I pray that the Lord would help
us and bless us as we turn together to his holy and precious word
of truth for our instruction. The word that's upon my spirit
you'll find in chapter 61 of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 61 and
the first three verses. The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek. He has 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, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might
be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that
he might be glorified. What we have in this precious
book, the Bible, is a prophecy which was of relevance five or
six hundred years before Christ, talking first of all about the
restoration of Jerusalem and how they were going to be restored
and rebuilt out of the rubble that was going to take place. Jerusalem at the time of Isaiah's
writing was still intact. As far as we know, Hezekiah was
still on the throne and it was another hundred years before
they were going to be taken into captivity. But here in God's
word is a message that was relevant all those years ago, it was relevant
when the Lord Jesus came into the world, and it is relevant
still today. And what we should look at in
God's Word, when we come to the Bible, what you will find is
that here is a message from God who takes pity on mankind and
sees mankind in all the things that distress us and comes with
a message and shows us what our God, what our Jesus, what our
Savior is able to do to deliver us and his people out of impossible
circumstances and God's word is made of words and obviously
and yet what it does is and there's no pictures in it there's no
illustrations but the words We take into our imaginations, in
our thoughts, and we can see that by the Holy Spirit, God
is able to show us that these things are applicable to us.
That in the circumstances that the people that are being written
about in God's Word, and how they were feeling and how they
were delivered. This is how you and I can realize
that we, in the similar circumstances, God is able to help us too. Because
although we live in two and a half thousand years after this was
written, human Nature is no different. We all have the same troubles,
we have the same worries, we have the same anxieties, we have
the same aspirations, we have the same hopes, we have the same
things that we long for. And so the word of God is so
relevant to each one here. Every single one of us has anxieties
and hopes and concerns. And so it was all these years
ago with these people that there was this prophecy that they were
going to be taken into captivity, that Jerusalem was going to be
razed to the ground and just be a waste city as it says there
in verse 4. And we see here that Judah was
going to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians, by Nebuchadnezzar,
and their land was going to be razed to the ground. There was
going to be nothing left. They were going to have to serve
Nebuchadnezzar, they were told, for 70 years. They weren't going
to be able to worship in a temple. There was no temple. They won't
be able to keep any of their sacrifices and various other
things that they used to be doing in the temple. But they were
going to start to learn to live not by sight, not by being worshipping
God in sight of the temple, but to be able to see that the God
that is there, or was there in the temple, is not just the God
of the temple, this is the God of the earth, this is the Lord
God Almighty, this is the God that is from the east to the
west, there is nowhere where God is not. Whether we go down
into the depths of the sea, he is there, whether we ascend up
into heaven, there he is too. and we're beginning to learn
you see that here is a God that we can worship not just by sight
but by faith by faith we can pray like a Daniel could pray
with his windows in Babylon pointing out towards Jerusalem to worship
by faith the God the temple may not be there but the God of the
temple is there And you see for us in today's world this prophecy
here is also about the Lord Jesus. Well the Lord Jesus was walking
with his people upon earth for several years, but the Lord Jesus
is no longer walking here upon earth. but we are to walk by
faith we are to see that we are to know that although we cannot
see the lord jesus he is risen he is in heaven he is able to
see our troubles he's able to hear our prayers he's able to
act on our behalf And in a way that's what this message here
is all about. Don't forget the Spirit of the
Lord is still at work in the world today. The Spirit of the
Lord is able to reveal to us that the power of Jesus Christ,
the power of the resurrection, the power of God is able to work
in today's world in the hearts of men and women and boys and
girls. And so this message came to the
children of Israel, the children of Judah when they were going,
well it was a message that was said before they went into captivity
about their captivity to show that there was a way of deliverance. There was going to be a release
and the opening of the prison doors. There was going to be
a proclamation of liberty to the captives. And this was something that was
amazing because the rest of the nations, as far as I know, the
rest of the nations that went into Babylonian captivity, what
they did was they moved all the people about so that the people
from there went to live over there and the people from there
went to live here and so on, so that everybody lost their
roots and had to live as kind of strangers. and under the instructions
and the ways of the Nebuchadnezzar. And the children of Israel, obviously
they were taken away from their land, but they were brought back. Out of all the other nations
of the world that were not brought back, God miraculously brought
his people back. There was an appointed time.
It says here, to proclaim an acceptable day of the Lord, the
day of vengeance. The day of the vengeance of God
on Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was going to get
his payback for all the cruelty that he had and his soldiers
and his armies had unleashed upon the children of
Judah. And Nebuchadnezzar, of course,
had died by the time that Babylon fell. The time came for Babylon itself,
that mighty power to be overcome by the Medes and the Persians.
