You. When this passing world is torn, When half-blown young
men fall, When I sacrifice in glory, After all, my sin is so evil,
then what shall I call myself? When the wind is cold On the
rocks and hills below When I see them startin' to shriek Oh. Oh. When I stand before the throne
Dressed in beauty not my own I'll be with a singing heart
When the children call me home The. Law. Law. We have hearts full of love,
yes, Lord. Then, Lord, shall I fully know Clothed and clothed for good
and dear Waken up from restless sleep Let the Savior find By that spirit learn to fight
Teach me word for word to show Turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter
4. Gospel of Luke chapter 4. I would love to be able to preach
the gospel Just one time in my life, Martin Lloyd-Jones one time said, he said, I have preached the
gospel two times. He said both times I was asleep.
I was dreaming. I can say the same thing. I would
like to preach the gospel. I mean preach. the gospel, whatever
that means. Preach the gospel so clearly,
so definitively, so clearly as to leave no doubt whatsoever
in the minds and the hearts of everybody who leaves what the
gospel is. And most of all, though, I would
like to preach the gospel. in the manner, in the way that
the Lord Jesus Christ must have preached the gospel. I can just imagine the grace,
the scripture says, grace poured from his lips. I can just imagine
what it must have been like to sit under the sound of that voice
of his as he expounded the gospel from his heart. He never said
anything from his head or to the head. It was all from his
heart. And the power, the clarity of
his voice, the power, the authority. They said, no man spake like
this man. He spoke like somebody who has
authority. The scripture says, if any man
speak, Let him speak as the oracles of God, that's the truth of God,
the authority of God. Christ was, is. That is, any man who speaks should
speak with such conviction, such a firm and absolute persuasion
of what he believed. It was said of Whitefield, Benjamin
Franklin said this of Whitefield, that he liked to go hear him.
He'd like to go here, Whitfield, because Whitfield believed what
he preached. A lawyer one time told my pastor,
he said, if I preached with such conviction as you do, if I really
believed in the cause I was espousing to the people, he said, I'd never
lose case. John, when Christ preached, he
never lost a case, or anybody that he had on his heart and
mind, that he was going to woo them. The tenderness, the compassion,
the pathos, the love that must have come from this man, Jesus
Christ. The perfect communication. You
know, preaching is communicating. A preacher shouldn't strive to
go over the heads of people so as to impress them. with your
Latin liturgies and all of your Greek meanings. Somebody said
that there aren't giraffes, they're called sheep. You put the food
down here where the sheep can get to it. Christ, it's communication. Wanting the people, the people
need to understand what is being said. Christ was the ultimate
communicator. He sat down and talked to people.
He was, think about this. He was the greatest, he preached
in parables, stories. He was the greatest storyteller
ever, with the greatest story ever told. And what it must have
been like to sit under the sound of that voice, like the disciples
went away after hearing him preach to them. I said, their heart
was burning. And they wanted to hear him for
hours on end. They didn't want him to quit. Well, this morning I'm going
to use one of his sermon outlines. Christ didn't expound upon this.
