Okay, now back to Isaiah 61. And I'm taking the title from
what is said here about how the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah,
was blessed by the Spirit of God. We read in John chapter
3 that he had the Spirit of God upon him without measure as the
God-man mediator. Now as God, he's always had the
Spirit of God because he is God. But as the God-man mediator,
he had in his ministry the anointing of the Holy Spirit without measure.
So we're calling this message the mission, the mission of the
Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now from reading the account
as we just did in Luke chapter four, we see the Lord Jesus Christ
is indeed the Messiah. He is the promised anointed of
God. the promised anointed of God,
and that's what the word Christ means. Jesus, Savior, Christ,
the anointed of God. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that he sent of God
for a purpose, anointed of God for a purpose, and that purpose
is not to try to save somebody, but to actually accomplish God's
will in the salvation of our people. I cannot stand the notion
of anybody saying that the Lord Jesus Christ came and tried and
failed. He is not a failure. He cannot
fail because He is God. The Lord Jesus Christ is a complete
and perfect Savior who perfectly fulfilled all the Old Testament
types and pictures and shadows. He's a fulfillment of all those
types, pictures, and shadows, and prophecies, in the Old Testament. We read from Luke chapter 4 when
the Lord was reading this and finished reading this portion
of scripture, He said, this day, this is fulfilled in your ears. To Him give all the prophets
witness. That's what He came to do. He
came to work the Father's will and fulfill everything that was
written of Him. And He did so perfectly. And
in doing so, He accomplished our salvation. Now that's good
news. We can confidently rest in His faithfulness. I can't rest in mine. I rest
in His faithfulness. Now the Lord Jesus Christ was
no unsent, unauthorized Savior. He is the Savior and Redeemer,
that Son of God. In the fullness of the time,
God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, God sent Him forth,
made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them. He was indeed
Son of God to accomplish salvation for His covenant people, His
elect. His elect, He is the surety for
them, the surety of the everlasting covenant, and He is the sacrifice
of that covenant. The surety of that covenant,
the sacrifice of that covenant, He's the mediator of that covenant. Now when the Lord Jesus Christ
began His public ministry, one of the first messages that He
preached was from this Isaiah 61. After he administered to
the multitude in Galilee, preaching the gospel and healing many,
he came to his hometown, Nazareth, on the Sabbath day, Saturday,
to worship God. And he did so perfectly. He did so perfectly. He did worship
God sincerely in spirit and in truth. He couldn't do less. He
read when he requested to read from Isaiah 61 and how all that
was arranged is by the good providence of God that he stood up to read. They must have asked him to read
and they gave him the book that he requested. He read from the
passage that we read from in Luke chapter four, but he requested
from Isaiah, the book from Isaiah and read from Isaiah 61 and said,
this day, this is fulfilled in your ear. Now, we know it says
there that many wondered at his gracious words. when he said
that. But when he comes on down and
then makes application to what he has just read in Isaiah 61,
an application of sovereign mercy and sovereign grace of the Lord
having mercy on whom he will and preaching the good news to
the brokenhearted and saving sinners as he will, The religious
crowd that day, they weren't happy. When he brought forth
two cases, when God had mercy on two Gentile dogs, a Gentile
widow woman and a Gentile Syrian captain who was a leper and he
healed both of them and he made application of God will have
mercy on whom he will have mercy, he'll harden whom he will harden.
They weren't filled with excitement. They were filled with wrath,
anger, so much so that they took him physically, no doubt, removed
him from the synagogue, took him outside the city, physically
lay hold upon him, and would cast him down or off the hill,
head first. Now, why would they do that?
To kill him. They had murder, murder in their
heart. Now, we see so many examples
of our total depravity, don't we, throughout all the scriptures?
