Nazareth. I had the privilege of going there with Pascal and Tara and Kelly and one hundred of us from church. And it was a beautiful day, as you can see, when we got to go to the town where Jesus grew up, this little town in the northern part of Israel. And in Luke, chapter 4, Jesus goes back to his hometown, and he read some Scripture in the synagogue, and they try to run him out of town and throw him off of this cliff right here, Mount precipice, which you can see if you're trying to throw somebody off that cliff, they're not going to have a happy landing. They're trying to kill Jesus. What could Jesus possibly go and read from Scripture in his hometown that would make the crowd turn against him and want to kill him?
I invite you to open your Bible and turn with me to Luke, chapter four, verse 16, and we'll go to this scene in the synagogue on the Sabbath day in the little town of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, and we'll see the Scripture that he read and the response of the crowd. So out of respect for God's word, I invite everybody here to stand up for the public reading of Scripture. I encourage you to give this your full and undivided attention. This is the Word of God. This is actually Jesus reading the Word of God in his hometown synagogue, Luke 4:16-21. Please follow along as I read.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
That's the reading of God's word. Please go ahead and have a seat. And I just want you to think this through with me for a second. Let's say I hand you the scroll of Isaiah. Let's say I hand you this epic prophecy, 66 chapters of Isaiah. And we'll put it up here on the screen behind me. This is the famous Isaiah scroll. Now they've made a digital version of it that you can go search. This is one of the great archeological discoveries of all time, the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the most famous scroll out of the all the scrolls is the Isaiah scroll. Where would you turn in Isaiah? Think it through. Where would you go to? A lot of people, the most famous chapter of Isaiah is chapter 6, where Isaiah has a vision of the holiness of God on his throne. And Isaiah says, “Woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips.” And he says, “Here am I? Send me.” Or maybe you would go to Isaiah 9. I know a lot of us read Isaiah 9 on Election Day, where “Unto us a child is born, a son is given. He's going to have the government on his shoulder, and his name is going to be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Or maybe you would go to Isaiah 53; that's a famous prophecy, that “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquity.” Seven hundred years before Jesus dies on the cross, Isaiah describes in vivid detail the righteous one paying for our sins.
Where would you turn in Isaiah? Jesus turned to Isaiah 61 when they handed him the scroll. He could turn wherever he wanted, and he turned to Isaiah 61 and that's what he reads here in Luke 4. So, I want to invite everybody to go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 61 with me. Let's see what is happening here in this chapter that Jesus, that's where he wants to turn, that's what he wants to read to his hometown crowd. Now I don't know if you've ever read Isaiah. We've been reading Isaiah together as a church, and we were at chapter 61. That's the next chapter we would read on our schedule. And so maybe, you have been reading with us, maybe not. But this is the chapter that Jesus turns to. And then he reads it like what this chapter says is fulfilled in their hearing in the synagogue in Nazareth. So, look at how the chapter begins. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.” Jesus is making a bold and audacious claim that he is the me of Isaiah 61; he's saying that this famous prophecy that they would have been familiar with, that they would have heard read in the synagogue many times, is actually about him who grew up right there in their hometown. What a thing to say that this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing today because of me.
So, here's what's happening at our church. This is the not everybody at our churches having the same experience. Some people, ever since we went through the law, they're really reading the Bible. They're really reading the Bible, and they're seeing Jesus in places in the Bible. They've never seen him before, places like Isaiah 61 and so let's get this down for point number one if you are going to take some notes. There's a handout there if you want to write down some things.
Number one, a good goal for us in the new year, let's “Resolve to grow in knowing Jesus.” That's what we want to do. We want to grow in our knowledge of who Jesus is and what he came to do for us. And we can find Jesus, not just in certain passages, not just in certain chapters, but the whole Bible is testifying about Jesus. Can I get an amen from anybody on this? In fact, Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of his day. He said, you search the Scriptures because you think you're going to find life in the Scriptures, but they testify about me. Jesus said in John 5:39 and so Jesus is claiming that all of the Hebrew Scriptures, the law, the Prophets and the Writings, they're all prophesying about him. And then we have the Gospel accounts. We see the book of Acts, where the church spreads by the ministry of the Spirit. We see that the whole story going all the way to Revelation. It's about Jesus.