God's appointment for Belshazzar that you can read about with
the hand on the wall, mene, mene, tekel, you fast in your kingdom.
The days of your kingdom are numbered. You're judged. You're
found wanting. Your kingdom is going to be taken
away from you. day of vengeance as it says here
the day of vengeance of our God and then Cyrus appointed by God
as a servant of God to do what God would have him to do to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord, to proclaim that there was a
day when the children of Judah could go back to Jerusalem, start
rebuilding the temple, to reestablish worship there, to re-inhabit
the city, and so on. And this was something that was
an amazing miracle. They went from captivity to liberty. They went from sorrow. You can
read about the sorrows of the children of Israel in Psalm 139,
where it just gives us a glimpse of the very sad situation they
found. No, sorry, 137. By the rivers
of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered
Zion. It was such a sad time for them
to be away from their beloved city, from the city that they
believed God had placed them there forever. But because of
their sins, they'd been taken away, but by God's grace, they
were going to come back. And we see there that sorrows
were going to be turned into joy. There was going to be, as
it says here in verse three, beauty of beauty, or ashes were
going to be exchanged for beauty. So where they had ashes on them
because of all their sadness, to be covered in sackcloth and
ashes was a sign of things going wrong in your life, but no, they
were going to have those garments transformed for garments of beauty.
Mourning and sorrow meant that they didn't anoint their faces
and their bodies as they would have done in good times, but
that mourning is going to be transformed and they can anoint
their body with oil again. The spirit of heaviness, the
spirit of depression, the spirit of sorrow, the spirit of despondency,
the spirit of trouble, they were going to be uplifted. lifted
out of these things so that they were dressed up in their finery,
their best clothes, the garments of praise, the spirit of heaviness,
instead of sorrow and depression, a spirit of our God has done
amazing things for us. It's the Lord that's done these
things. He's transplanted us, as it goes on to say here. like
you transplant your plants in the garden from a seedbed out
into the main part of the garden. So that's what it says here.
The Lord has transplanted us. He's going to transplant us from
like a seedbed in Babylon to grow to perfection in Jerusalem. And these things is what the
Lord has done. And so This is what was happening
in Isaiah's day. This is what was going to happen
in the next couple of hundred years after this. And we can
understand that here was a great miracle that was being performed. And now we see that this is going
to be applied, as it says here, as an office of Christ. This
is what the Lord Jesus is going to be like. And just like we
said this morning, we said about the old world before the flood,
we spoke of the our world today, and we spoke of the kingdom of
heaven. The old world before the flood
is swept away. no one survived that except through
the Ark of Noah and then they have then produced the whole
human race we are all cousins in Noah and but this sin-cursed
world continues But then there is going to be, how are we going
to get from this present world into the kingdom of heaven? And
the link is the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the announcement
of the beginning. of the ministry or prophecy of
the announcements of the beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that the Lord Jesus Christ has been anointed to preach good
tidings unto the meek. There is a message out there
of good tidings to bind up the brokenhearted. You see, we live
in a world with so much that is difficult There is so much
deep sorrow in the world where things are not working out where
people can't see a future and human nature you see has a As
an eternal soul, we are created eternal souls at conception.
And it's that eternal soul, what future does an eternal soul have
in a world where people don't really believe in anything to
do with the afterlife? And yet, you see, there is that
eternal soul there that is, its needs are not accounted for.
and there are deep down concerns that people just dampen down
and quieten down with whether it
be drugs or drink or work or the pleasures of this world or
whatever it may be, these things are dampened down and yet deep
inside we know that we have a never dying soul, deep inside we know
we have an existence that is forever and there's no basis
is to know what is going to happen to that never dying soul at the
time when we must leave this world. And what anxiety and worry
and concern that brings when people are diagnosed with cancers
that they're not going to live from or other issues and concerns
that people have. People become broken hearted.
People become like bound up and not knowing what to do. Oh, the
spirit of the Lord was upon the Lord Jesus. He was anointed to
preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives. And the Lord Jesus, he came into
this world and he announced these things. He announced that there
is a way of deliverance for the souls of men and women and boys
and girls. The kind of things that people
are told by the medical profession, there's nothing I can do for
you. We can care for you, we can try to help you along, we
can give you various medications, but we can't cure the problem.
