If three old sinners can sound
that good, I cannot begin to imagine what it will be like when a number that no man can
number sings the praises of our Savior. I invite your attention this
morning to the book of Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah 61, and after
you've found that, Flip over to Luke 4 and put a marker or
your finger there. Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. Isaiah 61 verse 1, The Spirit
of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath 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 garment 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." Now we know clearly
that these verses are speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ because
He tells us as much in Luke chapter 4 that we're going to read here
in a minute. And we find an account there of our Lord going to the
synagogue on the Sabbath day, as we're told, as was His custom,
and standing up to read Scripture. Let's flip over there to Luke
chapter 4. Verse 17 tells us that they gave
Him the book of Isaiah. These were actually scrolls.
And it says, that he read from that book, and it was a short
reading, only one sentence. But oh, what a sentence. He read,
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.
Now, our Lord declared in that one sentence His entire purpose
for coming to this world. And He told those present in
the synagogue on that day, this day is this Scripture fulfilled
in your ears. I am the one, speaking of here,
I am the one that God has sent. Let's start reading in verse
22. And it says, And all bear him
witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded
out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's
son? And he said unto them, You will
say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself whatsoever we have
heard done in Capernaum. Do also here in thy own country. And he said, Verily I say unto
you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you
of a truth. Many widows were in Israel in
the day of Elias, when the heavens were shut up three years and
six months, when great famine was throughout all the land.
But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Septuagint, the
city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers
were in Israel in the time of Elias the prophet, and none of
them were cleansed save Nahum the Syrian. Both these people
were Gentiles. And all they in the synagogue,
when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose
up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow
of the hill whereupon their city was built, that they might cast
him down headlong. And he, passing through the midst
of them, went his way, and came down to Capernaum, a city of
Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days. And they were astonished
at his doctrine, for his word was with power." Now, our Lord
begins Isaiah 61 by telling us, the Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me. And we know from what was spoken
of by John the Baptist that we find in John 3.34 that God the
Father gave to God the Son the Spirit without measure. The Spirit
that He says was upon Him. John said, For he whom God sendeth
speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by
measure unto him. Now the first part of this verse
tells us that Christ speaks the very words of God. God the Father. We know this because in his prayer
to the Father in John 17, verse 8, our Lord says, speaking of
His disciples, "'For I have given unto them the words which thou
gavest Me.'" Then in John 3, verse 34, it goes on to say,
"'For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.'" Now when
we read that, that Christ is given the Spirit without measure,
it simply means that there is no limit. to the degree of the
Spirit of God to be found in this man, Christ Jesus. Colossians
2.9 tells us, For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. Every attribute of God, every
characteristic of God, every bit of the power of God, all
the goodness of God, all the grace of God, all the love of
God, and every other thing that can be attributed to our God
is found in its fullness in the man, Christ Jesus. We read throughout
the Holy Book of how Christ is the very wisdom of God. Colossians
2.3 tells us, "...in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge." When we receive any gift of the Spirit, that
gift comes from the storehouse of Christ Jesus, where all of
the treasures of God are hidden. Also, the love of God is found
in Christ without measure, meaning that God the Father loves His
people as much as He loves His Son, because His people are one
with Christ, inseparable from Him. Paul tells us that in Romans
8, 38, 37, and 38, where we read, "...for I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus." Now, I enjoy telling
my wife and members of my family, I love you. And I hope they know
that I mean it. My granddaughter, I think on
one of my birthdays, wrote on Facebook, there's nothing that
this man wouldn't do for his family. And that is indeed the
truth. But sadly, I'm limited by my
ability and my means to do them good. But not so with our God. Turn to 1 John with me. 1 John chapter 4. Beginning in verse 7, speaking
of the love of God, it said, Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not
God, for God is love." And he demonstrated that love to the
nth degree because we read in the next two verses, and this
was manifested, this is how God showed His love. And this was
manifested, the love of God toward us, His people, His elect. Because God sent His only begotten
Son into the world, that we might live through Him, here in His
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. He sent His Son
to become a bloody sacrifice and to give His very soul an
offering for sin. There has never been a greater
manifestation of love in the history of this world than that.