So, I don't know what your New Year's goals are, if you have any resolutions, is your goal to know Jesus more and love him more deeply in 2025? See, I've seen how it can get twisted. I'm a church kid. I went to Christian school. I went to Bible College. I've been to multiple seminaries. People can start studying theology, and what they learn is more information, but it seems like they actually get less Jesus. There are a lot of people reading the Bible because they want to learn how to live, but they should be searching the Scriptures to see Christ. Make sure you're not just trying to grow in your knowledge, but you want to actually know Jesus. And so, this is profound what I'm sharing with you that Jesus would claim that Isaiah 61 is about him. This is profound!
And I'm going to give you a few things to write down on the page. And my concern is that just me trying to summarize it and you writing it down is going to simplify the utter awesomeness of what Jesus is saying here, that there's going to be someone who has the spirit of the Lord God upon him. And Jesus says, it's me. I'm the one. I'm the anointed one. Look at these first two phrases, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed Me.” Now, this is how it works. In Scripture, you get these references, and things are not fully explained. It's not like there's now a whole chapter that explains to you what that means, that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, or that he's the anointed one. No, it just gives us these references. And then as we compare the different passages together, we see this epic picture of who Jesus is. So, let's think these phrases through, this idea of Jesus being anointed is extremely significant. It's the Hebrew word Messa. It's where the idea of Messiah comes from. When they anointed someone, they messed, they smeared oil on their forehead. And certain people were chosen by God to be anointed, the high priest and the king of all Israel. They were anointed like God had chosen them for a specific purpose. Well, God has chosen his Son, Jesus. He has anointed him to do something very specific. There is no one like Jesus. He is unique in all the world history. He's the Anointed One of God.
And then this phrase, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon him. Now, do you notice how in GOD there are three capital letters, G, O, D, and then do you notice how LORD in the next line is capital L, O, R, D. Let's throw that up here on the screen. Whenever you see the capitalized LORD, that's the name of God, Yahweh. Some of us learned this when we were going through Exodus together, that God told his people his name, Yahweh. It means, “I am, that I am.” He's the self-existent one, Yahweh. And the Jews, out of respect, didn't want to use the name Yahweh. Well, you can use the name Yahweh and still show respect for God. And so, we don't need to be afraid of using his name. And so, when it says Lord GOD, with the capital God in the Hebrew, then it's actually Adonai Yahweh. And Adonai is the title of Lord, the sovereign ruler, the one who calls the shots, the one who's in charge. Yahweh is the one who has all authority and reigns on a throne over heaven and earth. And the one who has all authority, his spirit is going to be on me. He's the one who anointed me. And then Jesus shows up, opens the scroll of Isaiah, reads these words and says, Today, this is fulfilled in your hearing. The I Am, the me, is what Jesus says. And it blows the minds of everybody there in Nazareth. They're like, well, they're amazed at what Jesus is saying. It's so intellectually stimulating to think about Jesus being this one that has been prophesied.
So, let's get this down, three dashes there under point number one, three thoughts. We want to try to get our minds around about Jesus. Number one, “Jesus is the second person of the Trinity,” is how we would say it in theological terms. Now notice, it doesn't use the word “trinity” here. In fact, it doesn't use the word trinity in Scripture. That's just our way to try to describe the reality that there is only one God, but this God is three persons, the father Yahweh, the Son Jesus, and the Spirit. And you see that right here in this first phrase, the Spirit of Adonai Yahweh is on who? Jesus. Okay, so you have the Yahweh on the throne, and then his Spirit is on Jesus. They're reading the scroll in Nazareth. And so, you can see all three persons, one God. It's unfathomable. And people sometimes act like, well, I wish there was just a passage I could go to that would just explain it all to me. No, the thoughts that we're trying to think about God, we can't fully comprehend who God is. God is beyond our limited, finite understanding. And so, we have to take all these revelations of who God is, and then try to put them together and think deeply about them. And God is going to send someone who's going to be a man, but the Spirit of Yahweh is going to be upon him. And if you've been reading Isaiah, if you're a student of this masterpiece of prophecy, this phrase, The Spirit of Yahweh is upon me, you've read this before. In fact, by this point in Chapter 61 the repetition is supposed to be making an emphasis of how important this really is.