We cannot give you eternal life. We cannot give you assurance
of eternal life. We cannot give you assurance
that your soul is going to be okay. You see, The Bible so clearly
tells us that death is not the end. You think of the rich man
in the parable of rich man and Lazarus. And there is a rich
man who has lost his life, but his existence continues. His body is in a grave, but he,
his existence continues. And he can see that there's no
hope for the circumstances he finds himself in. He can see
that these things cannot change. He's told that there's a great
gulf that is fixed between where he is and where he wants to be,
and that there is no way out. Here is a captivity that is forever
and ever and ever. There is no opening of the prison
to those people that are bound in that circumstance. There is
no proclamation of liberty to captives that are in those circumstances. And that rich man, he knew that.
And he was very concerned. He says, well, I want you to
go and tell my brothers. I want you to go and tell other
people that this is a terrible place. Well, it says there, just here,
Moses and the prophets. There's enough written in this
Bible for us to know these things. But what it means, you see, is
that there is The worst thing that can happen to us is not
just even that we die, there's some terrible things happen.
Terrible floods, terrible plane crashes, terrible car crashes
of footballers, all sorts of terrible things, terrible cancers.
But the very worst thing that can ever happen to man is never
in the news that people die and lose their soul. Their soul is
lost in eternal damnation forever and ever. Here in Jesus Christ is a message
of good tidings unto the meek, the people that know they have
a problem that none of us can solve ourselves. To deliver my
soul from my sin-cursed situation that's due to my sins, it's my
fault, it's my sins that have done this, it's my mistakes,
it's my problem, and yet the Lord Jesus tells us, well, you've
got a problem that you can't solve. You've done things that
you cannot reverse. You've upset people that cannot
be undone. There are things that you cannot
put right. But the Lord Jesus, there is
an announcement of good tidings unto the meek, to the people
that know that they cannot solve the problems of their lives.
What the Lord Jesus does is he says, well, you have done things
that are worthy of death. But I am going to come into this
world and take the death penalty. Jesus Christ has come into this
world. We sang about it in that hymn
about his high priestly work. And the Lord Jesus Christ has
come into this world totally able to live a perfect life and
never to die. There's no reason why the Lord
Jesus should have died. He could have lived forever and
ever and ever here upon earth because he hadn't sinned. God would not have allowed him
to die as a non-sinner because he was righteous. The wages of
sin is death. He hadn't sinned. There was no
sin in him. There was no reason for the Lord
Jesus to die whatsoever except he Volunteer. he was covenanted, he was appointed,
as it says here, he was appointed to bear the sins of others, so
that the sins of all those that come to the Lord Jesus Christ
and confess their sins at this acceptable time that we see here,
this is the acceptable year of the law, the time in our existence
when we can come and be accepted with God. And that's a different
time for all of us. It's sometime between our conception
and our death. And I don't know when it will
be. But that's the only acceptable year for each and every one of
us here. From the time of our conception
to the time of our death. There is no acceptable time after
death. And of course, there is no acceptable
time before we exist. This is the acceptable time and
God has said, I am here to hear the prayers of people during
that acceptable time. That's why every day is so important
for each one of us because today is a day that you are living
in the acceptable time. So that yesterday is gone, you
can't do anything about that. Tomorrow, the important thing
is it may never come. We hope it will, we trust it
will, but we have no confidence because we cannot give ourselves
a breath. We cannot give ourselves a heartbeat.
Today, the Bible tells us, is the acceptable day of the Lord,
the acceptable year of the Lord, where God is able to accept us,
where we can come to the Lord Jesus to hear his good tidings,
that what he is able to do in taking the sins of others and
becoming sin. And as a sin bearer, he was then
punished on the cross with the hiding of his father's face and
all the things that he endured when he said, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? That was because he was bearing
the sins of other people. He was bearing the death penalty
that you and I deserve. and the Lord Jesus endured the
death penalty that was the punishment but the moment the death penalty
was over and done with and finished the debt was paid and Jesus Christ
was laid in a as it says a rich man's tomb he was made his grave
with the rich because he was is able to receive sinners, he
is able to, he has made a way, he has made a mechanism whereby
you and I can confess our sins and they are laden from us onto
the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus bears that death penalty
on the cross and does away with the punishment of those sins
and takes away the cup of the wrath of God that is due to us,
drinks it up himself and gives us in return the cup of his blessing. Here is good tidings unto the
meek, the people that know they can't do anything to solve their
own problems, who've been told no doubt by others too that there's
nothing that they can do to help, who've been told by mankind that
they can't help. Good tidings. There's a proclamation,
the message of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God our Heavenly
Father, that there is good tidings unto the meek. This is such an
amazing, amazing message. In the world in which we live,
that there is the Lord Jesus Christ that is anointed to proclaim
such good tidings. We live in a world where, if
you read the paper, there is so little good news, and there
is so much bad news, and there is so little that really encourages
us to think that the future is going to be bright. But the Lord
Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven shows us that there is
a future with not a single sin, not a single curse, not a single
teardrop, not a single discouragement. And the Lord Jesus is able to
bind up the broken hearted. Broken hearted because we can
see no hope in the life that we are now living. And yet the
Lord Jesus is like someone, like a doctor that comes to like you
with a wound. Put in the ointment, cleanse
it, put on the ointment, bandage it all up, heal it. That's what
Jesus is able to do to broken hearts. Hearts which have been
let down. Hearts that have been broken.
