There's a hymn in our hymn book
entitled, I Surrender All. And it goes like this, All to
Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love
and trust Him in His presence daily live. All to Jesus I surrender,
humbly at His feet I bow, worldly pleasures all forsaken. Take
me, Jesus. Take me now. All to Jesus I surrender,
Make me, Savior, wholly thine. Let me feel the Holy Spirit.
Truly know that thou art mine. All to Jesus I surrender. Lord,
I give myself to thee. Fill me with thy love and power.
Let thy blessings fall on me. I surrender all. I surrender
all. All to thee, my blessed Savior.
I surrender all. Now, whoever wrote that was lying.
That's about all you can say. Whoever wrote that was lying.
If you surrendered all, You've never seen again. How I love
that. Well, that wouldn't even a version
of this song, that was just the real thing. Turn to Luke chapter
four. Luke, the fourth chapter, while
you're turning there, I want to make a couple of comments
before we look at this message with regard to this time of year,
Christmas. Christmas. It's where people
celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And is there anything
in the Bible about when the Lord was born? No. Is there any command
in the Bible to celebrate his birth? No. Christmas is Christ's
mass. Even the name tells us something
about what it means. Now, as a religious holiday,
no, I don't put any stock in Christmas. None at all. But I
like Christmas. I like Christmas. It's a good
time for families to be together, for people to get some days off,
maybe to stimulate the economy or ruin somebody's economy, whichever
one. And as far as people thinking
about the fact that our Lord was born, they're confronted
with thinking about that. So would I make a religious stand
against Christmas? No, no. Do I observe it as a
religious holiday? No, I don't have one of those
nativity scenes and all that kind of that's no, no. But I think of my I've got a
relative who is very against Christmas. And he's a real self-righteous
guy. And he even quit the church I
grew up in because they didn't have enough law. And this guy,
he's lawless, believe me. But he said, I will not go anywhere
where they celebrate Christmas. He said, however, I will take
gifts. And let's be, I'm thankful, not as a religious holiday, but
aren't you Thankful for people getting together, families, and
it's always a special time. Thankful for that. So that's
my take on this time of the year. That's why I would also, I know
some people feel like it's very wrong to observe Christmas. And
if you feel that way, okay. But I'll tell you what, you put
a lot of pressure on your kids. You put a lot of pressure on your
children. They're made to feel different. They're made to feel
it just it just that can be very hard on children to have this
hard line stand like that. That's my view on it. So get
that for free. Luke, the fourth chapter, I'd
like to read the 22nd verse. and all bear him witness, and wondered at the gracious
words, the words of grace, that's why I've entitled this message,
Words of Grace, which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is this not Joseph's
son? Now they heard these words of
grace. And they did not receive a favorable
reception from these people after they heard these words of grace. As a matter of fact, if you go
on reading verse 28 and all day in the synagogue, this same group
that heard these words of grace and all day in the synagogue
when they had heard these things. Were filled with wrath, and rose
up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him under the brow
of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast
him down headlong." Now that was their response to these words
of grace. They became so angry that they
wanted to murder the Lord Jesus Christ. And they actually attempted
to throw him off of a cliff. These are words of grace. They
didn't receive them that way. I'm wanting to ask myself the
question, how do I receive these words of grace? Do I find them
to be words of grace or words that make me so angry that I
want to put the Lord Jesus Christ to death for saying those things?
And that's what took place in this passage of scripture. Now,
I pray that we will all everybody in this room will find these
as words of grace to our soul. But it's. Difficult to think about. But
there are some people who have the same response that these
people who wanted to murder the Lord. But I pray everybody in
this room will have a favorable response to these words of grace. Now, look at verse 14. of Luke
chapter four. And Jesus returned in the power
of the spirit. Into Galilee. And there went out of fame of
him throughout all the region round about, and this is after
that he had defeated Satan. After the Satan attempted to
tempt him and he defeated Satan and he comes back filled with
the spirit God didn't give the Spirit by measure to him. And
he came performing miracles. He was doing things they'd never
seen. Miracles that only God could
do, that testified to his divine authority. They saw these things.