Go back to Isaiah, chapter 11, which we already maybe have read and looked at before, but see that's where we saw this idea that there would be someone who's going to be born, but this someone will be unique, because the Spirit of Yahweh will be upon him. And we saw that here in Isaiah, chapter 11, when it was talking here about the house of David, look what it says in Isaiah 11:1. “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” So, someone's going to be born, the house of Jesse is going to be broken down, just a stump, but boom, here comes a shoot. Here comes a branch out of that family tree. And this one who's going to be born in the house of Jesse in the line of David, he's going to have the Spirit of the Lord upon him. What does that mean? Well, it's a spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. This is the very Spirit of God himself.
So, you’ve got to know some things for the context here. Jesse is the father of who, everybody? King David, king of Israel. So, we're talking about the house of David has been cut down to a stump. The House of David, it's going to look like, maybe it's finished, like it's over, but then all of a sudden, there's going to be someone coming out of the line of David, this shoot, this branch that's going to burst forth, and that one, when the one comes in the line of David, he'll have the Spirit of Yahweh upon him. Okay, so these House of David prophecies here in Isaiah are epic, and you really have to know the whole context here of Isaiah 7, all the way to 12. And we've already seen, maybe you're familiar with some of these prophecies, for example, that he would be born of a virgin, and that his name would be Immanuel, God with us. So here, in the context, the king in the line of David Ahaz is not really trusting God. He's shaking in the wind. He's afraid that their enemies, Israel to the north, and Syria, are going to come and wipe them out. And so, God sends his prophet Isaiah to come and encourage the king to give him faith. In fact, God even says to King Ahaz, ask for any sign you want. I'll give it to you to strengthen your faith. But see, Ahaz, in his pride, he acts like he doesn't need help from God. He doesn't need a sign from God, even though, clearly he is not a man who lives by faith. He acts like, no, I don't need anything. And God says, well, if you're going to ask for a sign or not, I'm going to give it to you. How about this? For a sign, a virgin is going to have a child. How about that? Is that impressing you? Is that getting your attention? And when the Virgin has a child, it will be “God with Us.” In fact, in Isaiah 9:6-7, it talks about this child that's going to be born, this Son that's going to be given, and this Son, he'll run the government. See, there's someone coming in the line of David who will lead God's people of Israel. And he won't just lead the chosen nation. He's going to lead all the nations, because he will have the wonderful counsel of God himself. He'll have the power and might of God. Even though he will be born as a child, he's the Everlasting Father. He's the one who will bring peace, shalom. See this idea? Well, who is this going to be? Well, he's going to come from the line of Jesse. He's going to come from the house of David, and he will have the Spirit of Yahweh upon him.
So, “Jesus is ‘anointed’ as king.” That's who we're waiting for. That's our second dash. We know that a king is coming. We know that a king is coming in the line of David, through the nation of Israel. And this king, when he comes, he's really going to bring justice and righteousness, and he's going to bring God's Kingdom, and the Spirit of God will actually be upon this king. He'll be unlike anyone else before him. Now go to Isaiah 42 where it talks about the same idea, again, of the Spirit of the Lord being upon someone. So, there are other places we could go in Isaiah as well, but this is a theme throughout the prophecy. Look for the one who has the Spirit of Yahweh upon him. And here's what God says about that in Isaiah 42:1, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, and whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nation.”