This is a sermon outline. I'm going to use one of his sermon
outlines and expound upon it a little bit this morning. I
want you to look with me here at Luke chapter 4, verse 16. Luke 4, verse 16, and it says,
And he came to Nazareth. What a sermon in itself. And
he came. Who's he? Who is he? The great I Am. God walked on planet earth. He came. Didn't have to, but
he did. Came to Nazareth. What's significant
about that? Well, Nazareth. Nazareth was
the most notorious place on planet Earth at the time. Nazareth was
known for its sin, its wickedness, the vileness of its people, the
raucousness. It was known as a wretched place,
Nazareth. Somebody said about Nazareth,
can anything good come out of Nazareth? Anything? Oh, yeah. God came out of Nazareth,
or at least he was raised up there, where he had been brought
up. As his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath
day, as his custom was. Christ, the man after God's own
heart, was always about the things of God, always. Whenever God's people met, He
was there. He was there. He never forsook
the assembling of himself with God's people under the sound
of the Word. Never. With God's people. And so he
came in the Sabbath day, where he was raised, in Nazareth, and
stood up to read. He was thirty years old, the
beginning of his earthly ministry as a man. Thirty years of age
back then was the age of manhood. And every young man, as was the
custom of that day, upon reaching that age, would stand up in his
home church or synagogue and read from the scriptures. And so it was his time. He got
the privilege of standing up and proving his manhood. and
reading the scriptures. No, they got the privilege of
hearing him speak. Verse 17, and it was delivered
unto him. They had a minister, they had
a preacher, a priest, just like you have. It was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. In God's good providence, thank
God, they opened it up to this portion, where they opened it
up to the book of Isaiah. and handed Christ the book. They
handed the word to the word as if he needed it. And it says, when he had opened
the book, they handed the scroll, Isaiah, they rolled up individually,
books, handed the book, the scroll of Isaiah to him, and he opened
it up and he found the place where it was written. And he
read, just like this. He headed straight to Isaiah
61 that we read a moment ago. And it's paraphrased here in
Luke 4 for brevity. And he read this out loud. I
would have liked to have just heard him read it. And that's all he did on this
occasion was read it. But he read it, verse 18 and
19. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
blind. to set at liberty, set free them
that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year
of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it to the minister,
the man in charge, whoever it was, whoever the preacher was. And the scripture says he went
over and sat down. Went over and sat down. And it said that the eyes of
all them were fastened upon him. Just like you are me right now. And they wondered at the gracious
words that had come out of his mouth. And this is what he said
as he sat there after reading that passage of scripture. He
looked at those people, looked into the eyes and the hearts
of those people, and he said, and I'd like to have heard this,
this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. this day. And they wondered at
the gracious words that had come out of his mouth. And they began
to think about it. They began to talk among themselves,
and they began to say things like, is not this Joseph's son? Isn't this just Joseph's son?
Well, we know his brothers and his sisters. Is not this the
carpenter's boy? And then he began to talk with
them about God's sovereign election of certain people, and they grew
angry at him. And this once peaceful church,
Sunday-going meeting church crowd became a lynch mob, and grabbed
him and took him out to the brow of a hill and would have cast
him down had it been his time. But he escaped. Well, I want you to look at these
gracious words that came out of his mouth. Now, listen to
me. It says in verse 21, or verse 22, that they bear him witness.
They didn't bear witness to him, but they bore witnesses. They
were witnesses of what he had said. OK? They bore witness. Terry, what these people did
was they bore witness against themselves of what they had just
heard. Because they didn't believe him.
And they got mad at him. They got mad. And if they had
only, I thought about this, if they had only heard what he had
read, they would have rejoiced. If they'd only heard what he'd
read. But no, they were too busy looking at the man. Who does
he think he is? Look at him. That's just Joseph's boy. And
he said, I know a prophet's not without honor, saving his own
country. Another place said he could do
no wonderful works there because of their unbelief, so he went
someplace else. If only they had heard the passage
read and attended to his voice, he may have expounded it to them.
He may have revealed the gospel to them. But no, they were only
conscious of the man, not the message. their traditions and
so forth, not the Savior. And I'm here to tell you this
morning, with all of the sincerity and
heart that I can muster, this day is this Scripture fulfilled
in your ears. January the 5th, 1992. Is this scripture fulfilled in
your ears? You're hearing this this morning.
