seeking the Lord's help and your
very prayerful attention, I turn your thoughts to Isaiah 61 and
the first verse. Isaiah 61 and the first verse. 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
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound. this prophecy written by Isaiah
was written a long time before the Lord Jesus came, something
like 700 years before the Lord Jesus came to this earth. And yet so many parts of Isaiah
are so applicable and so prophetic
of what would take place when the Lord Jesus did come to this
earth. And indeed the verse that we
have read here, Isaiah 61 verse 1, was what the Lord Jesus himself
read out when he was reading on the Sabbath day in the synagogue. If you turn to Luke chapter 4,
you can read that account. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus had
just been baptised by John the Baptist in Jordan. The spirit
then, we read Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit, was led into
the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days. And then when he
came forth from that time of temptation, those 40 days of
temptation, then we read in Luke 4 verse 14, And Jesus returned
in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and there went out a
flame of him through all the regions round about. And he taught
in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And then we read that
he came to Nazareth, the synagogue in Nazareth. And he came to Nazareth
where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto
him, so somebody else it seems chose which book that they should
read. Delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And
when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was
written, and then we have our text, the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor. It's a slightly different in
one or two wordings, the quote in Luke. But he has sent me to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
the recovery of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty
them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the law. and he closed the book and gave
it again to the minister and sat down and the eyes of all
them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him and he began
to say unto them, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your
ears. So clearly the Lord Jesus was
saying that this prophecy written 700 years before by his servant
Isaiah the prophet had its first fulfilment, as it were, in the
Lord Jesus Christ himself. He was not just to do the work
of salvation, he was to preach about that work of salvation
that he was to accomplish when he came to this earth. And if
we look at this, the precious word that we have before us,
we see really what, in a very short few verses, what the purpose
of the Lord's work and ministry was. This was what he came to
do. The spirit of the Lord God is
upon me because the Lord hath anointed me." We read that he
was anointed with the Spirit and in John we read that he had
the Spirit without measure. He was anointed with the Spirit,
the third person in the Trinity. Anointed with the Spirit was
the Lord Jesus Christ and that anointing was so necessary so
that he could, as it were, do his great work. here on earth,
that he should be filled with the Spirit, that he should preach
those things. So we have here then really the
essence of what the Lord Jesus' work was. He anointed me to preach
good tidings unto the meek. This was the first thing and
there's a list of many things going on into verses two and
three. A list of many things that the
Lord Jesus came to accomplish as it were through his ministry
and through his work. The first that he states here
is to preach good tidings unto the meek. The gospel you see
is good tidings. But to understand good tidings,
as it were, we have to understand something of a background to
those good tidings. Because many of the things, if
you look at the list, they are similarly related really. What
is the amazing thing about being set free from prison if you don't
consider you are in prison? You'd say, well, if I was in
prison, I would like to hear that I would be set free. But
if I'm not in prison, really to be told that I've been set
free from prison means little or nothing to me. I ask you this
morning, What does the preaching of the
Gospel mean to you? You see, if we are to preach
good tidings, which is what the word Gospel means, it is because
there is an awareness. If it's good tidings, it's an
awareness in those that hear the good tidings that they are
in a state which is not good. What's so amazing about being
fed if we're already overflowing with food? But if you're hungry,
you'll want food. What is so amazing about somebody
offering you a drink if you've had plenty to drink already? It doesn't mean much. Really
it means little or nothing. The Lord Jesus then, has come,
you see, to preach these good tidings to a people that are
in trouble, a people that have difficulties, a people that are
far off from God. And this is the vital necessity
of the need to preach and to explain our need of salvation. See, all the time you are content
with the way your life is going, as it were. You're content with
your level, perhaps, of spirituality. You're content, perhaps, with
the amount of time you come to be in the house of God. Content,
as it were, with that you're a lot better than many other
people you might wish to name. Well, all the time, if that is
the case, then are we truly realizing our lost state? Good tidings
unto the meek. The meek, you see, are the humble.