So, these are the Servant Songs we want to we want you to write these four Servant Songs down here. And it begins right here in Isaiah 42 and maybe you read through this over Christmas break. I don't know if you did or not, but you start to hear God talk about his servant, not just his chosen people of Israel as his servant, but someone is going to come to save his chosen people of Israel. And this one who comes to serve Yahweh, he's going to suffer and die. Isaiah 1-9, 49:1-13, 50:4-9, 52:13, 53:12. So, we get introduced in 42 we get more in 49 and 50, and the most famous of these Servant Songs is the end of Isaiah 52 all the way through Isaiah 53 where this righteous servant is willing to offer himself like a lamb led to the slaughter, like an animal that's going to be sacrificed. This righteous servant is willing to die, and he's “pierced for our transgressions, he's crushed for our iniquities.” He's willing to offer himself in our place, so that we are now considered righteous through his sacrifice. This is the service that he's coming to do for Yahweh and for us. He is willing to suffer for our sins.
So, let's get that down for our third dash. “Jesus is the servant sent to suffer for us.” Here, the one who's going to have the Spirit of the Lord upon him; Jesus is the servant sent to suffer for us. So, you could see this one who's coming. He will be God in flesh. He will have the Spirit of Yahweh upon him as a man. He will come in the line of King David, and he will come to do God's will, to serve God, which is to save all of us. He will suffer and die in our place, paying the penalty of our sin so we can receive his righteousness. This is the idea of the one who's coming, and the spirit will be upon him.
Now go back with me to Luke 4, because when you do a study of Jesus like this, and your mind gets blown a little bit, or you remember these core foundational truths of who Jesus really is, Jesus is an endlessly interesting figure in human history. Even people who say that they believe as Christians and have put their faith in Jesus, they still find him to be fascinating. It's hard to deny that Jesus has had a unique impact in the history of the world, that Jesus is kind of a singular figure, and so learning about the claims of Jesus, learning that Jesus read this in his hometown, and look at the response, the initial response, of people there in the hometown when Jesus reads Isaiah 61, says it's about him, says it's fulfilled in their hearing. Look at Luke 4:22, “And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.” The initial response is awe, like wow. Listen to Jesus. How profound. Look at what Jesus is saying. And this is how it is when you talk about Jesus and you introduce the one who God sent, the one who has the Spirit of the Lord upon him, the Anointed One. Hey, there's nobody like Jesus. Let me tell you about him. A lot of people are very interested. But see the whole point of saying today this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing, it's like a double-edged sword. One point is, can you see that Jesus has the Spirit of Yahweh upon him? But go back and look at what Jesus said in verse 18. Remember what he read, “Because he has anointed me,” what? “to proclaim good news to the” who there, everybody? To the who? “the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the” who? “to the captives and recovering of sight, to the” who? “the blind and to set at liberty those who are” what? Oh, wait a minute, if you're the one that the Spirit of the Lord is upon, then that means you're saying that we are the poor prisoners, blind and oppressed.
See, that's the other part of the dual-edged sword, and that's what happens here in Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus, like, wow, Jesus, you're really impressing us. But then, as it goes on and Jesus continues to speak, he talks about how the people of God, the Jews, often don't act like they need God. They often act like they're doing just fine. Thank you very much. And we're pretty good people. We're not poor, no, we're not slaves to anybody. We're not prisoners bound by anybody. We're doing just fine. And Jesus starts to say, sometimes it's people who are not Jews, it's people of other nations who know that they're sick, who know that they're poor and in need, and they're the ones who seek out God's help, and they're the ones who find salvation. And sometimes, God's own Chosen People don't even find that salvation. And by verse 29, look at the response here. “They rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.” See, they're amazed when they're learning things about Jesus, but when Jesus starts to say who they are, they don't like it very much. Thank you. Who are you calling me poor? You’re saying I'm a prisoner. You're saying I'm blind. I'm one of the oppressed people. I'm not one of the oppressed people, I'm one of God's people. That's what they say to the Son of God when they're trying to kill him.
So, when you get to see the light of who Jesus is, it exposes the reality of who you are as well. And this is something you have to decide. Are you not just going to believe who Jesus is, revealed, to believe in the Scripture? Are you going to believe who you are revealed to be in the Scripture? Jesus, when he preached his famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, first line that Jesus said in his sermon, “Blessed are the poor in” what, everybody? “Spirit”. So, when it talks about the poor here, it's not just talking about the amount of money you've got in your bank account. It's talking about, where do you find your sense of value? Where do you think that you have worth? Do you think that in and of yourself, you have the goodness and righteousness that you need before God? Or are you willing, willing to agree that when it comes to having righteousness, you are definitely poor, in fact, you're ready to declare bankruptcy that you don't have the righteousness that you need before a holy God.