I don't know how many other churches anywhere are hearing this passage
of scripture. You are. Now, let's look at what he said
here, verse 18. I said, here's his message. Here's
his preaching. He said, the spirit of the Lord
is upon me because he hath anointed me. The spirit of the Lord is
upon me. Now, listen. Everybody everywhere
claims to have a Spirit-filled ministry. Okay? Don't they? Every preacher that stands up,
this is his calling card. This is what he tries to sanction
his ministry or give credibility to what he says by saying, we're
a Holy Spirit-filled church. Right? They're all saying that. Spirit-filled singing, spirit-filled
preaching, spirit-filled church. How do you know? Everybody's
saying it. How do you know who has the Holy
Spirit of God? How do you know who has the anointing
of the Holy Spirit of God? That Holy Spirit is called a
wind that blows where it listed, and you can't tell the sound
thereof. Or that is, you can't tell whether it goes or where
it's coming from. And nobody has a lock and says,
we are this or we are that and we're going to have a spirit
tonight at 7 o'clock. You be here. How do you know, though, when
somebody has the Spirit of God, when the anointing of the Holy
Spirit is upon a man's preaching? How do you know? Well, we've said it so many times.
The Spirit of God, as Christ said in John 16, 15, 16, 14,
15, 16. He said, the Spirit of God will
take the things of mine and show them unto you. That is, the things
of Christ, and expound them, exalt them, proclaim them. He'll
take the things of Christ and bring all things to remembrance,
what Christ said. The Spirit of God is the witness
of Jesus Christ. And that man or that ministry
which bears the most witness of Jesus Christ, not itself,
but of Jesus Christ, that man or that ministry who points people
the most to Jesus Christ, not himself, not the Church, to Jesus
Christ, not themselves, to Jesus Christ. That man or that ministry
which exalts Jesus Christ to the stars, which praises him
with everything they do or say, that preaches him His person,
His work, everything about Him, that's who the Holy Spirit of
God is anointing. Count on it. And now look here at the text
here. I've got six points. There were six points in Christ's
outline here. Six points in His message and
six in mine. He said, The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. remind you that Christ had the
Spirit without measure. Now, what was Christ's chief
occupation? Look at it here, verse 18. He
said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. I've got a job to
do. The Spirit of the Lord has anointed
me, sent me to what? Preach the gospel. Look over with me at Mark chapter
1. Preach the gospel. Do you know that God Almighty
had one son? Joe, do you know what he did?
He was a preacher. He was a preacher. He wasn't a preacher of foolishness,
and he wasn't a foolish preacher. But he was a preacher, a preacher
of the gospel. No doubt about it. Verse 15,
Mark chapter 1. Look at this. Christ first began
his ministry, and it says in Mark 1, verse 15, "...as he walked by the seaside." That's not the
passage I want. Verse 14. After John was put
in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom
of God. This was the first point in Christ's
preaching, the gospel of the kingdom of God, or that is, that
God is the King who has dominion. All authority, all power, the
sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, absolute monarch
of all men, Jesus Christ preached the King, God in his absolute
authority, the Creator, the ruler, the controller of all things,
the dominion of the King. That's what kingdom means, the
dominion of the King. And verse 15, saying, the time
is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent. Sounds old-fashioned, doesn't
it? But that's what he preached,
though. Why? Because if you ever see the King
in all his glory, if you ever see God in all his holiness,
you'll repent. You'll see yourself. Repent ye,
repentance toward God, that is, and believe the gospel, he says. The exaltation of God, repentance
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he
preached. Look at verse 37. And when they found him, they
said unto him, All men seek for thee. And he said unto them,
Let's go into the next town, that I may preach there also. I've got a lot of preaching to
do, a lot of meetings to hold, a lot of sheep got to hear my
voice. For therefore I came, came I
forth. And he preached, you see. Boy,
that adds dignity to this office, doesn't it? And the scriptures
say, let no man despise you. Get up into the high mountain.
Preach! I know they don't like preachers today. They shouldn't.