Hearts that have got no hope. Hearts that can't see the future.
They don't know what they're going to do. They can't see any
optimism and good in the future. And yet Jesus tells us he's been
sent to bind up the brokenhearted. He has set up his clinic, if
you like. He is the good physician to set
up his clinic. for the broken-hearted and this
is such a beautiful message for the world with all its troubles
that here in Jesus Christ is a clinic for the broken-hearted
where we can go where we have no ability to solve our own problems
and Jesus heals the broken-hearted. to proclaim liberty to the captives,
just exactly what he did to the children of Israel all those
years ago. The Lord Jesus is able to declare
liberty to the captives. Captivated by sin, we may be
thinking that there's nothing that we can do to deliver our
hearts from the sins, the addictions, and yet The Lord Jesus is able
to deliver from addictions. I've heard of people talking
about God rewiring their minds, rewiring their existence in just
the same way as he is able to heal the the mad Gadarene, in
just the same way as he's able to heal so many that were possessed
of various evil spirits, so the Lord today is able to rewire
our hearts so that we can see things in a different way and
we can understand things in a different way and perhaps free from addictions
or all kinds of besetting sins that we can have our hearts turned
off to. the proclaimed liberty to the
captives, those that are captivated with all the troubles of the
world that the Lord Jesus is able to deliver. Here we see that this is the
Lord Jesus that is speak is a prophecy of the Lord Jesus. It was fulfilled
when he stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth. And I think it's
in Luke chapter 4. We see that he said very similar
words. 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 broken hearted. to preach deliverance
to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set
at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord." That is Jesus' beginning, entering into his
earthly ministry. And we see there that He went on throughout his life
to fulfill those things and heal so many people with so many different
problems and to overcome all the enemies. the day of the vengeance of our
God, to stand up on behalf of other people against their enemies. And we see even in this chapter
in Luke chapter 4 that the Lord Jesus had enemies that wanted
to throw him over the cliff that was at the edge of the city.
They were going to arrest him and throw him over the hill because
they didn't like what he said. And we read he passing through
the midst of them went his way. They were not able to lay a finger
on him. They were human beings intent
on destroying him but they had no power against him at all to
do those things that they wanted to do. We see that the Lord Jesus
was able to overcome those that were frustrating his father's
will in trading in the temple with cattle
and sheep and doves and money exchanges, kind of changing currency
from one type to another. And they were all doing this
trading in the temple and the Lord Jesus with authority drove
them out and told them that his house, his father's house, I
should say, was to be called a house of prayer. but that they
had made it a den of thieves. They had no ability to stand
up against the power of Jesus Christ. He is a conqueror that
is able to conquer on our behalf. The Lord Jesus is able to shine
and will shine from the east to the west at that last day.