God doesn't hide the fact that men, all men everywhere, are
sinners. I see it in others, but more
importantly, I see it in me. I think it's rightly been said,
you really don't believe in total depravity until you know that
you're totally depraved. that you are totally sinful before
God. We know the response from the
Lord's message in that day was anger and wrath. They were upset
with him when he declared that he will have mercy upon whom
he will have mercy. Now, that being so, that being
so, let us not be surprised when the self-righteous of our day
hate what we preach because we preach the same gospel, that
God will have mercy on whom he will. The self-righteous or the
free will preacher, they hate that message because they hate
the God of that message. And we should expect it, shouldn't
we? They hated the Lord for it. And
when we plainly declare that God will have mercy upon whom
he will have mercy, they'll get angry with us too. I felt their
anger, I've seen their anger, and I've been an object of their
anger. The natural man or the carnal mind we know is enmity
against God. The natural man cannot and will
not receive the things of the Spirit of God. We studied that
in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14. The Lord said, if they've hated
me, you remember in John 15, He warned his disciples, he said,
they've hated me, and you know what? They're gonna hate you
too. So, don't expect to get along with this religious world. They hate what we preach because
they hate the God that we preach. Our Lord said, if the world hates
you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. And that's
so. Now, having said that, In using
that for an introduction, let's look at verse 1 of Isaiah 61. And again, the Lord Jesus Christ
we know is the fulfillment of this prophecy. The Spirit of
the Lord God, the Lord our God, the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit,
the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, excuse me, Because the Lord hath anointed
me to preach good tidings. He anointed me to preach the
good news, the gospel of good news to the guilty. To preach good tidings unto the
meek, to those who are brokenhearted and poor. He has sent me to bind
up the brokenhearted. to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and an opening, 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
morning Zion, to give unto them beauty instead of ashes. Beauty
for ashes? That's a pretty good trade, isn't
it? to give unto them oil, the oil of joy for mourning." Well,
that's a pretty good trade, isn't it? The garment of praise for
the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of
righteousness. That is, they are the planting
of the Lord. And here's the whole bottom line
in all that he does and all that he has said, that they might
be glorified. or that God may receive all the
honor and glory. If you look right up on that
column into the preceding chapter in verse 21, thy people also
shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may
be glorified." God has so arranged and ordained and appointed all
things in salvation that He must have all the honor. He must have
all the glory for the salvation that is of the Lord. Now, He
said, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me." Even the Savior's
mission, the Lord Jesus Christ, and His ministry were dependent
upon the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God to bless Him,
the Spirit of God to anoint Him, the Spirit of God to help Him
along. At His baptism, remember, the
Holy Spirit descended upon Him And the Father speaks from heaven,
said, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. John the Baptist declared in
John chapter 3, considering and talking about the Lord Jesus
Christ, that he had this Holy Spirit without measure. In him
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Now that's a
blessing. That should tell us that everything
he said was absolutely true. Everything he did was absolutely
successful and eternal before God. The Father ordained and
anointed the God-man Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be
our surety. to be our substitute, to be our
sin offering, to be our Savior. He gave Him the Holy Spirit without
measure. Now, do we understand that fully? No, but I believe what God says. He had the Holy Spirit without
measure upon His humanity, upon His person. He came from the
Lord on behalf of His elect to accomplish the Father's will,
to speak His words, to perform His work, to honor His law, and
to satisfy His justice. And He did so exactly, perfectly,
accomplishing our salvation. He performed all things for us. You remember Psalm 57 verse 2?
where it says that He performed. You see, our salvation is based
upon His performance. His performance. And I love this. I was looking at this scripture,
Psalm 98. Oh, singing to the Lord. This
is Psalm 98, verse 1. Let me just read it to you. Singing
to the Lord a new song, for He hath done marvelous things, His
right hand. And his holy arm has gotten him
the victory, and he's gotten the victory for us. And Paul
writes this, thanks be to God who's given us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ. No believer is a loser. We're
all winners in Christ because he's the winner. He's the winner. He's performed all things for
us and has given all things unto us. He that spared not his own
son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us, well, all things in salvation. Now,
let's look at these particulars here. What said the Lord Jesus
Christ? He has anointed me, the Lord
God has anointed me to preach good tiding. The Lord was a preacher.