Ain't none of them very likable. But preach anyway. Preach. Now, on this social issue or
that social issue, look back at the text. Look at what he
preached. He said he preached, The Spirit of the Lord hath anointed
me to preach the gospel. The gospel. Paul said in one
place, he said, Necessity is laid upon me. Words unto me,
he said, if I preach not. Now, he didn't stop there. If
I preach not the gospel, he said. Because there are other gospels
out there. There are perversions of the gospel. There are many
who claim to be preaching the gospel. That one Jesus, because
there are other Jesuses who men are following. I need to proclaim
So there is no doubt who Jesus Christ really is, what he really
did, what the gospel really is. Do you see the reason to define
the gospel? Certainly you do. One true gospel,
one Lord, one faith, what is the gospel? Well, the answer
lies in the rest of his message here. He said, the Lord
has anointed me, the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor. to the poor. Am I poor in here this morning? Well, you say, yeah, I'm poor.
I don't have much to eat, and I don't have a big savings. That's
not what I'm talking about here. That's not what Christ was talking
about here, either. Not at all. He's not talking about penniless. He's talking about godless. He's
not talking about homeless. He's talking about those who
don't have a righteousness. Talking about those who realize
by God's Holy Spirit that they are nothing, that they are nobodies,
that they are no good, that there is no soundness in them, that
there is none good in them, no righteousness. Nothing to recommend
them to a holy God. Nothing. In my hand, no price
I bring. I don't have anything If anybody
anywhere thinks that they have anything to offer to God, they're
not poor, and the gospel is not for them. I don't care if it's
our good deeds, if it's our morality, if it's my motherhood. If anybody
anywhere thinks that, hey, God needs me, or I've got something
to offer to God, or I can accept or reject God, that's not a poor
person, and the gospel is not for them. The word means good news. You go up to Madison Avenue or
Park Place or wherever it may be and go up to a mansion and
walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell, and the butler
answers it, and you ask for the man of the house, and he or she
comes down there and you say, I've got good news for you. They're
giving food away down here at the Mission. dressing, all the trimming. Come
on and eat. My dear sir, I'll let you know
that I am resident of the local bank here, and I ain't had to
eat up nothing. But you go down on Skid Row now,
to an old boy who hadn't had a meal in a few days, hadn't
had a bath, and you say, hey, give them food away now. Now,
that's good news to that old boy. And the gospel is a spiritual
thing. The gospel is the good news of
pardon. Free pardon. Now, who needs pardon? Guilty people go to the prison
and holler out from the highest fence or wall, we're going to
let everybody go who's guilty in here. There'll be a shout
to the highest heaven. But you go to the average church
and stand up before them and say, I've got good news, got
a gospel, got mercy, God's got mercy, going to have mercy on
somebody. What was that, Preacher? That those who realize that they're
poor. And those who realize that God's
given away salvation, buddy, they're going to be on a doorstep
waiting for it. Those who realize God is going
to accept some people. That's the way. That's blasphemy, isn't it? That's
the highest form of blasphemy. That's another gospel. What good
news is there to that? They make that sound, Henry,
they make that sound like it's good news to God, don't they?
Hey! And they say there's joy in heaven
over every sinner that repents. I know the Scripture says that.
But there's glory to God given for every sinner that repents
because God's the one that did it, not because they of their
own free will did it. And God's not just happy and
glad because they accepted him. The boy, when a sinner hears
the gospel of free expectation for him, that God's accepting
some people in the beloved, that there's nothing acceptable about
me, that my goodness is like filthy, dirty, stinking rags,
my rites, my churchgoing, my morality's no good, but God's
receiving some people. You know God's accepting applications
for mercy. He's doing the accepting, Joe,
not us. And if anybody who knows what
they really are before this holy God hears about that, they'll
sue for mercy. Can I have some? You say there's
mercy? I want some of that daily. Daily. It's not a one-time thing, either.
The gospel of the poor. Poor. Anybody poor in here? Huh?
in poor folk, spiritually poor, blessed in the poor, for theirs
is what? The kingdom of heaven, the gospel,
the good news to the poor. Christ said, God the Holy Spirit
has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor. And there was a
few, not many, but a blessed chosen few. And I hope there's
a few in here. Look at point number two. God has sent me to preach the
gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. Christ preached healing. This was a healing ministry.