See, this is the question you're going to have to answer for yourself, is, are you a good person? And other people are going to say you're a good dad, or you're a good mom, or you're a good kid. Other people are going to say, hey, we think you're pretty good. And that's going to be based on our standard today in America, but if we measure ourselves based on the standard of God's law, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Can I get an amen from anybody on that? And so, you have to, I hope that even if somebody says, well, you're a good person, I hope you're going to get reaction over time to that would be, come. Well, not really, not me, not who I really am. Like if I look into myself, if I see who I am in my heart, I don't have this sense of richness within me. I actually have a poverty within me. I actually need something outside of myself, something that I don't have this holiness of God, this righteousness of God. I don't have that in myself. I needed someone who had the Spirit of the Lord upon him to bring me that righteousness.
And so, the world is trying to tell you that you need to be yourself. And the world is really good at giving you this message right now in America. And you might even hear people say, hey, be you. Be true to yourself, believe in yourself. And you might think, Ah, I don't agree with that, but watch out, because it's very deceptive and very subtle how the world is trying to say that you're going to find value and worth in looking to yourself in your own self esteem. And I understand, because we don't want people beating themselves up. We don't want people walking around feeling bad. We don't want people thinking like I'm a terrible person or things like that. But where are you going to find a sense of value from looking within or to looking to the one who has the Spirit of the Lord upon him?
See, what the Bible is saying is, here's good news for the poor. You don't have it, but Jesus does have it, and Jesus will come and give it to you. That's the good news to the poor. But see, you’ve got to agree that you're poor and that you need the righteousness of Christ counted to you, because you don't have it in and of yourself. And so, what this passage should do is it should remind all of us where our sense of value and worth come from. It's not through self-esteem. It's through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he came to save us, and that's my identity, that's now where I find hope, that's now teaching me who I really am as a new creation in Christ.
Let's get that down for point number two, you want to “Identify as someone who needs Jesus.” Okay? You're talking about poor prisoners, blind and oppressed. Yeah, sign me up. I'm one of those people. Now you could be fascinated by Jesus, but then act like you don't really need Jesus yourself, and try to run him off a cliff. Or you can agree with what Jesus is reading from the scripture that, yes, he is the light, and I have darkness. I have evil bound up into my heart and the core of who I am in my soul. I choose myself over other people. I want to do things that I know are not right for me to do. Yeah, I not only do the things God has commanded me to do, I sometimes transgress his laws and do the opposite of what God has told me to do, in my rebellion. I want to go my own way, rather than God's way. Yes, I am poor. I am a prisoner in the cell of myself. I am blind to the glory of God, and I am oppressed. I need help. Are you ready to agree with that? Has there been a time in your life where you've admitted that? See, that's what we're getting to here. That's why this goes from wow, that's amazing that Jesus is reading us this, to we’ve got to kill this guy because he's offending us, and he's calling us poor people. He's calling us blind people. And so, you can decide to agree with what Jesus says about you, what the Scripture says, or you can harden your heart and, in your pride, be offended by it. And you see here in Nazareth that they ended up having a hardness of heart and trying to throw Jesus off the cliff.
But I want to encourage you to find your value and worth in the fact that Jesus came to bring you the good news. Jesus came to set you free. Jesus came to open your eyes so you could really see. Jesus came to tell you that this time, right now, this year that you're living in right now, is a time of God's favor, and that God wants to be good to you and bless you. If you'll just agree with God about who you are, you could have all the spiritual riches that are in the grace of Jesus. You could have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It just starts by admitting that you're poor in spirit and that you need what Jesus came to do for you.
