes as a great Redeemer. He comes to proclaim liberty
to the captives. But He does more than that. He
comes to set at liberty them that are bruised. The prophets
proclaimed liberty, but Christ, who has the power on earth to
forgive sins, came to set at liberty. To set at liberty, it
means the voluntary release of a person over which one has a
legal or actual control. To set, to release voluntarily. freely he forgives on the basis
of grace. To set at liberty means forgiveness,
it means release, it means remission, it means pardon, it means cancellation,
it means passing over. Isn't that wonderful? What a
great picture we have in the Passover of our Saviour's Word. be in Israel. As the Lord revealed
more of himself to his people and to the Egyptians, the oppression
grew and grew and grew. And as the Lord took judgment
upon all the gods of Egypt, the oppression grew and grew. And
then finally we had that great night, that terrifying night. What must it have been like to
be an Israelite that night? There you are, and you take this
lamb, which is obviously representative of the Lord Jesus, and you take
it into your house, and you nurture it, and you care for it for four
days. And then on that night, you kill
that lamb, and you paint the doorposts of your house with
the blood of that lamb, and you dress yourself as ready to flee,
and then you family, eat all of that lamb,
and then that night, that night while you're sheltered in there,
under that blood, living upon that lamb, the avenging angel
of God, the wrath of God comes across that entire land and every
household You see, there's no one. What
a picture of hell. There is absolutely no one in
Egypt who can comfort anyone else. Because all of them, all
of them, are bearing the weight of the agony of losing their
firstborn. And they look outside and their
cattle have died. What a terrible picture. And
as those Israelites came out of their houses in the midst
of that wailing and that terrible despondency, they knew one thing
for sure. They knew one thing for sure. That a Lamb had saved them. And God says that wonderful thing,
doesn't He, brothers and sisters? He says, not when you see the
blood, Not when you feel the power of the blood. Not when
you feel the strength of the blood. What does God say? He
says, when I see the blood. He looks upon his son and he
sees the blood and he says, these can go free. These can go free. My children will go free. They are saved. set at liberty. What a great
redeemer. He sets at liberty those that
are oppressed, those that are overwhelmed. So he doesn't in any of this
hint that there might be the slightest possibility of failure. One of the great declarations
of the Messiah in Isaiah 42 is, He shall not fail. Absolutely everything He purposed
to do, everything He competed to do in eternity is done. It's done. That's what he says
to these people. And then he has this word, this
deep and serious word, an extraordinary word. He says, he came to preach
these remarkable things and he came to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord. There are times of acceptance. There is an acceptable time,
there is an acceptable season. The people of this world, until
God the Holy Spirit moves in their hearts, are insensitive
to their situation and they are blinded. And like Felix before
Paul, As Paul spoke to him about righteousness, the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus, about temperance and judgment to come in Acts
24-25, Felix trembled just for a little while. and answered,
and he said to the apostle, he said to the sent one, he said,
you go your way for this time. And when I have a convenient
season, I'll call for you. Brothers and sisters, how many
conversations have we had with people who say to God, in a convenient time. When it
suits me, leave me alone and in a convenient time I'll call
on you." What a shocking, shocking thing. Felix didn't ever get
to have that time ever again. It's a solemn word, isn't it?
There is an acceptable age. This Gospel age is an acceptable
time. Today, says our God, is the day
of salvation. Lay down your weapons of war. Put up the white flag of surrender. Come to the Lord Jesus. Believe. Believe Him now and be saved. Today is the acceptable time. What you think is your wisdom
needs to be taken away from you. What you think is your righteousness
needs to be stripped from you and be seen to be filthy rags. What you think is your sanctification
needs to be removed. What you think is your redemption,
what you think is what saves you. You see, He is made unto
us according to 1 Corinthians 1.30. He's made unto us of God,
wisdom. He is the wisdom. He is our only
wisdom. He is righteousness and He is
our only righteousness. He is our sanctification and
our only sanctification. He alone is our redemption. What a Saviour. That was his first sermon in
this town. For the rest of his time, he's
known as Jesus of Nazareth. All through the New Testament,
Pilate nails it to his cross. He's known as a man from Nazareth. And he stood up, having proclaimed
those things about the anointed one of God and about the sent
one of God. And then he says, when he'd finished,
He says, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. This day, this day and every
day, brothers and sisters, the scriptures are fulfilled in the
ears of God's people. Can you ever find it wrong? ever
find it wrong talking about him or talking about you or talking
about your circumstances. This scripture is fulfilled. Fulfilled. Perfectly and completely
fulfilled. We can't read it for want of
time. but it's interesting to go through the rest of this chapter
and you'll see what the Anointed One does. The Anointed One is
a preacher and Nazareth rejected him. In fact, when he proclaimed
that salvation is of the Lord, and God is totally sovereign
in all the affairs of salvation, that God is almighty and is no
man's debtor, he can save Naaman, and he can save the Gentile women,
and he can pass by the people of Israel. And he can say to
these people that God's grace is not earned or deserved. See, his Gospel is a Gospel which
is the savour of life unto life and death unto death. And his
Gospel is a Gospel that's proclaimed regardless of the approval of
men. You see, he proclaimed these
things about himself, and what was their response? Verse 29,
And they rose up, and they thrust him out of the city, and led
him unto the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, that
they might cast him down headlong. The response of the people in
his hometown in the presence of Mary and his family was to
take him out and kill him. Such is the response of unregenerate
men to the gospel wherever it has been proclaimed and throughout
time. But look what it says in verse
30. Does it hinder him But he, passing through the midst
of them, he went his way. What a glorious way it is. He
went, what did he do? He went and he kept on preaching. And he healed the demon-possessed
man. And the demon had hurt him not,
verse 35. And he came and he healed Simon's
wife's mother, taken with a great fever, and she was healed instantly
and served. But he came as the anointed one
to preach. Even when there were crowds at
the end of the chapter, he says unto them, I must preach the
kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sent. God's anointed ones preach the
Lord Jesus, preach His glory, preach His salvation, preach
His redemption, His deliverance. They preach His great and glorious
victory. They preach Him on the cross
and they preach Him regardless of the attitudes of men and the
response of men. because God will cause his people
to go his way. We have a glorious gospel. His
people were saved in eternity. They were saved by his activities
on Calvary's hill. They are now viewed by him as
Ephesians says, accepted in the beloved. This is the day of salvation,
brothers and sisters. May the Lord make it so in your
hearts and your souls. Let's pray.