The meek are the ones that are realizing that they're at God's
mercy. They're realising, see, blessed
are the meat for they shall inherit the earth. They're not, as it
were, they realise they cannot fight their own battles to solve
their own problems, but they need the Lord. They've come to
realise that the Lord has got to do this for them. It's not
because they're lazy, it's because they've come to realise the seriousness
of the problem. Have you come to realise the
seriousness of the problem of your need of a saviour? when you see the Spirit of God
came upon the Lord Jesus Christ. But He comes, now the Lord Jesus
has gone back to glory. He comes to others. He comes
to the Lord's servants today so that they, as it were, can
preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, to preach good tidings
unto the meek. Those that need encouraging,
those that are humble. You see, by nature we're proud,
we're self-sufficient, we sort our own problems out. I will
not have this man to reign over us. It's the heart of man by
nature and it's our hearts by nature too. But the Spirit of
the Lord comes, you see, upon the preaching of the Gospel.
that there may be this preaching unto those that are meek. We
read elsewhere with Christ preaching that the rich were sent empty
away. Now that does not just mean rich
as in those that have a big bank balance, but those who, as it
were, consider themselves. You see, there's a certain, there
can be, with riches, a certain security that comes with them
in feeling that, well, whatever difficulties comes in my life,
I have the riches to throw the money at it to solve the problem. and there is a sort of a security
that one can feel from being rich. But you see on the other
hand you may be very rich in earthly terms and yet you may
be well aware that your riches cannot solve the problems that
you have to do with you and your God. And therefore, it's not
riches itself that's the problem, but it's our feeling of self-sufficiency,
feeling of, I can sort my own problems out. Well, you see,
the Gospel is for those that have come and realised that they
cannot sort their own problems out. To preach good tidings unto
the me. He has sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted. Are there some broken-hearted
here this morning? Well, you see, we hide these
things, don't we? Somebody asks you, how are you?
Yes, I'm fine, thanks, we often perhaps would say. But underneath,
perhaps we are broken-hearted. Perhaps we're deeply disappointed
by what's happened. Perhaps we're deeply disappointed
with our fresh discovery of our own sin. Fresh discovery of a
new outbreak of that sin which does so easily beset us. Well
you see, the Lord Jesus, he has come, he has sent me to bind
up. the broken-hearted. You see here
that the language that the Lord Jesus uses is what others, as
it were, other persons in the Trinity, that is, have done for
him. Because the Lord has anointed
me to preach good tidings. His Father, He was anointed by
the Father. He was anointed with the Holy
Spirit. He hath sent me. You see, the
Lord Jesus was sent. Sometimes perhaps it's strange
to us to think of it like this. We might think that surely the
Lord Jesus, He was God. He would do His own thing. He
would come to this earth and He would live as He wanted to
live. But the Lord Jesus made it very clear that that isn't
the way He lived at all. He said, clearly, I came not
to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. It's
tremendous when you think about it. You see, we think of ourselves,
well, we should be self-sufficient, we should sort all our own problems
out, we should make all our own decisions. But the Lord Jesus,
he was, as it were, said I came not to do mine own will. And
we have in this text, he hath sent me. Jesus was sent. He was sent by the Father. You see this wonderful plan of
salvation that there was, that the Father should send the Son
to this earth, not to be left, that God's people would not be
left, but that there should be this plan of salvation that the
father sent the son at tremendous cost. He was sending his son
to a very difficult, a very dark path. It was a very dangerous
path. It was a very sorrowful path.
It was a path when at the end, particularly, he would know the
hidings of his father's face. He would lose that communion
that he ever enjoyed with his father, but he has sent me, the
love of God the Father, to send the Son. He has sent me to bind
up the broken-hearted. This is why he came. He came,
as it were, to bind up, to put bandages on, as it were, and
to heal the broken-hearted, to heal them. See, when the Lord Jesus heals,
It's not that he just covers up sin. That's never a good way,
is it? When we have infections or things
like that, just to sort of cover them up and hope that they go
away. But he doesn't come to hide sin. He comes to expose sin for what
it is, in all its vileness. but then to heal. You see a good
doctor, if you went to a doctor with something wrong with you
and some part of your body was not right, But the doctor never
really looked very carefully at what was wrong, never really
took much interest in the seriousness of the condition, just gave you
some painkillers perhaps and told you to forget about it. Well, that's not the way that
the Lord deals with his people. He has sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted. He's going to bind up their wounds,
but not by saying, well, don't worry. Sin doesn't matter. Just carry on breaking God's
law. Carry on sinning like that. That's
OK. I can bind it up. I'll make you
feel better. No, he binds up the broken hearted
by making them hate sin. He does take their sin, but he
pronounces the full measure of what sin should deserve against
those sins. He has sent me to bind up the
broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives. different figures, aren't they?