But he didn't have a crusade banner up there that said, Come
out tonight and I'll heal your arthritis. Any blind people,
I'm coming by and I'll heal your blindness. He did, but that's
not what he advertised. This is not what he's searching
here, Roberta. Healing! Do you remember that text of Scripture
where it says Christ came into one place and he healed everyone
that had need of healing? That had need. There's the key. There's the key, and he ain't
talking about my arthritis. He's not talking about my rheumatism.
Virgin, you're eighty-some years old, you're going to have arthritis.
You're going to have problems, you're going to have pain, you
can't do without it. And you're going to die someday.
That's the promise, that's what the Scripture says. We're going
to die, thus you are, thus you shall return. You're going to
ache, you're going to pain. That's not why Christ came. That's
not why he came. He said, look more closely, he
said, I came to heal the what? Broken hearted. Yeah, I lost my husband last
year, and my child, and my boys rebelling against me." That's
not what he's talking about either. Although, if you know him, that
peace will come. But that's not what he's talking
about here, brokenheartedness. In several places in the Scripture,
Psalm 34, Isaiah says, "...to this man will I look." This is
the person I'm going to take notice of. This is the person
I'm going to This is the person I'm going to have compassion
upon. He which is of a broken and a
contrite heart. Over what? Sin. Sin. And I remind you, not so
much what we have done. I've done a lot of bad things
in my past. Oh my, wouldn't want you to know
some of them. And I do a lot of bad things
now I wouldn't want you to know of. Think a lot of bad thoughts.
And I will do. Take it all and wrap it all together
and put it in my heart, in my head. It's this thing called
sin that rules me, that grips me, that makes me want to kill
a man because he pulls out in front of me in his automobile.
Sin that makes me want to lie quicker than I tell the truth.
Sin, that makes me ashamed of the gospel. Sin, that breaks
my heart. Sin, that makes me want to get
the credit and honor and the glory for what God only deserves.
Sin, for which God will hold me accountable, or somebody for
me. Sin, and it breaks my heart. Hearts broken over sin, that's
what Christ came to heal. Do you remember the man over
in Luke chapter 5, sick of the palsy? It says, do you remember
that story where Christ was teaching in a house and a man sick of
the palsy, born of four men, four people? They carried his
bed and they couldn't get in the front door or the side door
or the window or whatever. They wanted to get this man to
Christ. He needed to be healed of his palsy. Well, yeah, but
he needed something worse. Well, they climbed up on the
roof. Can you imagine all the trouble they went to to get this
man's body up on this roof? They must have worked an hour,
and they took the towel and tore the roof apart, and lowered him
right down in front of where Christ was sitting, teaching,
and everybody stopped. And the man, there he lay, sick
to the paws, all twisted and afflicted. You've seen some of
them, twisted and afflicted, and there's no doubt about it
what his man needed. No doubt what they lowered him
down there for. And what did Christ say to them?
Soon as they lowered him down in front of there, Christ looked
at the man and said, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Well, buddy, that would have
been enough to make him jump up out of that cot. And everybody, what does he mean? There's nobody can forgive sins
but God, and that's right. God, that's who that is. When
we brought him here to have his palsy, he doesn't need to be
healed of his palsy principally, he needs his sins forgiven. You
see, he's going to die someday, whether it be a palsy or cancer
or whatever, he's going to die and stand before a holy God.
So what does he need then? He'll be free of palsy all right,
but he'll have his sins on him unless I do something about it.
And God said, your sins are gone. soul. He's called the Great Physician. That song says, the healer of
souls is he, broken hearts over sin. Over sin. I'd like to find one. One. I've
got good news. I've got gospel. And then he
said, to preach deliverance to the captives. Point number three.
To preach deliverance to the captives. There he goes again,
preach. He said this three times in his
six-point message. He said it three times. Preach,
preach, preach. To preach, to preach, to preach.
It has something to do with preaching,
this deliverance, you know? But these folks didn't hear it.