God the Father, for reasons known but to Himself, said who, we're
told in Proverbs 8, was daily His delight, rejoicing always
before Him. And further, God the Son manifested
His love toward us in the fact that He was willing to come when
sent by the Father and lay down His life to suffer unimaginable
sorrow and wrath in order to bring us to God. Next, we read
in Isaiah 61 that God hath anointed Christ to preach good tidings
unto the meek. Now, the anointing of the Spirit
in the New Testament is compared to the anointing with oil that
we find in many places in the Old Testament. Anointing oil
is mentioned 20 times in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers. An anointing in the Old Testament
was a rite of inauguration into each of three different offices
in the Jewish commonwealth. Prophets were sometimes anointed
to their office, as Elijah was instructed of the Lord to anoint
Shaphat in 1 Kings 19.16. Priests were anointed unto their
office as well. In Exodus chapter 40, God gives
Moses instructions on the anointing of Aaron and his sons. An anointing
was also a divinely appointed ceremony in the inauguration
of Jewish kings. In 1 Samuel 10.1, it gives us
the account of Samuel anointing Saul to be king. In 1 Kings 1.34,
Zadok, the priest, and Nathan the prophet are given instructions
on the anointing of Solomon as king. And we read in the scriptures
where David was anointed three times. You see a pattern here? The three offices appointed were
prophet, priest, and king. Does that sound familiar? It should, because our Lord was
all three in one person. And He fulfilled those offices
better than any fallible man ever could. And He continues
to be our advocate, our priest, and our king. And His anointing
was not done by any man as was the case of the kings and the
prophets and the priests in the old Scriptures. but his anointing
was done by God the Father himself. And that anointing was not with
oil, as was done in the Old Testament, but rather, as we just read,
with the Spirit without measure. Peter declared in Acts 10, 37
and 8, that word I say ye know, which was published throughout
all Judea and began from Galilee after the baptism which John
preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost
and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil. And further, His anointing was
unlike the anointing we found in the Old Testament Scriptures,
because He was sent to preach good tidings unto the meek. Those same meek that were told
by Christ would someday inherit the earth. Now let me, just on
a side note, For a moment, address the difference. There's a significant
difference in the readings in these two scriptures between
Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. And I looked into this and spent
a fair amount of time researching it, but just to condense it down
to a couple of sentences, I just became more confused the more
I read to tell you the truth. Things written about the Hebrew
being different from the Greek and the Dead Sea Scrolls were
found to contain several different versions of Isaiah 61, and the
Aramaic translation was different again. But let's just suffice
it to say that if it's found in this new King James Bible,
that both those readings are accurate and scriptural, and
we'll simply leave it at that. Now, in the account of Christ
reading this text from Isaiah in the synagogue, It's described
in Luke 4. It reads, "...because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." This preaching
is one of six miracles which Christ listed when He spoke in
Matthew 11.5 when the two disciples of John the Baptist came and
said, are you the one that should come or do we look for another?
And Christ said, go back and tell John the things that you
have seen and heard. And then He listed six miracles. The blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto
them, exactly as promised in Luke 4. Now, none of these first
five miracles I don't think is as miraculous as the sixth, because
modern medicine can sometimes recover sight for a blind man,
They can sometimes, with surgery, correct what we call birth defects,
where the lame can walk. Leprosy certainly can be cleansed
with modern medicine. The deaf sometimes can have their
hearing restored. And there are times when people
die, at least for a few moments, their heart stops, and they're
brought back. But these are simply temporal
things. The real miracle here is that
Christ says that poor have the gospel preached to them. That
is a miracle that has eternal ramifications. The Lord promises
in Ezekiel 34, 16, it says, or I should say, the next thing
that we read in Isaiah, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, the
next thing we read in Isaiah 61 is that Christ came to bind
up the brokenhearted. Now, the Lord promises in Ezekiel
34, 16, it says, I will seek that which was lost and bring
again that which was driven away, and I will bind up that which
was broken and will strengthen that which was sick. Our great
physician binds up our wounded head, that head which contains
that carnal mind that we're told is enmity toward God. It cannot
be subject to the law of God. Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians
and in Romans, but he also tells us in 1 Corinthians that we now
have the mind of Christ, that sound mind that he spoke of to
Timothy. And he binds up our heart, that
same heart that's spoken of in Genesis 8.21, from which every
imagination from our youth is evil. And he doesn't just bind
up our heart, He actually promises to give us a heart of flesh and
remove our heart of stone. And He binds up our hands, those
hands that before were swift to shed blood, and He makes us
fit to ascend into the hill of the Lord and stand in His holy
place as spoken of in Psalm 24. He binds up our feet, which before
were used to run to evil and to make haste to shed blood,
and brings us up out of that horrible pit that David spoke
of, out of the miry clay, and sets our feet upon a rock, and
establishes our going. He promises to deliver our soul
from death, our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling. He
binds up our eyes, which were blind, but are now unable to
see the glorious light of Christ. He binds up our ears, which before
could not hear, the glorious gospel of Christ, but now soak
it up like a sponge. The Psalms have much to say about
this thing of a broken heart, this heart which Christ says
He came to bind up. Psalm 34, 18 says, The Lord is
nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saith as such, as
be of a contrite spirit. He has united them with a broken
heart because He knows what they're going through. His heart was
broken more than any man who ever lived when he was separated
from his Father. Psalm 51, 17 says, The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou
will not despise. He does not despise these things
because He's the one that brings them. He's the one that does
the breaking. He shows us our vile sinfulness.
