Please turn in your Bibles to
Luke's Gospel, Chapter 4. Luke Chapter 4. I'll begin reading in verse 16. 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 the book of the prophet Esaias, or Isaiah. And when he had opened
the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor, He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord. 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 the scripture or this
scripture fulfilled in your ears. I want to speak to you this morning on liberty procured and proclaimed. I know that there will be a lot
said about liberty and freedom today and throughout this week
of July the 4th. here in what is called the land
of the free. And we do enjoy a great deal
of personal liberty, probably more than anywhere else in the
world. And I'm thankful for that liberty. I'm thankful for the liberties
we have, especially the freedom to gather and worship and preach
the gospel. And I see some of those liberties
and some of that freedom ebbing away daily, I'm afraid. But though we have this liberty,
though we all enjoy this freedom, that does not necessarily apply
to our souls, to the matter of our situation spiritually. And the truth is we can enjoy
all of this liberty, all of this freedom, and still be slaves. We don't like to think of ourselves
as slaves or as captives or as being imprisoned or as being
bound. But we still can be such and
are apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ read from the prophecy
of Isaiah that we read for our reading when he stood up in the
synagogue to read. And what he read was the same
thing, virtually, about what the Messiah would do and how
he would be when he came. And in so many words, he finished
reading this passage and said, I am the Messiah. I am the one sent of God. I am the Christ. I am the one that this passage
was speaking of. And I am the one that has come
to proclaim liberty to the captives. And if we are to hear the message
of the gospel, then it necessarily applies that if Christ came to
liberate or to set free or to unbind, we must be in that condition. We must be what he says that
we are. And I believe that what both
Isaiah and what the Lord Jesus Christ was saying here, he was
alluding to the fact of the liberty that was pictured to be proclaimed
when the jubilee year came. Every 50 years. In Israel, there
was appointed of God a jubilee year, or a year of liberty. Listen to Ezekiel 46. He says, but if he give a gift
of his inheritance to one of his servants, then it shall be
his to the year of liberty after it shall return to the prince,
but his inheritance shall be for his sons for them." In other
words, this was to revert back to the sons or to the actual
heirs in this year of liberty. Now, if you turn back to Leviticus,
the book of Leviticus, we find something about what the Lord
Jesus Christ is talking about in the things that God gave through
Moses for Israel. In verse 8 of Leviticus 25, we
read these words. And thou shalt number seven sabbaths
of years unto thee, seven times seven years. And the space of
the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto you forty and nine years. Every seventh year was the sabbath
year. and seven of those times means
49 years. Then you shall cause the trumpet
of the jubilee to sound on the 10th day of the seventh month
in the day of the atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout
all the land. all your land, and ye shall hollow
the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be a jubilee unto
you and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and
ye shall return every man unto his family." So the fulfillment
of what Isaiah was saying And the picture that we read in Leviticus
was setting forth the fulfillment of that day and time and event
is what Christ is saying is now come to pass. And it pictures this day of grace,
this sounding of liberty, And Christ is hereby preaching the
gospel, which James calls the perfect law of liberty. The perfect law of liberty. You see, the gospel is good news
of a liberation. It is the good news of a liberty
that has been procured by the Lord Jesus Christ and is now
to be proclaimed. It is the liberation of Christ
that he has accomplished for his people. He has set them free. Another place in the Old Testament
refers to them as the prisoners of hope. In other words, how
