-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Good to be here today.
00:40 Hope you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week. Today we are diving into God’s Word as we do every time on this program and we are looking at a very powerful verse of Scripture. One that helps us understand God’s plan for humanity.
00:55 One that helps us understand God’s plan for us today. Us being those that are living on this earth. And one that helps us understand how we can have joy in such sorrowful times.
01:09 How can we have joy in such sorrowful times? Maybe you’re looking around at this year, this season of your life saying, man this has been a challenge. Or maybe you’re seeing a challenge ahead and you’re saying, I just don’t know how I’ll get through it. Or maybe you are kind of coming up through the tail end of a challenging time just saying, Lord what is going on? Wherever you may be, Amen.
01:32 And I’m guessing you’re kind of in one of those three. I believe we all are, Amen. Isaiah 61: 1 will really bless you.
01:41 It will really, really bless you. And if I’m honest here today, I need this preaching as much as anybody, Amen. Isaiah61:1 is speaking to me today as our family has been going through many the trials and tribulations of life, Amen.
02:01 And so I take this scripture very personally and I am leaning on this scripture and I hope you will too. Isaiah 61:1, 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.
02:28 All right, so Isaiah 61:1, we know the book of Isaiah was written by the prophet Isaiah, but many people have come to the conclusion as I understand it, this is actually Christ speaking. And we’ll get to that in a little bit as to how we can know that this is said by Christ, Amen. He certainly echoes it in the New Testament.
02:50 But Isaiah 61:1, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Now what does that mean? We look at the idea that if it is Christ that is the speaker here, that the Spirit of God is on Christ because Christ is God, amen. We understand that God and Christ are one, Amen.
03:08 In fact, there’s a verse that I was preaching on yet last evening at church, and the verse is, and I’m looking for it,John 10:30, I and my Father are one. I and my Father are one, I being Jesus. Jesus and his Father are one.
03:25 And so we see here in Isaiah 61:1, this idea that Jesus is God, amen. Jesus is God. And so we, it’s important, the reason you might say, okay, I know that, or why are you harping on that? But the reason why this is important is that everything that comes after our understanding that Jesus is God informs us that it is God himself doing these things, right? And so if we understand that Christ is God, and again, I preached to the congregation last night, many of whom have been in Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night services for as long as we can all remember, Amen.
03:59 I said, yeah, Christ is God. And they’re looking at me, okay, yeah, Christ is God. But now think about what that means in your life, Amen.
04:07 What does that mean if Christ is God? And what does it mean in Isaiah 61 one, if the spirit of the Lord is upon him, because Lord hath anointed him to preach good tidings unto the meek? What does good tidings mean? Good tidings is the gospel. It’s the good news. It’s what Christ came to preach.
04:28 And it is a truth that we can hold on to today. And what we see here is that Christ is preaching it, and he’s also fulfilling it, Amen. He is both the servant of the Lord, and He is the Lord, Amen.
04:47 He is both our friend and our Savior, Amen. There’s so much multiple layers to who God is. But at the heart of it, He came to bring good tidings.
04:54 Now, oftentimes we have burdens we want to bring to the Lord. And we want to say, God, why this? Why that? Help me out of this. Help me out of that.
05:04 But maybe the Lord wants to give us some good tidings. Maybe the Lord wants us to give us a good tiding like Isaiah 61:1, that the spirit of Lord 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.
05:26 And so we see here again that God wants us to know. He came to save, not to condemn, Amen. Christ says that in the New Testament.
05:34 But the devil wants us to think, the little g-god of this world wants us to think, that we are not going to be saved, and that this world is all we have, and we should make the most out of it, and live fleshly, right? Now, the devil’s called what? The author of confusion. And he is good at muddying the waters. He is good at creating confusion, creating goals and ideas in our life that don’t line up with the Word of God, putting us around people that have rebelled against the ways of God, keeping us in under the bondage of sin, when if we’ve been saved, we’ve been set free from that bondage, Amen And we have to realize that God came to preach good tidings, that Jesus came to save the lost, Amen But what is the problem here that so many people are missing? Okay, for the lost people, I believe the problem here is right here in the verse, in Isaiah 61:1. I’ll read it again.
06:36 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. Unto the meek. So that’s the first part of Isaiah 61:1. And I’m going to bring up meek.
06:49 I got the computer in front of me. I’m going to bring up the definition of meek. I’ve done this before, Amen And we look at the definition of meek.
06:59 It means quiet, gentle, easily opposed on, submissive, amen? And you can go into biblical definitions that are a little bit more, you know, biblically accurate. But the idea is to submit. The idea is to take that pride in your life and remove it.
07:16 And so how can Christ bring these good tidings and save the proud, the boastful, the rebellious, the sinful, the unrepentant? How can Christ do that, right? I mean, again, you’d be asking Jesus and God Himself by that nature to change his holy ways. Because as I saw a wonderful presentation by a man that’s one of the co-founders of Appian Media. You can look him up on YouTube, Appian Media.
07:46 They film Holy Land videos and documentary style kind of stuff. It’s very high quality. And that young man said something to the extent of, you know, he’s talking about Hollywood.