And they were amazed. And the Lord became very popular.
Now, if a man today was doing the things that the Lord did
at that time, they would become very popular, world famous. I mean, people that could actually
heal the sick and so on. Everybody would want to see who
he was. The fame of him went throughout all the region around
about and he taught in their synagogues and being glorified
of all. Now he comes to his hometown,
Nazareth. And you know, these people in
Nazareth, they had known the Lord all his life. He was the
carpenter's son. They knew his brothers and sisters.
They knew all about him. They knew his family. They saw
him grow up for 30 years in Nazareth and they never saw him perform
a miracle. And so how is it that he's performing these other miracles
everywhere else? And here he comes here. How is
this? He's famous now, and I guess
everybody's kind of excited about him coming. We never saw him
doing anything like this, and here he is, comes back home, and now
we're going to listen to what he's got to say, and maybe we'll
get to see him perform some miracles. Hometown boy, made big. And they
were excited about him coming. So he returns to Nazareth, the
place he'd brought up, where he'd worked in a carpenter shop,
where he'd been educated, whatever happened during those first 30
years of his life, of which we know very little. But he comes
back and people didn't know he was the Messiah. He never made
a claim to be the Christ. All they knew him as was Jesus. Jesus. And they didn't attach
any significance to that name either. Well, his name's Jesus.
His name's Bill. His name's Larry. Her name is
Mary. You know, just Jesus. Verse 16, and he came to Nazareth
where he'd been brought up. And as his custom was. He went into the synagogue on
the Sabbath day. I love to think about that when
there was public worship, the Lord was there. That was his
custom. That's what he did. He went into
the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up for to read. And there was delivered into
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. Now, it wasn't a book, it was
a scroll. And he found the place that we just read in Isaiah 61. He found that place in Isaiah
61. There was delivered unto him
the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he'd 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 hath 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 to the minister and sat down. Now, in this passage of scripture,
He tells them six things that he, as the Christ, came to do. And these are these words of
grace. He hath anointed me. Now, that
word anointed is where the word Christ comes from. Christ means
the anointed of God. Now, they'd only known him as
Jesus, and he lets them know he, God the Father, has anointed
me. He has given me the Spirit of
God without measure. And he gave six things that he
was especially anointed by the Spirit of God to do. And these
are the words of grace that proceeded from his mouth. And as I said,
these words did not have a favorable reception. They became offended
by what he said, and they ended up trying to murder him. As you
go on in this passage of scripture. Now, this crowd turned into an
angry lynch mob after he gives these words of grace. Now, how
do I respond? How do you respond to these words
of grace? Now, in this passage of scripture,
he clearly identifies who he came to save. Now, he didn't
come to save everybody. If he came to save everybody,
everybody would be saved, wouldn't they? I mean, that's just obvious. He did not come to save everybody. Well, who did he come to save?
In this passage of scripture, he identifies who he came to
save and how we will view these words will be completely dependent
on whether or not we believe we fit the description of the
people he came to save. Now, He came to save the poor. The gospel was to be preached
to the poor beggars. Poverty stricken with absolutely
no power to enrich themselves. They have nothing and they have
no way of getting anything. That's what poor means. It means
you do not have anything. You don't have a penny's worth
of merit to recommend you to God. You have nothing. And then he speaks of the broken
hearted. And when he's speaking of broken hearted, this is not
really a reference to people who've had their hearts broken
romantically. That's a difficult thing. Probably
everybody's had their hearts broken at one time romantically,
even when you were a kid in junior high or something, you know,
you got your heart broken by some boy or girl. Difficult. That's not what this is talking
about. It's not talking about people whose hearts have been
broken by their children. And indeed, that has happened
to many people. They've seen their children go in a direction
that they didn't want to see them go and their hearts broken
over it. But that's not really the broken
heart our Lord is speaking of. It's not talking about those
people who are broken down under the cares of life. There's so
many troubles. There's so many trials and people
break down under so much trouble. Now, you can be lost and be broken
hearted in this sense, and I'm not saying that harshly. I feel
for anybody with a broken heart, but that's not really what he's
talking about when he talks about being broken hearted. A broken
hearted person is someone whose heart is broke. That means it
doesn't work. That means it's no good. That
means it doesn't do the things that it should do. It's broke.