He gives us a heart of contrition. And His goodness leads us to
repentance. In Psalm 147, verse 3, He says,
He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
This term, bindeth up, means to wrap with bandages, to care
for a wound, which is what our Savior does for His elect when
He begins and in time accomplishes the work of salvation. He wounds,
then He heals. We're told in 1 Samuel 2.6, the
Lord killeth and maketh alive. He bringeth down to the grave
and bringeth up. In exactly that order. Isaiah
1. Turn there with me to Isaiah
1. It's perfectly described to all sinners. Isaiah chapter 1. We'll begin reading in verse
4. Our sinful nation, a people laden
with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors.
They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One
of Israel unto anger. They have gone away backward.
Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and
more. The whole head is sick and the
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even
into the head, there is no silence in it. But wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores, they have not been closed, neither bound
up, neither mollified with ointment. Before Christ came to where we
were, we were like a soldier who was not only stricken with
a grievous disease, but had been mortally wounded on the battlefield. Sin had put us, spiritually speaking,
on our deathbed. But along comes our great physician. binds up our wounds, heals the
broken heart, broken over sin, and applies the only ointment
that will mollify our wounds, the salve of the righteousness
of the Christ. The word mollify is not a commonly
used word. but it means to soothe, to soften,
to make less harsh. Christ soothes our wound when
He finally speaks peace to the repentant heart after giving
us the gift of faith to believe. So when we read in this verse,
it tells us that Christ came to bind up the brokenhearted,
and it encompasses all that our merciful Savior does for the
wounded and lost sheep, that he seeks out, finds in the wilderness,
wounded and wandering, puts on his shoulders, brings back into
the fold, and nurses back to perfect health. The next thing
we find in our text in Isaiah 61, and that Christ came to do,
is to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound. Now when I read this, my mind
went to the stories I've read, and films I've seen and pictures
I'm sure you have too, about our troops in World War II in
Europe liberating the prisoners in the German concentration camps. And our minds simply cannot comprehend
the horrors that these men and women went through who were held
in these camps. Most of you have probably seen
the pictures. Many captives were basically skeletons covered with
skin. And their existence consisted
of days of utter, absolute misery, dying of disease and starvation,
days, weeks, months, and sometimes years of simply waiting to die.