He said, the words I speak are not mine, but I speak the words
of him that sent me. Remember what I told you what
preaching was, repeating what God's already said? The Lord
Jesus Christ was repeating what God already said, the good news
of the gospel. He has anointed me to preach
good tidings unto the meek, to the meek, to preach the good
news of the gospel to those weak, feeble, diseased, needy sinners. That's me. Ungodly before God. He said I didn't come to call
the righteous, I came to call sinners to repentance. He came
to seek and to save that which is lost. He came to save the
chief of sinners. That includes me because I'm
the chief one. He lived the Lord Jesus Christ
upon this earth in a real body. He lived the prince of preachers. No one could preach like him
because he preached with absolute power. They were astonished at
his doctrine for his word was with power. He lived the prince
of preachers. He died as the theme of all preaching. He arose as the Lord of heaven
and earth, the Lord of all preaching. He preached good tidings of grace,
sovereign grace, sovereign mercy, all forgiveness of sin to those
who are poor, weak, sinful, cast out, beggars, lepers, ungodly
sinners. That's for whom the Lord Jesus
Christ came. They're all in desperate need
of all things, where he says, the meek or the poor, as it has
over here in Luke chapter 4, the Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
The poor who have nothing, who know nothing, who are nothing,
nothing but wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores before God. Poor folks, poor disowned, the
poor have nothing, know nothing, can do nothing acceptable unto
God. They are in desperate need of
all things and they ascribe all they are and all they have received
through and by the Lord Jesus Christ alone. We say with Paul,
I am what I am by the grace of God. And our God shall supply
all our need according to his riches in glory through Christ
alone. So aren't you glad the Lord Jesus
Christ came as the anointed preacher of the gospel to preach good
news? to sinners, and that's who the
gospel is good news to, not good news to the self-righteous. They
hated him, didn't they? We've seen that through our study
in the book of Luke, how they plotted and planned to destroy
him and his ministry. but the Lord came to preach and
tell us the good news of God saving mercy through the blood
atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The second thing he mentions
here back in Isaiah 61, he has sent me, that is the Lord God
has sent me, sent me on a mission of mercy, sent me on purpose
to bind up those who are broken, convicted, know themselves to
be guilty before God. To bind, as it says in Luke chapter
4, excuse me, Luke chapter 4, to heal, to heal the brokenhearted. Now we need healing, and the
healing we need is not physical healing, it's spiritual healing. The Lord came to bind or to heal
the brokenhearted. When something is broken, It's
worthless. It's of no value. The Lord came
to fix that which was broken by sin. The Lord came to fix
that which could not fix itself. We're so broken, so diseased,
so violent, so dead, we cannot fix ourselves. We don't want
to be fixed. We're broken by sin. And we need the Lord in
mercy to operate upon our heart, to cause us to love Him, to believe
Him, to give us a new heart. And unless He does, we'll never
believe the Gospel. Unless we're regenerated and
born again by the Spirit of God, we'll never believe the Gospel.
We'll go right on being religious and lost. God, when He operates
on us, He gives us a new heart, a new mind, a new will to love
Him, a new nature, a holy nature, a holy nature. He's nigh unto
them of a broken heart, and save us such as be of a contrite spirit.
I tell you, it's a blessed thing to know that you're a sinner.
It's a blessed thing to know that you're guilty before God
because He came to save the guilty. Grace is for the guilty, is it
not? Mercy is for the miserable. Salvation
is for the lost. If you've ever been lost, you've
never been saved. That's right. And then thirdly, he said, to
proclaim, to proclaim, sent me to bind the brokenhearted, then
to proclaim liberty, to proclaim it, to produce it, liberty. to those who are captive, held
captive. The Lord Jesus Christ, He's called
the liberator. He's called the deliverer. He
is the redeemer. That's what redemption means.
Redemption means to deliver by a ransom price. He is our deliverer. He's our redeemer. He's our savior
who really redeemed and who really saves. He came to redeem sinners
taken captive by sin, bruised and crushed by sin. And the Lord
came to fully and totally deliver us by His power and by His precious
blood to proclaim deliverance. Deliverance to set at liberty
those who were bruised. Our Lord came to set captives
free. Free? from the curse of the law,
free from the bondage of sin, free from the clutches of Satan,
free from the penalty of sin, the wages of sin is death, the
gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now notice, as you read down
through here, you find that salvation is of the Lord. It's His doing.
It's everything He's done for us. It's nothing we have done
for Him. He had done this. He came. He was sent. He produced
this. He proclaimed this. And then
it says, to open the prison house to those who were bound by the
chains of sin. Believers who have been bound
by sin in the bondage of the flesh are set free. Set free to worship Him. set
free to believe the gospel, set free to honor him. It says in
Luke 4, verse 18, the Lord came to give sight to the blind. And
that's what he does when he saves us. Except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God. He gives us sight. We're so blinded by sin that
He gives us sight. He causes and commands the light
to shine in our hearts that we might see what? The glory of
God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to give us eyes
of faith to see Him, to behold Him. And then it says in verse
2, Isaiah 61, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. to proclaim how we are accepted
only in the beloved. And this refers back to that
year of jubilee under the law when the debtors were set free
on that 49th year on the day of atonement. Let me read that
to you in Isaiah, excuse me, Leviticus 25. And ye shall hallow
the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to
all the inhabitants thereof. 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, and the Lord Jesus Christ is
the fulfillment of that year of jubilee." Every seventh year,
remember the land rested was the Lord's year under the law,
and was the Sabbath of rest to the land, but on the years following,
the seventh of those seven years, the 49th year was the year of
jubilee. When every man sold into slavery
was set free, when all property and family was redeemed and returned
to the family on that 49th year, when they blew that trumpet in
the year of jubilee, boy, it was a good time, wasn't it? Every
man sold into slavery was set free. All property was returned
to the family. All debts were discharged. And
the year of rest was proclaimed. And all of that we have in Christ. He is our kinsman redeemer and
who has done all this for us and so much more. Our souls have been set free. The Lord said, you shall know
the truth and the truth shall set you free. Where sin abounded,
grace is much more abound. Our inheritance is restored.