These folks heard, Deborah, these folks heard the Son of God preaching,
and they were no different. And later on, these very ones
said, well, we'd be Abraham's seed. We've never been in bondage
to any man. We're not bound. That's a lie. You know, that's
a lie. They were lying then, and they're lying all the time.
The Jews were in bondage from the very beginning. They were
in bondage to the Egyptians, they were in bondage to the Babylonians,
and they were right then in bondage to the Romans. They were so deceived,
their hearts were deceived. That's a lie. And mankind, any
man who says, I'm free! He may be lied through his teeth. We're in bondage, we're captives,
we're in prison, first of all. Man is bound by the law of God
Almighty. Man is under the condemnation
of, the curse is under sentence of death because of this holy
law of God Almighty. You know what the word captive
means? I looked that up. The word captive right here means
prisoners of war. Prisoners of war. Now, what war
are we prisoners of? The war against God. The war against God. Romans 8,
7 says, The carnal mind, the natural man, is enmity against
God. hates God. Every man by nature,
every man who is not in Christ by faith, every man who does
not love God, love Christ, the disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ,
in Christ, in his righteousness, covered by his shed blood, God
Almighty is angry with that man. God Almighty, the wrath of Scripture
says, the wrath of God hangs over his head like a guillotine,
doesn't it? He's hanging over, he or she,
hanging over hell on a cobweb, waiting for the time when God
says, cut it, cut the rope. Prisoners of war. It started
with Adam, and it ends with us. We're in the, we're enlistees. We joined up, though we weren't
just drafted, we joined up in Adam's army, didn't we, against
God. You say, I don't hate God. I'm
a nice woman or a nice man, all right?" Men and women don't hate
their conception of God. Men and women don't hate the
God of their imagination who loves everybody, say. Who could
hate a God who loves everybody? Who could hate a God who wants
so badly to do some things for you, and He can't do it unless
you let Him? And if you do, He's just going
to heap praise on you. Who could hate a God like that?
but an absolute God who reigns in the armies of heaven and the
inhabitants of earth, who does his will according to his will
in his own good time, for whom he will, how he will, who chooses
whom he will, who does what he will with his own who saves some and passes by
others. Now, again, I don't like that
God. I don't like that God. You see,
and if they could, they'd pull him off the throne. And they
did. God came down here in the form
of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ said, Nobody, nobody gets to
the Father but by me. He said, All that the Father
gives me shall come unto me. And they said, we won't have
this. And they took God and hung him on a tree and put a spear
in his side and said, away with that God and we won't have that
God to reign over us. We want a God who loves us. And we enlisted, we're all enlistees
by nature in that army against God. The scripture says not only
that, but all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. A sad thing about it is, under
the pretense of giving glory to God, they're blaspheming him
in his name, in the name of his precious Son. And God is angry, and he'll require it at our hands. Or we're under the judgment of God.
That, the Scripture says. God, who is rich in mercy. for
his great love wherewith he hath loved some people." God became
a man. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. Immanuel, God with us, is his
name. And you know what he said? He
looked at some guilty, godless, God-hating, wicked, ungodly,
vile, God-hating rebels against God and said unto God, and for
everybody, for all time to hear it, from going down into the pit.
I got a ransom right here. I know it says the slave that
sinneth must surely die, but deliver that Lord right there,
and that one, and that one, not all of them, but those, those
right there, that one, that one, that one, that one. Deliver them
from going down in the pit. I paid the price. Blood, without
the shedding of blood, no remission of sins. I shed my blood freely
for some people. Not all, else all would be saved,
right? But some. And it's a people that
no man can number, a multitude of people, lest anybody object. But those who have the mark,
those who have felt the error upon them say, well, oh, my soul. Deliverance from the law, like
old barracks. I love that story. I just like
the name. Isn't that like Jesus Christ the Lord? Boaz. It was somebody who had first
claims on Ruth, wasn't it? Or Naomi. Somebody who had first
claims over her. And if he would redeem her, he
was supposed to. And that represented the Lord.