could you ever have such terms as that, prisoners, and hope
in the same phrase? But it describes them, that although
they are like everyone else, prisoners, in this spiritual
sense, they have hope, the hope of God and grace in Christ. And that is why that it is said
here in Leviticus that this trumpet, and maybe it's just a little
bit hard for us to understand when it says trumpet. Because
what actually was being sounded was the shofar or the ram's horn,
and it was to be blown and sounded all throughout the land to sound
the note of the jubilee year and this liberty. And I don't
think that's without a reason with God. Because the ram is
the symbol, if anything is, of the substitutionary work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And I say that because of this. When Abraham took Isaac up into
the Mount of Moriah and offered him up, was about to offer him
up in a sacrifice, in obedience to God, When God said to Abraham
that he was to take his son, his only son, into that mound
and offering, Abraham in obedience went up. And Isaac looked, and
he saw the knife, and he saw the fire, and he saw the wood
necessary for the offering and the sacrifice. But he asked this
question to his father. He said, I see all the things
necessary for offering the sacrifice, except the sacrifice. And the Lord and Abraham said
to Isaac, he said, the Lord will provide himself a sacrifice. And so when he went up into that
mountain and Abraham was about to plunge the knife into his
son Isaac, God stayed his hand and pointed to him a ram In the
caught in the thickets by its horn, a God provided sacrifice
and he took that ram and offered him up in the place of Isaac. He offered that ram as a picture
of substitution, as a picture of the sacrifice that God has
made in Christ for his people. And if you notice here, it says
that this was to be sounded, this liberty was to be proclaimed
on the day of atonement. Adding to this very thing, it
was to be sounded on the Day of Atonement that we read about
so clearly in Leviticus 16. On that day that would bring
about this at-one-ment with God, whenever Aaron, as the high priest
who is a type of Christ, he was to wash himself with water. That speaks of the sinless perfection
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That earthly priest was to wash
himself with water and he was to clothe himself with a linen
coat and with britches and with a girdle and with a miter and
all the things that speak of the humanity of Christ. And he
was to take two goats. And he was to cast lots on those
two goats. And whichever goat the lot of
the Lord fell on, in other words, what was necessary to satisfy
God, what was necessary God-ward, Whatever lot that the lot of
the Lord fell on, that goat was to be taken and slain and offered
and his blood shed as a sacrifice to God. But the other lot, the one that
fell for the sinner, for the offerer, That goat was to be
taken by a fit man, a suited man, and he was to be led out
into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Which pictured how the blood
of Jesus Christ, how the substitute himself would take away our sins,
and as it says in the Bible, never to be remembered again. But more than atonement, the message of the gospel speaks
of reconciliation. Atonement in the Old Testament
basically is the Hebrew word that means a covering, covered over. But when we get
to the New Testament, when Paul writes like this, and not only
so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
we have now received the atonement, that word is actually reconciliation. In Christ we have received the
reconciliation. He says in Hebrews 2, wherefore
in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren
that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things
pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. And Christ has come and he's
done that work. He's hung on that cross. He's
offered that sacrifice. He's made reconciliation. And what is to be proclaimed
now is this liberty. This freedom. That God was in
Christ reconciling. Listen to what Isaiah said. And it shall come to pass in
that day that the great trumpet shall be blown and they shall
come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria and the
outcasts in the land of Egypt. and shall worship the Lord in
the holy mount at Jerusalem." Now what does that mean spiritually? He's talking about that day.
