-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Thank you for joining me.
00:40 Welcome to the cafe today. Good to have you here. Great to be here.
00:44 Today we are diving back into God’s Word as we always do. Get into God’s Word. We study God’s Word.
00:49 We see what it means back then, what it means in today’s age, and more specifically what it means for you. Today we’re in a fantastic verse of Scripture. They all are great, but this one is really special.
01:03 Isaiah 61:1. Oh, this is many believe our Lord Jesus Christ speaking through the prophet Isaiah. 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.
01:27 Amen. This should bless you today. This should encourage you today because we see here the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
01:35 We see that that is Christ himself. And you might say, well, Brother Clark, how can you make that statement that that is Christ himself when it says the prophet Isaiah or it’s from the book of prophet Isaiah? If you go to Luke 4 starting here in verse 16 and he being Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read.
02:02 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. Verse 18 of Luke 4. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
02:16 He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Amen. And so we see Jesus Himself mentioning this message in the New Testament in His hometown, in His hometown of Nazareth.
02:35 In verse 19, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the book and he gave it again to the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all of them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him.
02:49 And He began to say unto them, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears and all bear witness, bear Him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And then they go on to doubt Him. Okay.
03:05 They go on to say, is this Joseph’s son? Surely this couldn’t be the Christ. And it was very profound. Now I want you guys understand too the context.
03:13 As I understand this, the context of this verse, not only did Christ go home to Nazareth and a prophet it says is never accepted in his hometown. And anyone that’s been preaching for God or living for God, oftentimes they have the biggest trouble at home. Amen.
03:28 Maybe with relatives and so forth. But here Christ is rejected and they’re not believing on Him. Right.
03:38 As He mentions this. And at that time, typically, as I understand it, you would have these scribes, the upper crust. Amen.
03:48 The high level intellectuals of the time would read of the scriptures of those mosaic scriptures from Moses. Amen. They would be like Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Genesis and so forth.
04:03 They would read it. Okay. They’d read it and you would listen.
04:06 That was that. Amen. And so the idea that somebody would get up there in this holy sacred place and say, let me read this to you.
04:13 Oh yeah, by the way, that’s me. And this has been fulfilled, was very controversial. It was very, they would looked at as almost like it was forsaking tradition.
04:26 And that’s why people were so stunned by it. Amen. But back to Isaiah 61:1, Christ did say that.
04:33 Amen. So we believe it was Christ here in the old Testament saying it, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. And as I mentioned in a previous message, the idea of good tidings is the good news.
04:48 That is the gospel message that Christ didn’t come to condemn. Amen. He came to give life and give it more abundantly.
04:52 Amen. He came to save. And he came to save who? The meek, unto the meek.
05:00 Now the meek, the definition means submissive, means obedient. It does not mean someone that’s proud or boastful or rebellious. And so we realize of great truth of God’s plan.
05:12 He came to save those that were willing to accept the fact they had a sin nature that they could not fix. They had a sin nature that they could not remedy on their own. And they needed a savior.
05:27 They needed somebody to come and fix it. And God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ came and saved those that believe on Him. That’s how that free gift of salvation comes about.
05:37 And I always like to say, when you have a free gift presented to you, you have to accept it. Have you ever been offered something for free and said, no? I’m sure you have. I have.
05:47 People may come and say, hey, my neighbor the other day, he came and said, hey, I’ve got two comforters. Do you want them? And I said, no, I don’t think we need the comforters. Me and my allergic defensiveness, I’m like, no, those don’t look brand new and airtight.
06:04 So even though they actually did look brand new, they were in a bag. So I said, no. He offered me a free gift.
06:10 I said, no. So then I don’t have that free gift. Now, just for clarity’s sake, my wife, realizing that we’re working with foster care program, said, wait, we may need those.
06:19 And so my wife took that free gift, but I said, no. So do I have those comforters? No, because I said, no. Amen.
06:26 I don’t have them. I rejected that free gift. Now, it was a free gift.
06:30 It wouldn’t have cost me anything. I would have received that gift from my neighbor, Sean. Amen.
06:34 I love Sean. And I would have received that gift if I had accepted it, but I didn’t accept it. Okay.
06:40 Well, Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, was buried three days and risen again. Amen. And this is all for you.
06:47 Amen. He took on your sin debt, but if you don’t accept that free gift of salvation, you don’t have it. Just like those comforters.
06:53 I don’t have them. I didn’t accept it. Amen.
06:55 But if you don’t accept the free gift of salvation with me, I might have to get a blanket later. Okay. And again, this example is a little bit curved off because my wife did take it.
07:04 So technically they’re in the garage. But with me following the example is I’d have to get a blanket later. But if I don’t accept that free gift of salvation, then I am not Christ.
07:09 I’m not set free. Because look at the second part of Isaiah 61:1. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. What does that mean? That’s the idea of like a surgeon binding up a wound.
07:24 Amen. Binding up a wound. Think about all the guilt and all of that.
07:29 I mean, if you think back on your life and all the things that you’ve done, and men, we’re really good at compartmentalizing. I’ve learned that. The idea of like putting things away in a place where we don’t think about them.