But they're all situations where God's people are in great difficulties. They're greatly burdened, they're
greatly saddened. And you see the gospel is that
there is a way to have union with Christ that we can, as it
were, have that sin removed, to proclaim liberty to the captives. It's the opposite, isn't it?
Liberty is the opposite of captivity. To be at liberty, to run in the
ways of God's commandments, is the opposite of being captive. Are we captive? Have you come
to realise that by nature we are captive? We are slaves to
sin. We cannot cease from sin. We
cannot love the Lord as we would desire to do. We find fresh breaking
out of sin in our lives, fresh things to cause us to despair. But the Lord Jesus here is saying
that he is going to proclaim liberty. to the captives. Liberty, that means they are
set at liberty, set at liberty from all that grieves them, the
sin which does so easily beset us. But I have to say this, this
morning, is sin a problem to you? You see, sin and our relationship
to God is not a problem to us, causes us no trouble, causes
us no heart-searching, causes us no, as it were, concern in
our lives, then the preaching of the Gospel
will mean very little. Really, ultimately it will be
smooth words. It won't do you any real good. Well then, we need, by God's
grace, by the Spirit's work, to convince of sin. It is the
Spirit's work, you see, the work of the Holy Spirit, to convince
of sin, so that people who are, as it were, running along, happy
with the way they're living, unconcerned about their judgement
day, that they may come to realise
that there is a judgement day, that there is a need to be prepared
for it. You see, we come on to that in
verse 2, it says, and the day of vengeance of our God. You
say, well that doesn't sound a very good thing, a vengeance
of our God. You see, we need to understand
the nature of God, that he is a God that hates sin, a God that
will punish sin. And he must punish sin. And there must be somebody that
is punished for every sin that you commit, every proud thought
you have, every unkind word you say, every lustful thought you
have. There has to be a payment made.
It will either be by yourself, when the day of vengeance of
our God comes, or it will be laid heaped upon Christ. You see, Christ was the one who
stood as a substitute. He stood in the place, the wretched
place of sinners. And you see, when you read these
lovely words, and they are lovely words, to proclaim liberty to
the captives, the opening of the prison to them that abound.
If we feel anything of our captivity, anything of our bondage to sin,
anything of our inability to keep the law as laid down in
the Ten Commandments and in the rest of the Word of God, or summarised
in the Ten Commandments, should I rather say. If we understand
anything of that, we realise that bondage is very difficult. We realise that there is a great
problem. But we need to also understand
this, to try and understand something of the wonder of what the Lord
Jesus did, that whenever there is a blessing that we receive,
whenever there is liberty for captives, wherever
there is binding up of the broken-hearted. In other words, pouring in the
oil and wine of the Gospel, wherever there is mercy. And that's what
we love, isn't it? The Lord's people love mercy. They live upon the mercy of God.
It's the mercy of God that enables them to continue living, isn't
it? Because they have fresh sin,
and God is merciful to them, and he forgives them. But I want
you to consider this, that whenever we receive the mercy of God,
then this One that was spoken of, this Lord Jesus Christ, this
Great Shepherd of the sheep, receive the opposite treatment
than you receive. You see, if we receive mercy
at God's hand, so that though we are sinners, yet He does not
lay the sin to our charge, He does not punish us according
to what our sins so richly deserve. The Lord Jesus always, when He
stood in our place, was picking up the opposite. He was standing
in the place of sinners. He delighted to do his Father's
will. It's quite precious to me recently,
another word in Isaiah 50 verse 10, where it talks about this
word. Who is among you that feareth
the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh
in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of
the Lord and stay upon his guard. We think of that as an encouragement
for believers. when they're walking through
some dark times, when they have obeyed the voice of his servant,
they have gone forth in the way that they have been commanded
to go, but they have no favourable sense of the Father's presence. They do not feel that he is with
them at this time. That does not mean he is not
with them, but they do not have that sensible favourable sense
of his presence. Who is among you that feareth
the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh
in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of
the Lord and stay upon his guard. That's what he's to do. But what
about the Lord Jesus? When he was on the cross, he
was obeying the voice of God the Father. He ever delighted
to do his father's will. We read that, therefore does
my father love me because I lay down my life for my sheep. He
was perfectly doing what his father delighted that he should
do. And yet as the sin bearer, as
the one that was bearing all that these these opposites to
what we have in our beautiful text. He was receiving, as it
were, the silence from his father. He received that far-offness. He received, you see, the forsakenness
of God. He was forsaken, but he had obeyed
He'd walked rightly, he'd cried to God, surely God would hear
his beloved son. But because he was standing in
our place, because of his love, because he delighted in the gospel
that we have in our text here, he endured the wrath of God in
our place. So you see, it makes us have
a different view about the value of what we have in our text.