08:00 And he said, well, if someone said a movie’s not that bad, he said, well, what’s their standard of holiness? And he pointed out that God’s standard of holiness is perfect holiness. And I love that reference. And it just kind of rang in my head is so true.
08:07 And I’ve been using that reference, perfect holiness. So how can you be boastful and reach God’s standard of perfect holiness? How can you think you can do it on your own when only Christ is perfect and reach God’s standard of perfect holiness by rejecting Christ? You cannot. And so we see here in this just little part that many people may miss in Isaiah 61:1, in the first part of that verse, that the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, unto the meek.
08:44 And we understand meek being submissive, easily opposed on, gentle, quiet, mild. It doesn’t mean weak. Amen.
08:55 Another example I could give is Adrian Rogers. I gave a message once. I know I quote him about every broadcast about how a horse with a bridle, a horse is very strong, but with that bridle becomes meek, Amen, and under control.
09:10 A horse is strong, but it is under control. It’s submissive. And so what we need to do is look at the idea of submitting to the Lord.
09:19 Look at the idea of realizing our sin nature and realizing our limitations. Now, some people are hardheaded, aren’t they? Me included, Amen. I’m so hardheaded.
09:29 I was living out in the world a long time. I knew I needed to be saved. I knew the world had nothing good to offer.
09:35 I’d figured that one out a long time ago, amen. I grew up in a troubled house, a broken home, got into all kinds of problems, and I saw all the kind of the sick and disgusting aspects of sin and just the grossness of it and the wickedness of it. I knew that was no good.
09:52 I said, Lord, I’m ready to be saved. I practically ran down to the altar to be saved when they did the altar call when the point in time was, but yet I was still out in the world, and I was debating with this idea of, well, could God really be calling us to a kind of holiness that forsakes the things of the world? I mean, does God really not want us to drink alcohol and not want us to curse and not go around the unclean thing? I mean, I know it sounds silly to fundamental believers, but for me at that time, it was pretty groundbreaking. I grew up outside of New York City, Amen.
10:25 I saw everything. I got into every kind of thing, and to me, it was unimaginable. You’re just going to go ahead and forsake all of these things for God? And my pride got in the way saying, well, I’m a good enough person, and I’ll go to church on Sundays, but don’t ask me to commit to the rest of the week, Amen.
10:44 I know it sounds awful, but many people, that’s how they live, is it not? They’re living with the Bible in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other hand, and that’s not Christianity. That’s not perfect holiness. That’s not submitting to God.
10:57 God says to be of a sober mind, and you say, Brother Clark, if I just have a little bit, that’s okay. Well, I don’t know if you can have a little bit. I don’t know, but I know with me, I don’t do anything a little bit.
11:05 If you saw me, you’d say, well, he certainly likes to eat, Amen. I like to eat. I like sports, Amen.
11:12 Catch me around a South Carolina football game, and my blood’s pumping, and I’m running around. Everything I seem to do, I seem to go all the way, so I can’t go near that because the Bible says to be of a sober mind, and I can’t go near a bunch of people that are always living in sin because they’re going to influence me, and so I go over them, try to influence them. Hey, I can give them a gospel track.
11:34 I can give my testimony, but after that, I can’t be hanging around because more than likely, that sinful group is going to influence me, and all of these things are meant by the devil to push us away from God, and here Isaiah 61:1 says he came to bring good tidings, the gospel message to the meek, and so we need to get right with God. We need to realize that pride is the enemy of God. I was going to say the Bible word is enmity or warfare with God.
12:02 That’s the idea. The Bible says that he that is not with me is against me, we must realize that we are at war with God when we are living carnally and sinfully even after being saved. I mean, some preachers might view this differently, but I believe God’s got a very high standard for those that accept salvation, for those that accept that free gift of salvation, and he’s going to hold them to it, so when you say, okay, I’m making Jesus Lord of my life, God’s going to say, okay, I hear that pledge and commitment, and now I’m going to hold you to it, and so we have to be meek, and when we’re meek and we’re submissive and we submit to God, we realize we can’t do it on our own, which again for men is very hard sometimes.
12:41 When we give that to God, he fills our life with peace and joy, and by the way, his plan is so much better than anything you could plan or I could plan ever. Amen. He gives us the desires of our heart, the Bible says, when we seek Him.
12:57 He allows us to have joy and riches untold in heaven. Amen. We realize our eternal place is in heaven with Him, so don’t be sorrowful today.
13:10 Don’t get caught up in the anger and frustration of the day. Instead, turn to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, our salvation, our promise, our strong tower. Turn to Him today and lean on Him.
13:24 Count on these promises. Look in Isaiah 61 : 1, and then go, as we will in the next episode, and look at Luke 4:16, and understand that Jesus Christ is alive today and has made that promise to us today that He is our Lord and Savior, and He will deliver us from all of the evils of this world, and He is the one that sets captives free. Yes, you may go through hard times.
13:57 I’m not saying you won’t, but what you can count on is the Rock, Jesus Christ, our solid rock foundation, to deliver you from all of those problems and to keep you until the day, the blessed hope, when He calls us home to be with him. Thank you for listening. Take care.
14:14 God bless, and Amen.