07:39 But if you do think about them, and don’t worry, Satan will bring them up. But time and time again, you’ll realize, oh, I’m not a good person. And I’ve really done some bad things in my life.
07:48 And there’s issues here that I can’t even figure out. Well, Jesus came to bind up that broken heart, to say you are forgiven, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to say, you know what, you were in captivity of sin, you were under the bondage of sin. And how do I know this? The idea here is when you are born, you’re born spiritually dead when you’re born.
08:12 So you’re physically alive, but you don’t have the Holy Spirit because you’re not born again yet, right? And so when you’re born, you’re spiritually dead. You’re living in sin because you inherited that. That’s hereditary, passed down from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
08:25 And you are living a sinful life. That’s all you can do. You’re a sinner, you’re going to sin.
08:29 It’s literally your nature. And then when you’re born again, when you accept Christ as Savior, when you accept that free gift, now you have the Holy Spirit living within you, the capital S Spirit. You have God living within you.
08:42 And now you’re no longer under that bondage. Now you are literally free. That should bless you today.
08:49 If you have been saved, if you accepted Christ as Savior, you’re no longer under the bondage of sin. You are not. You do not have to live in sin.
08:55 You do not have to deal with this guilt and pain about past problems, these broken hearted issues, because they are all now under the blood. Amen. You understand they’re under the blood and Satan will bring it up and try to make you think, Oh, remember that horrible thing you did 10 years ago, 30 years ago, five months ago.
09:15 Well, if you’ve been saved and you’ve repented before God, he’s faithful and just to forgive you of those sins. That’s what the Bible says. And you can tell Satan to go take a hike because you are no longer under the bondage of sin.
09:26 You’re no longer under that bondage. You are now free by the grace and by the blood of Christ. You are free.
09:33 And so you don’t have to live that life. You don’t have to walk around and say, I’m no good. I can’t do anything right.
09:39 I mess up. I feel so bad. I’m going to be punished for this.
09:43 You have been set free. Now, if you’ve been set free, you’re not going to be punished. Amen.
09:48 Again, the Lord didn’t come to condemn. He came to save. Amen.
09:53 The Lord didn’t come to cast judgment on this world. Amen. That’s at a later time after the tribulation, the Lord came to save.
10:00 He said, look, I know your nature. I see where you’re at. And I will rescue you from that sin.
10:07 I will set that. You’re captive and I will set you free. I will break those chains.
Amen. It’s amazing. In the Old Testament, there are pictures of this, specifically the year of Jubilee to proclaim liberty.
10:23 It’s in Leviticus 25:10, Ezekiel 46:17. I believe Jeremiah 34 has it as well. This idea of freedom or the year of Jubilee and Elcott’s commentary has helped me with this because I’ve read about the year of Jubilee and I hadn’t connected it quite to Isaiah 61 until I saw this commentary. And I don’t get into the commentaries too much.
10:47 I try to just let the Holy Spirit lead. And I just study my Bible as much as I can to give you the plain truth. Amen.
10:53 And I pray over it and I trust the Lord. He’s brought me this far. Amen.
But this one is really quite good, this commentary, because it’s showing the connection between Leviticus 25:10. The idea of the Jubilee was you would be a servant for X number of years. And then on the last time of that year, all slaves would be freed, all debts would be forgiven. It’s really powerful.
11:16 I mean, Leviticus 25: 8, and now shall number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee. Seven times, seven years in the space of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee 49 years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee, this would be in the 50th year, to sound on the 10th day of the seventh month.
11:37 In the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. Verse 10, and you shall hallow the 15th year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a Jubilee unto you, and you shall return every man unto his possession, and you shall return every man unto his family.
11:56 Wow. And so what you have here is in that 50th year, everyone’s freed, the slaves are free, the debts are canceled. All of this is a picture of what Christ did for us and all of the sin and problem that we can never resolve in our life that’s caused by sin.
12:11 When Christ died on the cross for us and was risen again, Amen, and when we believe on Him, we’re freed of that debt. And as one commentator put it, we now can have rest. So the year of Jubilee is very powerful because it frees us of that indebtedness that back then it did, Amen.
12:31 And now here in the New Testament, we see it with Christ and finished work on the cross. Colossians 2:13-14, and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened or made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. You see, it’s just like, and again, you can get into historical references of nailing a debt being paid, when your debt was paid and you’re let out of prison.
13:07 I believe historically that debt was posted publicly for people to see that had been paid. But the idea is as Christ was nailed to the cross, so are these debts. So are these problems that we have that we can’t resolve and they’re all caused by sin, Amen.
13:22 Sin is a burdensome burden beyond belief. I just gave a bunch of Bs there, but sin is just awful. I’ve personally seen sin wreck a home, wreck a life, wreck more than many lives, Amen.
13:36 So many lives. I’ve seen sin take lives of kids I went to high school with way, way too young. Oh, how sin is awful.
13:42 I’ve seen sin creep in and lead to addiction and divorce and every kind of problem you can imagine, depression, and Christ frees us from this sin. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
14:06 And so that is us here today. We are bound and we are freed by Christ. Thank God for that.
14:12 Amen. Think on that today. Thank you for listening.
14:15 Take care. God bless and Amen.