Boaz said, I'll go talk to him for you. And he went up and gave
his shoe. and did all that for Ruth's availment. Let the law head on, and that's
what Christ did. Christ took the book of the law,
the handwriting of ordinances that were against you, John.
You're under captivity. You're under curse, do you know
that? Do you know what the law is? Don't let anybody get you
under it. It's a curse. It condemns everybody that's
under it. Whatsoever things the law say, it says it's under the
law. Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which
are written in the book of the law to do them." Every jot, every
tittle. Christ says, it's impossible. He'd come under that. I'll keep
it. And he did. Every bit of it. Every bit of it. Kept it. He
had it written on his heart perfectly. He knew he wasn't going to fail
anywhere, Henry. Not in one, not in thought, word, or deed,
he did it all, and he stood before God Almighty, looked God Almighty
right in the eye and said, I fulfilled all righteousness as a man for Charlie Ross. Who? Of all people, why not President
Bush? He's a more valuable fellow.
No, I sent my love on Charlie." You think about that. Oh, Thoreau could do so much
more good, you know, he's got all these people, ain't he? And look at point number four.
Recovering, he said, he sent me to preach recovering of sight
to the blind. We're born blind. Do you know
that? And you know we're a great deal blind right now? We're in
darkness. We sure are. Ignorance, superstition,
we can't see God. I grope in the darkness all the
time, don't you? Grope around for answers. In
the darkness of sin, superstition, ignorance, can't see God, can't
see myself like I ought to see. I can't see my own desperate
condition. It's kind of like a man who's dying with AIDS and
is still continuing in his former course of life. It's killing
him. And as for me, Roberta, if I saw what sin was really
doing to me, I'd loathe the thought of it, wouldn't I? I'd avoid
every appearance of evil. If I saw what it did to the glory
of God and to my soul, my life, oh, Lord, keep me from evil. Like a man who's headed toward
a precipice, toward a cliff in pitch-black darkness. He might
think he's finding his way. He might think there's a way
that seems right to him. This must be the right way, and
he's headed toward a cliff. He's in the darkness, but God,
in mercy, turns on the light, and he says, Whoa, I about fell
off a cliff! Whoa unto me, I'm a sinner! That's when God turns the light
on, isn't it? I'm a sinner undone, lost and
unclean before God. God be merciful to me, the only
sinner on the face of the earth. If you're not merciful to anybody
else, I need it. God turned the light on to see
who God is, who he is, and to point that man to Christ. There's
your only hope, not what you do, not what you can be, only
what he has done and what he is right now. Right there is
your hope. Jesus Christ the righteous. There
he is. Believe in him. Believe on him.
Look to him. Call upon him. All right. To
set at liberty them that are bruised. There's a difference
here. To liberty them that are bruised. Set at liberty. Somebody gave me an illustration.
I said, what does this remind you of? I was sitting there reading
this to a I said, what does this remind you of? It's bruised,
being bruised. Well, I had one thing in mind,
and he had another, but it worked. It was fine, and I'm going to
use it. See, it kind of reminds me of
an apple that's been bruised. That's the first thing I think
of, an apple that's been bruised. And I said, well, how does an
apple get bruised? By a fall. You drop an apple, it's going
to be bruised, right? Now, do you know what we are? Why? He took a vow. In Adam,
all died. In Adam, all have sinned, and
judgment, condemnation, death passed upon all men, and all
of this captivity to sin, to the law of God, all this evil
is on us. We're bad apples, Roberta. Isaiah says, "...from the sole
of my feet to the top of my head." There's no sound in this sentence,
nothing but bruises and putrefying sores. Isn't it? Bruises. I'm a bad apple. God can't use me. I'm not going
to tell people that God needs them. What's God want with bad
apples? God's going to make a pile, right? God's going to make something
with a sweet smell and flavor to it. He ain't going to use
bruised apples. He's going to create new ones, new fruits,
without imperfections. Perfect, holy, spotless, blameless,
thoughtless. Present us thoughtless before
God, for God to make this glorious, best pie ever been made. It's
called grace. Salvation. And he ain't going
to take me and make me a better man. He's not going to make a
better man out of the old one. He's going to kill me. Crucify
me in Christ. Make me a new creature in Christ
for fruit, to bear fruit unto his Lord. And it's no longer
I that live now. It's not me. It's not part me
and part God. No, it's all Christ. All Christ. Now, look at this. This is the
greatest. He saved the best point for last. Oh, I'd like to have heard him
preach this. Maybe we are right now. He said, God, if the Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, he's anointed me to preach the, verse
19, acceptable year of the Lord. The acceptable year of the Lord. From the time that Jesus Christ
stood on the earth. the time that God walked this
planet until now. This is the acceptable year of
the Lord. These are good times, Henry.