Go with me all the way back to Leviticus 25 because I want to try to give you an idea of what it would mean to be a captive or a prisoner here. And it's not just maybe someone who committed a crime. No, that it goes along with this idea of poverty. You’ve read about people who owed debts, you. In the Bible, if you could not pay off your debt, you were often thrown where? Into prison. So, the idea is you would get in so much debt that you would have to sell off your property, and then, even then, you couldn't pay off the debt, and so you would end up owing more than you could ever repay. And so, what are we going to do with you? Because you can't even pay off your debts, we're just going to throw you in prison. And so, this language of people being set free, captives being released, see, in the Jewish mindset, there's an idea that this goes all the way back to a day where all the debts are paid. And the day where all the prisoners get to go home for free, and they don't owe that money anymore. And it was known as the Year of Jubilee. You have it here in Leviticus 25, verse 10. This happened every 50 years on the calendar of God. They were broken down into seven-year chunks. And there were seven sets of seven, so 49 years. And then there was the 50th year. And it says here in Leviticus 25 verse 10, “You shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” There it is the same idea of Jesus proclaiming liberty to the captives. It's like announcing the year of Jubilee. “And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.”
So, the way God gave his people the Promised Land, all the tribes had their different allotment of land. The Levites, they kind of had it a unique way, but they had this land. And if you had gone into debt and you had to sell off your land on the fiftieth year, the Year of Jubilee, you get to go back, your land is restored, your debt is erased. Proclaim liberty to the captives you've been set free of your poverty. And that's what Jesus came to announce, that debt of sin that you had before God that you can't undo, that you can't repay. Here's Jesus saying good news all of you who are ready to say you're poor and you owe God a debt you can't repay. I want to proclaim liberty to you. I want to proclaim to you a year of the Lord's favor where you get to go back, and your debt has been paid in full. Have you ever felt like you really owed something and then there was just freedom from that burden being removed from you? There was relief from your debt. That's what Jesus is offering. Could you see the debt that you owed to God? That debt has been paid. He's proclaiming liberty to the captives.
Let's get this down for our first dash under point number two. “The poor in spirit have freedom from debt.” The poor in spirit have freedom from debt. Yes, I was poor in my spirit but look at what I have now in Christ. I used to feel burdened, and now I feel this debt relief. Now I feel this favor of my God in a time of Jubilee that all of my sins have been forgiven. Am I speaking to anybody here today? Man, have you done things that you regretted, that you felt guilty for, that you felt ashamed of, and did you feel the heavy burden of the weight of your sin? And then did Jesus remove the burden of your debt and give good news that all of your sin has been forgiven. That's something to identify in right there. That's something to find value in, worth it, that my sins that used to define me have now been so forgiven that they're no longer attached to me, but the righteousness of Jesus has been credited to my account. I am now a poor person like me. I am now rich in Christ. Hey, it's a time of the Lord's favor. It's a Year of Jubilee. See, I love this. I love reading Isaiah 61. I love how Jesus refers to it in Luke 4. Because it's like a matter of fact, this is who has the spirit of the Lord upon him. This is who's anointed. And here's what's going to happen for the poor, the prisoners, the blind, oppressed, almost like whether they want it to happen or not, here's what's coming. You're getting freedom. You're getting light. Your eyes are being opened. I have got good news for you. Here it is. It's the inevitability that Jesus is going to save people. It's who he is. It's what he's coming to do. And it was written long ago, and he can read it in Nazareth, and we're here studying it at the beginning of the year of our Lord, 2025, and nothing can stop it from happening, because God has already decreed that it would be so. And there will be people overwhelmed with the burden of their sin, and those people will erupt with joy that their debt has been paid in full because of Jesus Christ. That's what God sent Jesus to do.