It's no good. What do you do with broken things?
You throw them away because they don't work anymore. They don't
do what they ought to do. A broken hearted person sees
their heart is no good. You've heard of good hearted
people? I guess every mother's son has a good heart. He might
be a murderer. He might be a thief. He might
be some kind of monster, but he has a good heart. No, there's
no such thing. There's no such thing as a good
hearted person. I know some people are nice. Some people are nicer
than others. I realize that. But as far as a good hearted
person, there is no such thing. God only is good. That's what the Lord said. Remember
when that fella came up to him and said, good master, what good
things shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said, why call
this out to be good? There's none good but God only. A broken hearted person is someone
whose heart is broke. It doesn't do what it's supposed
to do. And then thirdly, he speaks of captives. Captives. What's a captive? Well, captives,
somebody's not free. They're not free. They're in
a cell and they can't just up and decide to walk out, the door's
locked and there's nothing they can do about it, they are not
free. They're captive. If I tell you
what, somebody's not free, they know the very idea of free will
is ridiculous. It's just absolutely ridiculous. Somebody says, well, I believe
men have a free will. Now, men are free in the sense
that people do what they want to do. I realize that. Anything
you do or anything I do, we do what we want to do. We don't
have some kind of force Going against our will, we do what
we want to do. But understand this, the will
is not free. While you do what you want to
do, your will is controlled by your nature, an evil nature. Now, these people who are captives
are people who are not free. They can't change their circumstances. They're captives. And then fourthly,
he speaks of those who are blind. Blind. When you're blind, you
can't see. You can't see. You can't see
one reason in and of yourself why God would look in favor toward
you. And when you're blind, you really
can't see any reason why God would accept you, why God would
love you, why God in and of yourself. You can't see that you're blind. Then he speaks of those who are
bruised, literally smitten through. Crushed and destroyed is what
the word means destroyed. By the fall. Destroyed. Completely unable. And then when he speaks of the
acceptable year of the Lord, that's a reference to. Jubilee. That's that time that happened
every 50 years in Israel, where those people who through their
own fault, could not pay their debts. They got themselves into
trouble and had to sell themselves into slavery. They were set free. So the person who's described
here is that person who cannot pay their debts. They sold themselves
into slavery and they need to be set free. Now, if these words
describe you, You will find these as words of grace. If these words
do not describe you, if you're not utterly poverty stricken
in terms of any merit that could recommend you to God. If you're
not broken hearted, your heart is good. You may do bad things,
but you're good hearted. If you're not a captive. If you
have a free will and you can just go wherever you want and
do whatever you want, you're free. You can choose the good.
You can choose to be saved. You can choose to not sin anymore.
You can choose to to surrender all and all that song I just
read says. If you have. Some ability to
pay these words will irritate you. But if this describes you, you
will find these words to be words of grace. Glad tidings. Glad tidings. Now, let's look
once again at verse 18 of Luke chapter 4. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me. Wouldn't you love to have been
able to hear the way the Lord read this passage of Scripture?
When he read this passage of Scripture, they knew that he
meant the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He wasn't just reading
a passage of Scripture the way you and I would read it. He said
the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel. Isaiah says the glad tidings,
the good news to the poor. Now. If you're poor. And you don't have anything to
recommend you to God, the gospel will come to you as good news.
Good news. Oh, everyone that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come
by, yea, come by and eat wine, milk, and honey without money
and without price. Now, what if a store advertised,
we're opening up to everybody who doesn't have anything to
pay and everything is free? Well, you know, it would be stampeded. But when the gospel is preached
and it's preached as free, nobody's much interested. Nobody's much
interested. But I tell you who will be interested.