These are gospel times. As I said before, there is acceptance
with God, God's acceptance of people, some men, God is accepting
some people. The Scripture says today is the
day of salvation. Salvation. This reminded me when
I looked at this, it reminded me of Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark. You know that after Noah built
that boat, 120 years, long time, after he built that boat, The
Scripture says that God waited seven days before he closed the
door, didn't he? Seven days. As long as that door
was open to that ark, there was salvation from that overflowing
scourge of God's wrath that was going to pass through. As long
as that door was open. You know what? God's mercy, isn't
it? That's the mercy of God. He didn't
have to take 120 years for Noah to build it. He didn't have to
wait seven days after it was built. He didn't have to. He
didn't have to build one period. But he did in mercy and grace
to some people. There was salvation in that ark. And do you know the reason we
preach here? We preach hell. We preach the doctrine of hell
and damnation and judgment. Why do we do that? Because it's
so. Number one. Because it's so. But I tell you what, nobody is
going to see the beauty. There's nobody back there, Sammy.
Nobody, nobody saw their need of that boat who didn't believe
it was going to rain. Right? They'd never seen rain
before. They didn't believe God's word
that God said it's going to rain. It's going to rain. Judgment's
coming every time Noah preached, the preacher of righteousness.
God's angry with the wicked every day. You'd better get in the
ark. It's the only place of safety. And we preach the same thing.
Judgment's coming. God's angry with the wicked every
day. You'd better get in Christ. Judgment's coming. Christ is
the ark of safety from divine wrath. You'd better get in Christ. kiss the sun, lest he be angry,
and blast the surf with his nostrils." And the only people who are going
to see their native Christ and see any beauty about that boat,
that ark, are those that realize, hey, this is true. This is true. I believe. And they come to Christ
by faith. And you know, there may have
been There may have been one or two people back in that flood
days that said, well, it sounds interesting. I'll look into it tomorrow. I've
got a party to go to tonight. Tomorrow, I'll make a decision
one way or another not to tune that boat. But you know what
happened? They heard of it. The door was shut. 120 years and seven days. The gospel's
being, this is the day. Not tomorrow. Today is the day
of salvation. Not tomorrow. I cannot promise
you you'll ever hear another gospel message. I cannot promise
you. We're not having services tonight. We're not having services tonight. Today is the day of salvation. Harden not your heart, as in
the provocation when the children of Israel, none of them went
in. None of them. Boast not thyself of tomorrow,
Christ said, but you don't know what the day will bring forth.
And Christ said, He anointed me to preach the acceptable year
of the Lord, and close the book. gave it to the minister. That reminded me of when God
Almighty, when Christ took the book out of the hand of the Father,
read the names in the Lamb's book of life, closed the book,
handed it to the angels, the book of judgment and wrath, and
said, Now, take the names which are written and do all to the
earth that I said for you to do. And those in me spare. Everybody you find the blood
on their hearts by faith, pass over." And he sat down. He sat down. God is seated right now. Christ
is seated on the throne right now. The book is open. We had the book open this morning
for a good while. The door of the ark is open,
Christ. Oh, my soul. I tell you, come to Christ now. The door
is open. May God help us to see, to hear
the gospel. Stand with me.