And some have been held for years, slowly starved to death before
finally being executed. And our minds cannot begin to
comprehend even the slightest understanding of the elation,
the joy, the relief that these people went through, that they
experienced when they saw those American soldiers. knowing that
their liberation was actually going to take place, no more
suffering, no more sickness, no more starvation, no more sorrow,
no more being surrounded by constant death. But we can relate to what
it was like to be held captive under the horrible conviction
of our sin. When our merciful Savior began
to work in our hearts and put us in the prison house of conviction,
Spiritually, we experience some of what these prisoners endured,
which is described in the verses that I just read in Isaiah 1. When all hope was lost and our
doom was sure, there being only a matter of time before we perished,
our blessed liberator appeared and said, look unto me, all ye
into the earth, for I am God and there is none else. Look
and live. Look and live. And unlike most,
if not all, of these Jewish prisoners who later died and perished under
the wrath of God, our liberation is eternal. There is no second
death of those to be found in Christ. For as He lives forever
and we are in Him, so we live forever, beholding His blessed
face and singing His praises. The second part of that sentence
declares that our Lord opens the prison to them that are bound. Picture in your mind how prisoners
of old were not only kept in filth and darkness, but many
times chained to the wall, unable to move or do anything, And when
your feet and arms are chained to a wall, you literally cannot
relieve yourself of human waste. You lay in your own corruption,
which is a spiritual picture of us, a very good picture of
us, before the Lord freed us from the disgusting corruption
of sin in which we were born. And as disgusting as the picture
of that prisoner may be in our minds, it's nothing compared
to the disgust of the Holy God field when He views sin. But
as He did for Paul and Silas, He sends the earthquake of His
love. The chains fall off our wrists and our feet. The prison
doors are flung open and we walk out of the darkness into the
marvelous light of Christ our Lord. Next in our text in Isaiah
61, we read another reason Christ was sent to proclaim the acceptable
year of the Lord. Now some of the commentaries
that I read looking into the meaning of this stated that one
of the meetings had to do with the year of Jubilee, which happened
every 50 years in Israel. That was the year when the priests
went through the land, blowing trumpets and proclaiming liberty
for the slaves, the remission of debts, and the restoration
of possessions to their original families. Leviticus 25.10 describes
this, and it says, the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout
all the land unto all the captives 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." John Gill said
that this acceptable year of the Lord was that time which
He willed and fixed for the redemption of His people, in which He showed
His goodwill and pleasure and a sinful man in the gift of his
son to them and for them. And Matthew Henry said of this
text, by Christ sinners may be loosed from the bonds of guilt
and by his spirit and grace from the bondage of corruption. He
came by the word of his gospel to bring light to those that
sat in the dark. and by the power of His grace
to give sight to those that were blind. And I believe this also
has to do with the fact that God Himself in human flesh was
on this earth among sinful men to proclaim the gospel of His
grace and goodness, and also to do those things which He listed
to those disciples of John the Baptist. The next thing that
we read in Isaiah 61, which our Lord came to do, is to proclaim
the day of vengeance of our God. There are many places where the
scriptures speak of God carrying out vengeance. Let me read just
a couple. This word vengeance is defined as the infliction
of punishment in return for a wrong committed or for an injury or
offense. In Deuteronomy 32, 35, God declares,
to me belong vengeance and recompense. A recompense is the same word
that we use for compensation. Compensation or wages. And we
know from the Scriptures that the wages of sin is death. Ezekiel
25, 17, I and I will execute vengeance upon them with furious
rebukes. And they shall know that I am
the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon them. In Nahum 1-2 gives
a solemn warning to the ungodly. It says, God is jealous, and
the Lord revengeth and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance
on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. Our God will indeed carry out
vengeance on those that hate him and those that have done
wrong to his people. And if you're like me, sometimes
when people do you wrong, you think, we'll see about this. But that is not the way we are
to do it. Because I can guarantee you,
any vengeance, no matter how severe we may think it may be,
cannot equal the vengeance of our God. Whatever we may do to
our enemy, it will be temporal. But a vengeance of our God is
eternal. And the vengeance that He meets
out lasts forever. And then we read in Isaiah 61,
how that our Savior came to offer aid and solace to them who are
sorrowful. It says, He came to comfort all
that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn and dine, and to give
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Now this is something
in which we can truly take hope and encouragement and consolation.
Our Lord is often called a man of sorrows and inacquainted with
grief. He suffered depths of sorrow
that none of us will ever know. In the book of Lamentations,
we read that verse that we are so familiar with. It speaks of
Christ our Savior when He was forsaken of the Father and hung
between heaven and earth and cried out, My God, my God, why
has thou forsaken me? That verse in Lamentations reads,
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by, Behold, and see
if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto
me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger,
when our sins were laid upon our Savior, the blackest day
of all days in the history of this world. When angry God poured
out His fury due the sins of His elect upon His Son. And as there will be no mercy
in the day of judgment, so there was none on that day when our
blessed Savior's soul would make an offering for sin. Throughout
the eons of the ages past, our Savior had enjoyed the sweetest
fellowship with the Father. They were one. And even before our Lord was
crucified, He told His disciples, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful,
even unto death. So because He hath borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows, He is able to comfort His people
in times of the most extreme heartbreak. I think of Daniel
and Sandy and Dee's family. Isaiah 51.11 promises, therefore,
the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing
unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They
shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall
flee away." What a promise. Those who once
mourned in Zion will now return with singing. And a similar promise
is found in Jeremiah 31.12. It says, Therefore, they shall
come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together
to the goodness of the Lord for wheat and for wine and for oil,
and the young and the flock and the herd, and their souls shall
be as a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more at
all." And he promises the most blessed of traits. He gives us
beauty for ashes. This has to do with the many
references in the Old Testament where God's people in times of
repentance sat in sackcloth and ashes. And many times those ashes
would be dumped upon their head. And I'm sure that it was probably
a somewhat scary sight, particularly when those ashes were mingled
with tears of sorrow. But the Lord promises to replace
that ugliness with beauty. And there will be no more weeping,
no more sorrow, but only joy. and singing. And we're going
to swap mourning for the oil of joy, it tells us. Now, there's
many mentions of oil in the Old Testament, as I've already said.