That person who has absolutely nothing to pay. To hear that
the gospel is free. Free. That God doesn't require
one thing from me. Now, he requires all of me. I
come to him. But as far as payment, not one single thing. Now, if I told the poor the gospel
can be had for even a penny's worth of merit, it would do you
no good if you don't have any merit, if you really are poor. But if you're poor, if you have
absolutely no merit, if you're nothing but sin in and of yourself,
The proclamation of the gospel comes as good news. It comes as gospel. It's free. Now, do you hear that? The gospel is absolutely, positively
free. There's not one thing that God
requires of you to provide. Now, that's good news if you
don't have anything. And the only way it's good news
is if you don't have anything. Now, while it's free to you,
it costs Christ his life. And that's why it's such an abomination
and I say an abomination to offer anything in payment. If you said to me, You know,
I'm going to give you my house. Here it is. I'm just going to
give it to you. Paid in full. Absolutely free. What would you say if I said,
well, I don't want to be a debtor to you. So here, I'm going to
give you $5 for it. How would you respond to that?
You'd be offended. You'd be insulted. And that's
just a little bit. When Christ gave all and somebody
tries to pay, it's nothing more than an insult. The gospel is
to the poor. And the one requirement is to
have nothing to pay. Now, do you hear what I just
said? Let not conscience make you linger.
nor a fitness fondly dreamed, the only fitness he required
is to have the need of Him. The only requirement is poverty,
to have nothing. Now how can that be? Well, 2
Corinthians 8 and 9 says, For ye know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, And who can describe
the riches of the Lord Jesus Christ? Rich in praise, rich
in love, rich in righteousness, owner of everything. Though He
was rich, yet for your sakes, He became poor. On the cross, He became utterly
poverty stricken, utterly without anything because he took my place
that you through his poverty might be rich. Now, the gospel is gospel to
the poor, and the Lord said he had anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor. Now, next, he says he's anointed
me to heal the broken hearted. Now the broken hearted know that
their heart is their biggest problem. All the broken hearted know that. Scripture describes our heart
as desperately wicked. deceitful above all things, who
can know it? That's what the Word of God says
about my heart and your heart. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart, the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. Now, that's God's description
of the human heart. And that person with a broken
heart knows that their heart is no good. It's broken. It won't
do what it's supposed to do. It won't love God with all the
heart and all the soul and all the strength. It can't. It's
broken. You know, preachers say, give Jesus your heart. You reckon
he wants it? What would he want with that
thing? He'll give you a new heart. That's what I'd be doing. I'd
be asking him for a new heart. I wouldn't say, well, here's
my heart. That heart is no good at all. I need a new heart, a heart that
He gives. He said in Ezekiel 36, a new
heart also will I give thee, one that was not there before.
Now, understand this. The Lord doesn't work with our
old heart. He gives a new one. It's called the new creation.
It's called being a new creature in Christ Jesus. It's called
being born again and born from above. He came to heal. The broken
hearted. And next in verse 18. It says he had anointed me to
preach deliverance. To the captives. Captives. Now, what does it mean
to be a captive? Well, more than anything else,
it means you're not free and that what it means if you're
captive. It means you're not free. If
you could just walk out the door, you wouldn't be a captive, would
you? You're a captive when you're in the cell, the door is locked
and you cannot get out. You're in the jail cell of an
evil nature and lack the ability to get out of your cell. Now,
this is why the very notion of free will is just so wrong. Your will is controlled by your
nature. Somebody believes in free will doesn't believe the
gospel. Somebody preaches free will does not preach the gospel
that God loves everybody. Christ died for everybody. God
wants to save everybody. But it's up to your will. If
you as an actor of your will decide to accept what he did
to you, then you'll be saved. There's not a drop of gospel
in that message, not even a drop. Men are Captive and anybody and
you're the only people that understand this thing. It's not having a
free will or people who are given a new nature. You can't really
understand this until you're given a new nature and then you
see what your old nature is. It's captive to sin. But here's
the gospel. He came to proclaim deliverance. Liberty to those who are captive. Now, I think the most powerful
illustration of this is Brabus. He's laying in a jail cell. He's
scheduled to be crucified that very day. And the scripture points
out that he was bound. Now, could Brabus do something
to walk out? No! He's bound. He can't get out. And he's a
wicked man. He's a murderer. He's a thief.