It's not some cheap mercy that didn't cost anything and it was
easy to put on. The mercy that God's people receive
Every mercy, every smile of his face, everything that you receive
that you don't deserve because you're sinners, and I don't deserve
because I'm a sinner. I'm not putting myself in any
different category. Everything that we receive from
God is because the Lord Jesus received
the opposite treatment at his Father's hand. He perfectly kept
his father's will and yet he was punished, yet he was despised,
yet he was rejected. Coming back to this beautiful
list, to proclaim liberty to the captives. Captive, you see
sin captivates us. We get in patterns of sin, you
see, and we can't get out of them easily. Well, you see, the
Lord is able to proclaim liberty to the captives. Do you see a
beauty in this list of things that we have before us that the
Lord Jesus came to do? Do you feel your personal need
of it? Or are you content to live without these blessings?
If that's the case, It is very solemn with you because
there is a day of vengeance of our God. And the vengeance of
our God upon the entire Church of God took place at Calvary
on the acceptable sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ. If that means nothing to you,
if you see no beauty in it, if you are not interested in that,
and that's the way it stays the rest of your life, then you see,
you will know a day of vengeance of God. You will know a day of
punishment, but there will be no substitute. There will be
no one to stand in your place. There will be no one to show
mercy to you. Well this is good news then to
the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the
opening of the prison to them that are bound, to be shut up
in prison, to be able not to get out. Is there any here this
morning? that are in prison. You know
you're in prison as it were. You know you want to get free
and as it were, you want to be able to love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
And yet you seem to be captive in Satan's power. You don't seem
to be able to be free to be able to worship the Lord in spirit
and in truth. And you see, in a sense, we each
need the power of the Holy Spirit to free us from this bondage,
this backwardness, this emptiness which is ours by nature, to proclaim
the opening of the prison to them that are bound, so that
God would open that door and enable us to go free, though
we are guilty, though we are unworthy of it. Though we have
not deserved the least of his benefits, the opening of the
prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord." Now you see, I think this has connotations to the
year of Jubilee. There was that acceptable year,
the 50th year, where those that were slaves, those which were which had been sold into slavery,
as it were, because they were so poor. Yet, in the year of
Jubilee, they were set free. And there was that time, you
see, that came round that they would be set free. It was a picture,
so many pictures there were in the Old Testament of the day
of acceptance, that they would be set free, that they would
be put once again, being set free from their bondage so that
they could serve the Lord, that they would be free. but then
it goes on to speak about to comfort all that mourn, to appoint
unto them that mourn in Zion. What is it to mourn in Zion?
Why are we sad if we're amongst the people of God? Why should
we be sad? Well, we have much to rejoice
in, but we do also have much to sorrow over. much that we
come short of the glory of God, that we have much to be sad over,
that we do not honour and glorify God as we should, that we do
not walk in His ways as closely to His footsteps as we should.
To appoint unto them that morning, Zion, to give unto them beauty
for ashes. The idea here is that in the
time of mourning, in Bible times, if you were mourning you would
put ashes, you would close yourself in sackcloth and ashes. It was
a symbol to show that you were, as it were, humble in the dust.
We read of that, of Nineveh, don't we? When Nineveh was preached
against or preached to by Jonah, that they repented in dust and
ashes. Well, here, to give to them that mourn in Zion, to give
them beauty for ashes. You see, the Lord is able to
raise us and to put a blessing on us. The oil of joy for mourning
and the garment of praise. for the spirit of heaviness.
All these reversals, isn't it? They're opposites. They're the
opposites of what the Lord Jesus came to do, came to reverse all
those things that sin had done and sin does in us, that he is
able to reverse it and to produce the opposite. Well, it's a great
blessing, isn't it, that the Lord, the Spirit of God did anoint
the Lord Jesus. that he was anointed, he was
appointed, he was sent and he delighted to come. And he preached
these things which he himself would bring to pass and make
possible in his church. You see, none of the blessings
that we have read about in verses 1, 2 and 3, none of those blessings
would come to pass, was it not for our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. There would be no way that we
would receive anything of blessing from God, as in terms of mercy
for sin. We would not receive it. but
because of the Lord Jesus' work, because of what he did at Calvary,
and because of the work that he was involved with. You see
this was at the beginning of his ministry. He was to preach,
he was to go about physically healing the sick, he was to be
a great blessing to them in very practical ways. But this was
all, as it were, symbolic as well of what he was to do spiritually
for his church. He was going to bless the church.