If you noticed in Luke chapter 4, that part of that prophecy
was that he had come in, he was come to bring about the acceptable
year of the Lord. What is that? Well, in one sense,
it is the last days, which began at the coming of Christ. But
it was the day of grace, the time and period in which the
gospel shall be preached clearly and fully, and by that, these
that are described as ready to perish and outcast in various
places, they'll come together at the message of this liberty,
and they worship the Lord in this spiritual Jerusalem, in
the church. But what did it mean? Whenever this shofar was sounded,
whenever the gospel is preached, What does it actually mean? What did it sound for those Israelites
during that time? Well, first of all, it meant
that they were to cease from all their labors and all their
working and all their efforts and do nothing. You say, well, that sure would
be good news. It would be good news to us naturally
for a while, until we began to worry and wonder at what our
next meal would be, at what we would do for something to eat
or drink in the coming year. Which means that the only way that we could live would be to
trust the Lord. Look over here in Leviticus chapter
25 and verse 10. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you,
and you shall return unto every man his possession, and you shall
return every man unto his family. And a jubilee shall that fiftieth
year be unto you. You shall not sow, neither reap
that which is grown of itself in it, nor gather the grapes
in it of thy vineyard undressed. For it shall be the jubilee,
it shall be holy unto you. Ye shall eat the increase thereof
out of the field. In other words, they were not
to plant. They were not to harvest. They
were not even to harvest that which grew up naturally. They
were not to do anything in that year except rest. Rest. They were not to tell or
sow or anything like that. And that's the reason why there
are so many false gospels in this world which are always telling
people to do something in order to gain God's favor. One of the deceptions of Satan,
the chief deception of Satan, is to make men and women think
that they must do something to please God and that they can. But that's not what the gospel
says. The gospel proclaims liberty from such bondage, from such
doing, from such stress, from such bondage as that. Listen,
he says in Ephesians 2, for by grace, are ye saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast." Now there's two things there
that people have problems with. Number one, the idea that salvation
is totally 100% altogether by the grace of God. And the second thing is that
faith is not a work that you do which is a condition of salvation. It also is a gift of God. Everything's a gift, just like
it was at this time. Everything, the Lord prospered
the harvest so that they could rest, so that they could cease
from their doing all of the jubilee year, that they could rest and
appreciate what God had done for them, such as Paul says in
the gospel concerning Romans 4. But to him that worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted
for righteousness." Also, the next verse, even as David also
describes the blessedness unto whom God imputes righteousness
without works. Paul writing to Titus, not by
works of righteousness which we have done, but according to
his mercy he saved us. Everywhere you look, there's
a gospel sounding Christ as being our Jubilee or Christ as being
our Sabbath, and he says it like this, coming to me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you what? Responsibilities. I'll give you a list, I'll give
you a punch list of what you can do to please God. No. He says, come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Rest. And then we come up with something
like this. What if I don't feel like this
rest? What if I don't pray enough? Or what if I don't
give enough? What if I don't do enough? What
if I don't just, how is it if I don't do that? Any way you look at it, The only
liberty, the only peace, the only satisfaction that you can
ever have is based on something God did and something God said. And Christ, the gospel always
points out to Christ for what he did and for what he accomplished
because that's the basis upon which we can have this rest. 90% of more than that. 99% of all
the religious figures of all the preachers, of all
the priests that are in this world, you can go to them, everyone,
and say, what should I do to please God? And they'll tell
you something to do. But the gospel preacher, the
Bible, Those that truly speak for God, those who proclaim the
word of God, they proclaim the gospel which is said to be good
news that we have been liberated from all this doing that we might
rest. Christ proclaimed liberty to
those who are the captives of this natural and false religion
which always sends us to doing something, feeling something
to do with pleasing God. But it not only meant that. It
meant the liberation or the setting free of all slaves. All the slaves were in the jubilee. All these people that had sold
themselves into bondage or come by one way or another into bondage,
they were to be set free. Set free. Every condition of servitude,
everything that was binding and incarcerating every person, they
were to be set free. I always think about the Philippian
jailer. He stood in that position of
authority, a rough man, no doubt, and one who had been put in charge
because he could keep control of that prison. And Paul and
the others were in prison with the jailer. But the reality was
Paul and the prisoners were free, but the jailer was in bondage. He was really the captive. He
was really the prisoner. But the Lord dealt with him,
spoke to him, revealed Christ to him, and when everything was
over, he himself was set free. The Bible says that we are slaves
to sin, that we are slaves to this world,
that we are slaves to Satan. Turn over to 2 Timothy. Now, I think this is most enlightening. II Timothy, chapter 2, beginning
with verse 24. And the servant of the Lord,
this is the servant of the Lord, must not strive but be gentle
unto all men, apt to teach patience, in meekness instructing those
that oppose themselves. If God, peradventure, will give
them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, that they may recover
themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive
by him at his will." I always remember When I hear these people talking
about rebuking the devil and such foolish nonsense as that,
I always remember where it says that Michael the archangel in
disputing with the devil over the body of Moses, he didn't
say such foolishness as that. He said, the Lord rebuketh. And all these Every man, woman,
boy, and girl that is born in this world is naturally captive
to the God of this world, which is Satan himself. You mean that one does this awful
thing and that awful thing? Oh, no, that's not the realm
in which he works. They are naturally and soon religiously
deceived. And if they're deceived by Satan,
they are naturally the captives of Satan. But it says here that
they are liberated by God. How? By giving them repentance. to the acknowledging of the truth. That's what repentance is about.