He's an insurrectionist. And he is scheduled to be crucified
the very same day the Lord Jesus Christ is to be crucified. He's
laying there bound, dreading crucifixion, dreading what's
going to happen to him. He hears the soldiers come in
to unlock the door. He thinks they're pulling me
out to crucify me. And he hears, you've been set
free. You're not a captive anymore.
You have been set Free. Through the gospel. I'm set free. The gospel is the emancipation
proclamation. You're set free, that same word
deliverance is also translated forgiveness. Forgiveness, how
is it I'm set free? Because God forgives. All my sin. And this is where
salvation begins. It doesn't end with the forgiveness
of sins. If I do this, I'll be forgiven. No, it begins with
the full, free, frank forgiveness of sins and set free. Nothing to condemn me for. And
next, he says. The recovering of sight to the
blind in verse 18, the recovering of sight to the blind. Now. I hope I'm being honest, I hope
I'm being honest. But in and of myself. I cannot see how God could love
me. I really can't. I can't see why
he would look in favor toward me. I can't see anything in me
that would draw out his love. I don't have any problem with
that scripture where it says, Esau have I hated because I can
see why a holy God would hate me and send me to hell. I really
can't see that. I can't see why he loved me in
and of myself. But when the blind has his sight
recovered, They're given grace to see why God could love them. Why God could save them. Why God could accept them. I now see. I mean, I see. There
was a time when I couldn't see. I now see why God looks at me
and says, You're lovely. You're beautiful. You're perfect. I accept you because you deserve
to be accepted. I see how that is now. Now, I understand this about
God's love. People say, well, God loves me unconditionally.
No, he doesn't. There's no such thing as unconditional love.
There's got to be something there to love. Now, God loves me as
I am in Christ. And that's how I really am. Turn
to John chapter 8 for just a moment. John chapter 8. The blind are given sight. You
know, if you're blind, you're in the dark. But when you're
given light, you see. Verse 12. Then spake Jesus again
unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth
me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
That saying really can't be understood apart from what previously took
place. Verse two of John, chapter eight,
and early in the morning he came again into the temple and all
the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them and
the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery. And when they said her in the
midst, they said unto him, Master, This woman was taken in adultery
in the very act. We all saw this. We're eyewitnesses
to it. Now, Moses in the law commanded
us that such should be stoned. And that's what the law says,
stone the adulterer, put him to death. But what sayest thou? This, they said, tempting him
that they might have to accuse him. They thought we've got the
perfect scenario. If he says, let her go. We can
say, where's your respect for the law of God? The law of God
says stoner. You have no respect to the Bible.