He was going to bring them out of all their troubles. He was
going to bring them that they may have this garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness. May there be some here this morning
that feel their need of such a great salvation, that they
cannot battle on on their own, they cannot make ends meet on
their own, they cannot, as it were, get right with God on their
own terms, but they need to come and have this spirit anointing
of the Spirit of God upon them. You see, we each need the Holy
Spirit. We each need to have the Holy
Spirit to powerfully work in our hearts, to convince of sin,
to convince that we are sinners, to convince that we are in a
barren place, to convince that this world will not satisfy,
to convince that we are great sinners. You see, this is not
natural. See, man by nature glories in
his own abilities, in his own strength. But God is able, you
see, to open our eyes. In fact, when Jesus was reading
this in Luke 4, it does say that, to preach deliverance to the
captives and the recovering of sight. to the blind, recovering
a sight, to give those sight that were blind, where you might
say, I see, I don't need that sight perhaps, well not that
you don't need it, but I don't need to be made to see because
I can see already. Do you see the wrath of God as
the Lord Jesus did? When he was groveling in the
garden of Gethsemane, he had a sight in that cup that was
given to him by the Father of something of what the wrath,
the righteous anger of God against sin was. And that holy, harmless
Son of God was shocked. nearly killed him, as it were,
in the garden. My soul is exceeding sorrowful,
even unto death." Have you had a sight? Well, I'm sure we haven't
had a sight exactly what the Lord Jesus had, but have you
seen something of what the righteous anger of God will do and what
it means? Because You see, the Lord Jesus
didn't take lightly the wrath of God, did he? He didn't say,
oh, well, that's just my father. I'm not worried about the righteous
anger of God against sin. No, he did not. He feared God. And you see, to fear God, he
feared his God greatly. He understood the righteous anger
of God against sin and he realised what it meant. Well, we need
to fear God. We need, therefore, to know the
Spirit of God. The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me because the Lord anointed me to preach good tidings unto
the meek. Do you see a beauty in these
words? Does it make all the things that
this world calls good or great pale into insignificance compared
to the work of our Lord Jesus who came to rescue the perishing,
to give deliverance for those that abound, to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord, that there was a way to be saved,
that there was a way of redemption for hell-deserving sinners, that
though their sins have made them fit for eternal destruction,
yet you see there is good tidings to appoint unto them that mourn
in Zion. to give unto them beauty for
ashes. What an exchange. God is able to do these things.
God is able to bless us in these ways so that the church may be
enlarged, so that His people may be built up. And we go on
in the rest of the chapter. It talks about that they shall
build the old ways, they shall raise up the former desolations. There was to be restoration.
There was to be blessing. And we have these beautiful words
here, that I will greatly rejoice in the Lord my soul shall be
joyful in my God. What a difference from being
in prison. What a difference from being
in bondage. What a difference from being
captive. 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. He has covered me with the robe
of righteousness. He was, He came to this earth
to work out this robe of righteousness so that His church should not
be found naked, not be found just neutral. You see, the Lord
Jesus doesn't just take away our sin and leave us with, as
it were, zero. He gives us something as well.
He gives us that robe of righteousness so that we are clothed with that,
so that we are not left naked. cover me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decketh herself with ornaments, and as a bride
adorneth herself with her jewels." You see, we are clothed to make
us glorious and to make us beautiful in His eyes. But it's the beauty
that He gave, it's the robe of righteousness that He provided
that we are to put on. Well, may the Lord bless each
one of us with seeing the beauty of the Gospel and those that
we lovingly would pray for that see no beauty in Christ, see
no preciousness in these beautiful words. Well, may you come by
the Holy Spirit's power to see your need, to see that there
is a day of vengeance of God, This can be taken in more than
one way, that he will, as it were, have vengeance upon death
and hell, and therefore bring deliverance to his people. That's
one way we can take it, a beautiful way, but also surely it's a day
of judgment. Jesus spoke much of judgment. He spoke much of coming to that
place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So there
is these two sides. This is to be in Christ. It is
to be looking to His work. And this is what the Lord Jesus
was speaking of here, that His ministry was to be a blessing
to the Church. And may we today know something
of that blessing in our lives. May the Lord have His blessing.