Now go to Isaiah 42. I want to read some more of these Servant Songs, as they show us this idea of what Jesus came to do for the people that God is going to save these again. These ideas are so profound, like, what does it mean to be a prisoner? What does it mean to be blind and then to have your eyes opened, or to be released from your prison? Well, if we keep reading, we'll get more of an idea here in Isaiah 42. So, we already looked at this passage earlier. We looked at the first verse because we saw that whoever God's servant is here, his Spirit is upon him, and he's going to bring forth justice to the nations. Now look at Isaiah 42:2-4 here, let's keep reading. “He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.” Now, it keeps emphasizing, when the servant of the Lord comes, the one who has the Spirit upon him, what is he going to bring to the nations? What is he going to bring to the earth? He's going to bring this justice. Get your batman voice out, right? And it makes you start thinking about the idea of superheroes in the Justice League, right? These and if you've ever seen a superhero movie, basically, we're going to fight the aliens at some point, right? And then we're going to start crashing into big buildings, and we're going to knock over buildings, and there's going to be destruction, and there's going to be chaos, but it's okay, because we're bringing justice to the universe, right? So, this is a very interesting description. Then here, because someone is coming with such power and such authority that he can rule all the nations, and he can take all the wrongs and make them right, and he can bring justice. But then look at what it says in Isaiah 42:3, “A bruised reed he will not break, and even this faintly burning wick,” even this little light of a candle over here that's about to go out, no, “he will not quench.” Even this faintly burning wick, even this little bruised plant over here that's hurt and barely standing up, even this little flame that's about to go out, see it's creating this picture of this epic power that Jesus has to bring justice. But then even this hurt one over here isn't damaged, even this little flame of a soul that's about to be extinguished, no he cares about that person, and their light doesn't go out.
So, you're seeing here someone with power like we've never known on planet Earth, and yet someone with compassion and care and love, that there is no buddy who's the least of these beyond his concern. There's this book that this guy, Richard Sibbes, wrote, called The Bruised Reed. It's like a classic of one of the Puritans, and you can go read it, and he's just overwhelmed with this idea that, wow, like a fire that's about to go out, or a plant that's about to die, and yet here Jesus is caring and keeping that plant alive, keeping that fire burning, like Jesus cares even about the lowest person in that nation, Jesus, he cares about them.
See, so you're getting the picture of who he is, the power to actually do something about the problems of the world, the care that no person would be left behind. And then it says in Isaiah 42:5-7, “Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: ‘I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” So, see, the picture of darkness is like, where would people sit all day in the dark? Well, those who are in a cell, those who are in prison. And the idea is, when this servant comes to bring justice and to care, God's people, his Light to the Nations, will show us who we really are, and we'll see ourselves as the as the prisoners of ourselves that we really are, as people who are in the dark, and the contrast of the glory of Jesus will shine the light to expose our real condition.
It is when you hear about Jesus that you finally start seeing yourself. Isn't that what Kelly was telling us in her baptism? “I knew God was holy, but then I had to see myself, my sin separating me.” And so, when this one comes, and now we're beholding real righteousness, real justice, the very Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, is upon him. Whoa. Then look at me. In contrast to him, I don't care about other people like that. I don't hunger and thirst for righteousness like that. Wow. Look who he is. Now, hey, look at me. Look where I am. I'm kind of trapped here. I care more about myself than other people. I care more about getting what I want than what's right before God. I'm kind of stuck here in this prison, and it's like as I see his light, it exposes where I really am, and it calls me out of that darkness.
Okay, so let's get that down for our second dash here, “The prisoners of darkness have light to see.” The prisoners of darkness, because of the light of Jesus, we can now. It's like the eyes get opened. We now start to see who we really are, how bad things really are, and how much we really do need Jesus to come to us.
Go over to Isaiah 49 where it continues the story of this servant in Isaiah 49. we'll pick it up in verse 5. Isaiah 49:5-6. “And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him— for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength— he says: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’” So, the promise has always been, in the house of David, in the kingly line of Israel, there will come a king, and there is a future for the nation of Israel. But here's God saying, yeah, one nation is not enough. You're going to be a light to all the nations, and my salvation isn't going to just go to one place, in Jerusalem, in Israel, my salvation is going to go to the end of the Earth. One important thing to keep in mind, as you're reading the Bible, is that the Bible is not written with an American-centric audience. We might think of ourselves as the center of the world. In the Bible, Jerusalem is the center of the world, God's City and God's people. There's a reason Israel is in the Middle East, and the world has kind of spread out around that particular area of the world. So, when it says that Jesus is going to be a light for the nations, and salvation is going to go to the ends of the Earth. Let me tell you, when I get to go to Nazareth, when I get to go to Israel, and I meet the people there, and they ask me where I'm from, I don't tell them Huntington Beach, because they don't really know about us and our pier over here. So, I usually just say, I'm from California. They look at me like, imagine somebody telling you they were here today from Australia. Your first thought would be. Whoa, you came a long way. That's how they look at you in Jerusalem. Oh, you're from California. You're from the ends of the Earth. Yeah. And guess what? The salvation of Jesus has spread all the way to the end of the Earth. And that's what he said would happen, that he wouldn't just be for the people of Israel, he'd be all nations.