You have no respect of God's law. If he says stoner, we can
say, well, what about the mercy you talk about? What about the
grace you talk about? What about the forgiveness you
talk about? We've got it. We've got him trapped. He can't
get out of this one. Verse six, but Jesus stooped
down And with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard
them not. I love to think about that. I
mean, they're talking here, not paying attention to you. You
know, he doesn't pay attention to Pharisees. He doesn't. Verse seven. So when they continued
asking him, he lifted up himself and he said unto them. He that
is without sin among you. Let him first cast a stone at
her, and again he stooped and wrote on the ground. And when they which heard it,
being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one,
beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, Jesus was left
alone. And the woman standing in the
midst, and when Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but
the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine
accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? There
wasn't anybody there to condemn her, was there? She said, No
man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither
do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Then spake Jesus again unto him,
saying, I am the light of the world. Now he is the light. As to how the Lord can say to
me, where are your accusers? There aren't any. Has no man
condemned thee? Is there anything late to your
charge? No. Neither do I condemn thee. He's the light as to how
that can be. There's no understanding of that
apart from this. My sin became His sin and He
was condemned. His righteousness is mine and
I'm justified. There's nothing to condemn me
for. He's the light as to how God
can love and accept and embrace somebody like me or you. And
then it says, In fact, our text in Luke, chapter four, verse
18. To sit at liberty. Then that
are bruised, that's the last phrase of Luke for 18. These
are his words of grace. He came to sit at liberty, then
that are bruised or crushed, thoroughly destroyed is what
the word means. Thoroughly destroyed all the
way through, shattered to pieces. Now, if I drop this glass, it
shatters. It shattered to a fall, isn't
it? This is a reference to what happened to us in the fall. The
fall of our first father, Adam, we became shattered to pieces,
crushed and bruised, crushed by the law, slain by the fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. I'm shattered, bruised, but he
came to preach to set at liberty them that are bruised. Now, what
is it that sets me at liberty? Well, the law cursed me. God's
holy law cursed me. And the only way I can be liberated
and set free is if that same law justifies me. It justifies me. It says, I find
no guilt. I find no sin. I bring myself
or I'm brought before the holy law of God and the holy law of
God says there's no sin there. Perfect in Christ Jesus. And
now I'm not under the law. I'm not under the law. Now what does that mean? Some
people say you're not under law. That means lawlessness. That
means you can sin all you want. No, it doesn't mean that. It
doesn't mean that at all. I don't want to sin. See, and
all I want, like Walter Roos, I send a whole lot more than
I want to. But what is this thing of not
being under law? What if somebody came up to you
and said, you better love me. It's your obligation to love
me. The law says to love me. And if you don't love me, I'm
going to make your life miserable. Would you love that person? You
might try, but you couldn't. You couldn't love somebody under
those conditions. If you don't love me, you're going to be in
trouble. If you don't love me, I'm going to punish you. I'm
going to bring trial into your life. There's all kinds of bad
things are going to happen to you if you don't love me. I can't love under those conditions.
But if somebody says, I love you to me, I can't love you more
and I can't love you less. You know how my soul responds?
I love you, too. I want to give myself completely
to you. That's what it means to not be
under law, but under grace. And the last thing he mentions
in verse 19 is to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And that's the year of Jubilee.
That's the year of Jubilee. Now, on the year of Jubilee,
it happened every 50 years in Israel, this took place. Let's
say you lost your property through inability to pay the debt. On
that 50th year, you got back what you lost. All your debts
were canceled. And as a slave, you were set
free. And the land was given a year's
rest. Can you imagine how a slave felt when that silver trumpet
sounded forth? The year of Jubilee, all of a
sudden, You're debt free. You're not a slave anymore. You're
free. Everything you lost is restored and you're given rest,
a year's vacation. How that sounded to those slaves.
But how did it sound to you if you're a property owner that
were, you know, that this was yours and now you're losing it.
It has to go back to them. I think what's interesting is that not
one time in the Bible do we find the example of the year of Jubilee
ever being kept. Not once. And I can understand
that. If I was a property owner and
I was going to lose what was rightfully mine just because,
you know, because the year of jubilee, I would want it to happen.
I bet there was all kinds of legislation under the table to
try to keep this from happening. Don't you? I mean, you know it
was. But I know who found this good
news. Slaves. In debt. In bondage. And the Lord says in verse 19,
verse 20, 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. I bet you could have heard a
pin drop at this time and they were just looking at him. Did
he really say that? Did he really say that about
himself? Verse 21, And he began to say
unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled. It has been fulfilled. in your ears. And all bearing
witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of
his mouth, and they said, is not this Joseph's son? This is
the carpenter. And they ended up being so mad at him that they
tried to kill him. We'll consider that soon. I know how they responded. But
how do I respond? How do you respond to these words
of grace? The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel, the good
news 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. These, to this sinner, are words
of grace. Let's pray together.