We are now joint heirs with Christ, heirs of God, and joint heirs
with the Lord Jesus Christ. All our debts, we had a lot of
them, debts of sin, are paid in full. He obtained for us eternal
redemption, and we enter into his rest. He is our jubilee. He is our salvation. The Lord
said, come unto me and rest, all ye that labor and the heavy
laden. Come to me and rest. He is our
year of jubilee. We are set free in Christ. We are accepted in the beloved.
Now look at the last part, Isaiah 61 verse 2. Look at the last
part of verse 2. And the day of vengeance of our
God. Now God is merciful and God is
love, but God is holy too. God is holy. His love is holy. His mercy is holy. God will and
must punish sin. either in you throughout all
eternity or in your substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what took place on Calvary. That was the day of vengeance.
When it pleased the Lord to bruise him in our room and in our stead,
therefore in Christ toward us, there was no vengeance, no condemnation
to those who were in Christ Jesus. And we do proclaim the day of
vengeance of our God. And that's what happened at Calvary.
He took vengeance against our sin in our substitute. Boy, that's
mercy, is it not? And the fruit of that, look at
the last part of verse two, and the fruit of that is comfort.
Comfort to those who mourn. Now, take your Bible and turn
back to Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40. Comfort. Comfort. People are always looking for
comfort, aren't they? Comfort. Christ is our comfort. The Holy Spirit is called the
Comforter. Remember our Lord said, when He, the Spirit of
Truth, has come, the Comforter, He will comfort you. But do you
know what He comforts us with? Christ and the Gospel. Look at
Isaiah 40, verse 1. Comfort you, comfort you, my
people, sayeth your God. speaking comfortably to Jerusalem,
crying to her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand double, double for all their sin." I mean we have
complete payment, double payment for all our sin. God said their
sin and their iniquity I'll remember no more. What is that to you?
Comfort, is it not? Comfort. Knowing that we are
sinners, knowing that we can do nothing but sin, and yet the
Lord has put away all our sin by the sacrifice of himself,
and that gives us comfort. Comfort. The wrath and anger
of God fell on my substitute, therefore in Christ there is
no condemnation for us. Now, look at verse 3, Isaiah 61 verse
3. And I love this word appoint,
to appoint unto them. There's that them again. You remember the Lord prayed, Father
forgive them. He has not appointed us to wrath,
but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians
5, verse 9. To appoint unto them, He has
not appointed us unto wrath, as many as were ordained to eternal
life believed. To appoint unto them that mourn,
we're comforted, and yet we mourn. We mourn in Zion. But look what he said, look what
he's provided for us. We have comfort in Christ. We have appointment of blessing
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse 3 again. To give
unto them by appointment, and this is God's sovereign decree,
sovereign appointment. To give unto them beauty. Now,
whose beauty do you think he's talking about here? He's talking about Christ who
is our righteousness. He is altogether lovely and so
are we in Christ before God. To give unto them beauty instead
of black, burnt, dried ashes. We have the very beauty of God
in Christ. And that gives comfort to those
who mourn. To give them the oil of joy instead
of mourning. What is our joy? Who is our joy? Christ is our joy. We rejoice
in the Lord Jesus Christ and have no confidence in the flesh.
He is our joy. But we have joy, we joy before
God in Christ. We have joy instead of mourning.
We have the garment of praise. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, for thy truth's
sake. Look right across the page, Isaiah
61, verse 10. I will greatly rejoice in the
Lord, My soul shall be joyful in my God, for He hath clothed
me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness. That's our beauty. He's the Lord
our righteousness. As a bridegroom decketh himself
with ornaments, as a bride adorneth herself with jewels. For as the
earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the
things that are sown it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause
the righteous and praise to spring forth before all nations, to
give them the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness, that," the last part of verse
3, "...that they might be called his trees." Trees of righteousness. Trees of righteousness. We're
trees of righteousness by the planting of the Lord. He has
planted us in the garden of His grace as trees of righteousness. The Lord is the true vine, we
are the branches, and we're blessed in Him that He might be Glorified and that's the bottom
line everything he does right his glory his glory that he might
be glorified God forbid we should glory save in the cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ Remember that verse from 1st Corinthians chapter
1 But of him are you in Christ who of God is made on the made
unto us wisdom? righteousness Sanctification
and redemption that according as it is written he that would
glory Let him glory only in The Lord and that's where we glory
God is jealous of his glory and And we, by His grace, desire
to glorify Him in our preaching, in our worship, in our lives,
and in all things.