There will be that every eye will see him. Every heart will
stop. Every person will see in the
whole wide world and realize that this is God. This is the
Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the judge. Here is the
one that is king of kings and lord of lords. But it will be
beyond the acceptable day. It's too late at that time to
fall down in repentance before him. It's too late to plead for
blessing at that point. And the day of judgment will
come when Jesus will decree who goes on his right hand and who
goes on his left. There will be those that will
be surprised but the Lord Jesus is the one that will have the
final say. Our important thing is to have an advocate in Jesus
Christ, to know that he will speak for us. that he cannot
deny that we have come at his feet, and he has taken us into
his loving care, and he has healed our broken hearts, and he has
cleansed us from our sins, and he has declared that he will
never leave us and never forsake us, and we go into that moment
trusting that he will stand by us, he will be good to his word,
he will be faithful, he will not let us down, we will never
be left ashamed, and we will be brought into his kingdom,
not by what we do, but because what Jesus has said he would
do for us. This earthly message, this earthly
ministry that the Lord Jesus had at the end of his days was
delegated to his disciples. They were named apostles and
he breathed on them we see in John and it says receive ye the
Holy Ghost. This same This same message,
this same declaration of the good tidings to the meek, the
binding up of the broken hearted, was delegated to the apostles,
Peter and John and James and Paul and the others. And then
we read also that these things have been delegated down through
the ages. in the likes of we read in the
second of timothy chapter 2 and verse 2 and the things that thou
hast heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful
men who shall be able to teach others also you see this message
of the Lord Jesus Christ and lifting up the message of the
Lord Jesus Christ amongst men is such an important thing. There
will be people that we will come across in all the distresses
that people are in with whatever need and what a wonderful thing
is if you're able to say well there's nothing that any of us
can do but there is a Jesus in heaven that is able to bind up
your broken heart. that is able to help you in your
circumstances and we are able then to bring such people before
the Lord Jesus Christ and plead that he will put his hand upon
such people and bless them and encourage them. Isn't it a privilege
as we see in today's world, we see impossibilities all around
us. And what a wonderful privilege
it is to take these impossibilities and tell the Lord Jesus just
how impossible it is for us. For whatever it is, for the salvation
of a soul, for the forgiveness of sin, for keeping a safe keeping
of souls, all kinds of things. But what a privilege it is to
bring them before the Lord Jesus Christ, and to take such a soul
and say, Lord Jesus, there's nothing more that we can do.
But we bring them to thy feet, and we trust and pray and plead
and supplicate that thou, Lord Jesus, will do what's necessary
to bind up such brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to them.
And Jesus is the same today. He is in heaven, he's not here
upon earth as such in a physical sense like he was in Luke chapter
4. where people could just bring
their problems directly to him but we are believers that the
spirit of God is still at work in the in the world today the
spirit of Jesus Christ is still at work and you and I can bring
our problems to the Lord Jesus Christ and lay them at his feet
and he is able to do, exceeding abundantly above what we can
ask or even think. There have been people that have
brought situations of, just like Jesus stilled the storm when
he was upon earth, people in a storm, on a lake, in a terrible
storm that it looked like there was going to be all kinds of
problems and perhaps even a sinking. And yet you see such people have
brought their troubles before the Lord Jesus Christ and he
has stilled the storm in those circumstances and enabled such
people to praise the Lord for his goodness and for his marvellous
work amongst the children of men. Well what a wonderful thing
it is that we can bring our loved ones and there's people around
us and in this world with all that's going on we pray and plead
that our Jesus will continue to go before us and that in the
churches and amongst our loved ones, that there might be the
work of God going on here to appoint unto them that morn in
Zion for those people that are in terrible circumstances, that
their terrible circumstances may be transformed from ashes
to beauty, from mourning to the oil of joy, and from the spirit
of heaviness to the garment of praise. Where will the praise
be? The praise will be to God, the
Lord Jesus Christ who has delivered in times past and we trust that
we come to him because we trust he will deliver. He will continue
to deliver. And so may we know that in today's
world, Yes, the spirit of the Lord was
prophesied here all those years ago as the one that was going
to deliver the captives. That happened. That took place. Yes, the Lord Jesus came into
the world and did so many amazing things and healed so many then.
But the Lord's hand is no different today. You and I with today's
problems in our year 2025. And I don't know all the things
that you are involved with in your lives. But one thing I do
know is that the Lord Jesus is appointed still today in the
spirit to continue to announce good tidings to the meek, to
proclaim liberty to the captives. and the opening of the prison
to them that are bound so that the impossibilities of our lives
we can bring to him for him to deal with and then there is that
praise God from whom all blessings fly. Well may God add his blessing
and encourage us as we go about in everyday life to speak well
of Jesus, to be willing to pray with people and to lift them
up in prayer to God that he will hear and bless. The blessings
don't come from us at all, of course not, but they come from
the Lord Jesus Christ. May God have his blessing. Dear
Lord God, we do thank Thee so much for Thy precious word and
we thank Thee that we're here this evening, Lord, that Thou
art the same yesterday and today and forever. And Lord, we bring
each one before Thee and pray that whatever broken-hearted
circumstances whatever captivated circumstances whatever impossible
circumstances each one is in here at this moment in time.
Lord we may know that thou Lord God omnipotent reigns thy ear
is still open thou are still accepting the supplications and
prayers and pleadings of people here upon earth that bring their
petitions to thee Lord, hear and answer on behalf of each
dear soul that's gathered here. Lord, we plead as we ask for
Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.