Repentance toward God is the acknowledging of that which is
true of God and all His Word. And that is the way He sets people
free. free from tradition, free from
all these errors in religion, free from a false hope, free
from a state of bondage to Satan, free in every way. And rather than the will of man
being free, The will of man is just like every other part of
man. It's in bondage to a fallen nature that is so easily deceived
by the devil. So the servant of the Lord, the
true preacher of the gospel, sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ,
and what He's done, and what He's accomplished, and how He
saved us, and by that acknowledging of the truth, He sets people
free from all of these lies. I ran into a lie on the way to
the building this morning. You talk about something contradicting
itself. It said, God is 100% real. Right under it said, try him. Try God? Like he's a piece of
cake or a drink or something like that? If he's 100% real,
we don't have to try. You see, Paul said, now the Lord
is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there's
liberty. Well, how do we know if the spirit
of the Lord is in a place? How do we know if the spirit
of the Lord is in us? Well, Christ said that the Spirit,
the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, when He's come, He'll
take the things of mine and show them to you. He'll emphasize the Lord Jesus
Christ. He'll present Him and bear witness
to the Word that says He is all of salvation, that He is the
only righteousness, that He is the only way to please God. And when He enables us to believe
that, When he enables us to believe
that Christ is all and has done all, then we will immediately
begin to experience liberty. Listen to the Lord himself. And
ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Listen to this, John 8. If the
Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Paul says in Romans 6, being
then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. Free from sin. How? Through Christ. He says this
in Romans 8, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has made us free from the law of sin and death. In other words, the law of sin
and death, pictured in the law, can only show our sins and pronounce
death on us. That's all it can do. People trying to put the Ten
Commandments up in this place and that place and all. All it
can do is pronounce you guilty. Because you haven't kept one
part of it. And if you kept all parts and
sinned in one part, you'd be guilty of the whole, James says. So what is the law of the spirit
of life in Christ? It's the gospel. Paul again to the Galatians,
stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us
free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. He said that to the churches
in Galatia who had had some people come into their midst again trying
to put them under the bondage of a do and live system. Do this. If you're a real Christian,
you'll do this. If you're that, that's always
Satan's method. To look for evidence of our salvation
in something that we do or in something that we can feel instead
of what it really is, which is to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ came to set the captives
free. It meant also the restoration
of all the properties. In other words, whatever had
been sold or lost of the properties of individuals was all restored
now. Can you imagine an Israelite
and he's lost everything he had, he's had to sell everything he
has to provide for his family and all things, he's down to
nothing. He's down to nothing one minute
and then all of a sudden this shofar sounds. And it means liberty. It means
the restoration of all that he's lost. What did we lose in Adam? We
lost that original innocence or righteousness, whatever you
want to call it. We lost the favor of God. We
lost dominion over the earth. We lost fellowship with God and
who knows whatever else we lost. But in Christ, we gain it all
and more. You see, all we lost in Adam,
we regain in Christ, but much, much more. We have now the righteousness
of God. We have eternal life. We have
everything because we have Christ who's all. All spiritual blessings. everything. And it meant also the cancellation
of all debts. I'm telling you, this was something.