One we find in the book of Esther, where oil was used in the purification
and the beautification of Esther and the other women before they
went into the presence of the king. So does the oil of the
Spirit beautify and purify us to make us acceptable to enter
into the courts of our God We have already reviewed how oil
was used to anoint prophets, priests, and sometimes kings
in Israel. And our text calls this the oil
of joy. And once we've been anointed
with this oil, there is no more sorrow, knowing that our God
will do us good eternally. And then we read in Isaiah 61
that the Lord came to give us the garment of praise for the
Spirit of heaviness." What another blessed swap. We read in Psalm
69, 20, a verse that clearly speaks of our Savior when He
was made a sacrifice for our sins. It says, "...reproach hath
broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. And I looked for
some to take pity, and there was none, and for comforters,
but I found none." He was full of heaviness because He not only
bore His own sorrow, but Isaiah 53 tells us that He carried ours
as well. And this is why He can promise
to swap our spirit of heaviness for a garment of praise. That
blessed garment of the righteousness of Christ will be ours to wear
for eternity as we praise our Savior. And lastly, because of
all that our Lord has done for us, we will be called Trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified. These are the last words in these
first three verses of Isaiah 61. Psalm 92 tells us, the righteous
shall flourish like the palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar
in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the
house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They
shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat
and flourishing, like a mighty oak, a mighty aged oak that continues
to bring forth its fruit for decades. So the people of God,
those that have been planted by our Lord, shall bring forth
fruit as long as they live. The fruit of righteousness, the
fruit of the Spirit, spoken of by Paul in Galatians 5. Love,
joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and
temperance. And in John 15, verse 13, Christ
told his disciples after one of his many run-ins with the
Pharisees, he said that every plant which my heavenly Father
hath not planted shall be rooted up. They will not be as those
planted by the Lord, or as the good seed that fell on good ground
and brought forth much fruit. Rather, they'll be like the tares
that will be gathered up at the harvest and cast into the fire. In all of this, everything that
is listed in these first three verses of Isaiah 61 will be for
one reason, which is the last three words we read in this text,
that He, our God and Savior, might be glorified. That He will
be highly lifted up and greatly praised by those whom He has
redeemed throughout eternity. In Isaiah 42, our God declares,
Thus saith the Lord God, he that created the heavens and stretched
them out, he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh
out of it, he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and
spirit to them that walk therein. I am the Lord, for I the Lord
have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and
will keep thee, and will give thee for a covenant to the people,
for a light to the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring
out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness
out of the prison house. I am the Lord, that is my name,
and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise
to graven images." Our God and Savior does everything He does
for the good of His people. and the glory of His name, that
name which is above every name, that name, or that one who's
known by many names in the scriptures, the angel of the Lord, the author
and finisher of our faith, the good shepherd, the mighty God,
the chief cornerstone, Emmanuel, the everlasting Father, the friend
of sinners, the Holy One of Israel, the great I Am, the Lamb of God,
the Light of the World, the Alpha and the Omega, the Rose of Sharon,
Wonderful, Counselor, Son of God and Son of Man, to name just
a few. And we look forward to that day
when we shall see Him as He is and being able to praise Him
as we ought. I pray that the Lord will use
this message to give some degree of comfort to those among us
that are brokenhearted, to those that are suffering under the
discipline of God. Not discipline for anything they've
done, But we're promised that if we are without chastisement,
we're bastards and not sons. The Lord sends these afflictions
for a purpose, to bring glory to His name, and one day we'll
understand it. Jimmy, come lead us in a song,
please.