This is what Christ is alluding to. This is what the prophet
Isaiah is alluding to. That's what the good news of
the truth is, the good news of the gospel. It's glad tidings,
liberty. True liberty, lasting liberty. And the slate of all indebtedness
was to be wiped clean. I could use that right now. Would you like to have every
one of your debts just canceled? Mark pay. But we have greater debts. We have a debt to the law and the justice of
God. And we owe the debt of eternal
death for our sin. You can't pay it. You can't pay it. That's why
hell is forever. Because there is no way that
God will ever be satisfied in the matter of our sin because
He's never honored in it. He's never paid. But the Bible teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ did
as the hymn says. Jesus paid it all. And I think more biblically than
what the second line says, all to him I owe. I understand that,
but the best way I think would be to put it, Jesus paid it all,
all the debt I owe. That means nothing left for me
to pay. We shall be saved from wrath
through him. He gave his life as a ransom. He accomplished a redemption. He paid all that was necessary. He bought a people. He became our surety, and the
surety, when the time was come, stood for the debt with his life,
with his blood poured out, and accomplished in the time between
his death and resurrection all that was necessary to satisfy
that debt to God's justice, and there ain't no more. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written,
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. And then finally there was to
be the restoration of every man's inheritance. We're
kind of like Esau. We sold our birthright for a
mess of soup. But Christ, because in him we're made heirs of God. we have an eternal inheritance. We got back more than that inheritance
with Adam. The second and last Adam, that
inheritance we receive in him far exceeds it. He says, in whom also we have
obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the
purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his
own will. An inheritance that can't be
lost. the promise of an eternal inheritance,
an inheritance, as Peter says, incorruptible and undefiled,
and that fate is not a way reserved in heaven for you. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed
this. that day, the first day of his
public ministry in Nazareth when he read from Isaiah, the Lord
has sent me to preach or proclaim liberty to the captives. And he did it on the cross. You say, I've never read that.
Well, it's in three words in the King James, but it's in one
word in the original. When he said, it is finished. Finished. All that was necessary to set
all the people All his, that died, that he died for, all of
the elect, all of God's children, all that was necessary to accomplish their freedom,
he finished. And so now, it's to be proclaimed. Liberty in Christ. Stand fast
in the liberty in Christ. Don't be put under bondage from
the liberty that's in Christ. He's already done all the work.
He's already paid all the price. He's already accomplished what
was necessary. And if He makes you free, you're
free indeed. Free indeed. If you think this was good news
to those Israelites, I suspect it would not have been
good news to some. Those who thought they had done
everything right, Those who had probably taken what was not theirs
or done so unjustly, those who thought they had something, it wouldn't have been good news
to them. But to every bankrupt, every enslaved, Every person who lost their inheritance, it was a blessed good news to
them. Christ said, I'm come. I'm come
now. I don't expect you to believe anything because I said
it, but God help you to hear the
Lord Jesus Christ proclaim liberty to your hearts. And therefore, every reason comes
to give him all the glory. He's the liberator. And all liberty is because of
what he did. I look and I'm thankful for earthly
freedoms. But I also see so many people
who have them and who are yet in such bondage. I heard a man
say on the radio yesterday, they asked him, a question was
asked him, he said, they said, now that you're at the pinnacle
supposedly, is there anything that you wish you had known As you made this rise, he said,
yeah, one thing, and that is that there's nothing
there. You get to the top, and there's
nothing there. The one thing we need to know is that Christ has done it all. that if God, in his grace, imputes
his righteousness to us, if we're in him, and he enables us to
trust in him, we're free. Free to worship him, free to
serve him, free to do, not in order to get, but because we
have received it as a gift. That's liberty. when you can
work because you want to, not because you have to. Our Father, we pray this morning that in our weakness, our frailty
in this flesh, in every Through your word you would speak
to the hearts of your people and cause them to know this blessed
truth, rejoice in it, rely upon it, that they might have in Christ
rest for their souls. Be liberated from tradition and
superstition and all other things and find for themselves liberty. that has been procured and now
is to be proclaimed in Jesus Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.