And then look, I just love this Isaiah 49:7-10, “Thus says Yahweh Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: ‘Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’ Thus says the Lord: ‘In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages, saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’” And then look at what the people that God sends his Chosen One to save. Look what they get: “on all bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” And you're going to be a light to all the nations. You're going to bring salvation. And it's like you're going to go to that person who's stuck in the cell of themself, and you're going to say to them, come out . This line. I've loved studying this line this week, verse 9, “to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’” It's like before you met Jesus, you just existed in the shadows. And then when the light of Jesus came and shined upon you, it's like you appeared. It was like in the life of Jesus is where you found life. That's how so many of us would see our lives. Like, before I knew Jesus, I was lost, I was in the dark, I was caught up in myself. And then after I met Jesus, it's like he said to me up here. It's like he called me out. He gave me a purpose; he gave me an identity. He gave me his life. See, that's what it's describing here. This is what Jesus came to do. He's got good news for poor people. You find yourself in a prison? You can come out of there. You find yourself lost in the dark? Here's Jesus saying to you up here, what an amazing thing that God would send this one to us and that we could see Jesus really call us like this. This is a time of favor. This is a day It says there in verse 8, “It's a day of salvation.” So, that's what Jesus means when he says, “Today, this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing.” When Jesus opens up the scroll of Isaiah 61 and he reads it there in Luke 4, and he says today, he doesn't mean maybe that particular day or that particular Sabbath. He's talking about like this time that we're living in, this season, this era, this age that we're in right now. We're living in the year of the Lord's favor. We're living in the day of salvation. Let it be announced to you that God sent someone, and the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. He was the Anointed One, the one that all the prophecies are about. He came, and now we've got good news for everyone who's poor. Now all the prisoners can be set free, and all of those in the dark can come and see a great light. Let us announce a time of God's favor where God wants to save more souls. See, it's really interesting in Luke 4, what is the last line that Jesus reads the year of the Lord's favor, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Look at Isaiah 61 with me. Look at the original text. That's the first part of verse two. If you look at Isaiah 61:2, it says, “To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” And then in the scroll of Isaiah, it goes on to say, “and the day of vengeance of our God, the Day of Judgment, the day when God is going to come and make all the wrongs right.
So, it goes straight in Isaiah 61, from a time of favor and a day of salvation to a time of judgment and a time of great tribulation, but Jesus, he only read the year of the Lord's favor, and then he stopped, and he closed the book, because the prophecy was fulfilled, that it was a day of salvation. But he didn't read about the day of vengeance, because the day of vengeance hasn't come yet. You want to talk about an important gap right there in Isaiah 61 verse 2, like, there's a difference between the time of the Lord's favor and age of the church, where many people can be saved by Jesus, and then a day of judgment, where God is going to come and the guilty aren't going to get away with it. And so, we're living in this gap between the time that Jesus ushered in the day of salvation and before the day of vengeance comes.
Let's get that down for number three, we want to “Make the most of this gap year.” This time that you and I are living in, as we begin a new year 2025, not so much this particular date or this particular number, but this age that you and I are living in, the era of human history that you find yourself alive in, is a time where God has pronounced favor to the world, that God, who would be right to judge the world, has decided in his patience, his grace, his mercy, to delay his judgment and, instead, to send his Son. And the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. He was anointed so that everyone who sees who Jesus is and believes in him, you could be saved. That's the whole purpose of life. Now, the reason we have a new year is so that more people can be saved. And let me just tell you what an important year we have here in Huntington Beach, what an important year to go and plant a church in Long Beach. What is Jesus going to do in 2025? I want to be ready. I want to be praying. I want to be looking to see the one that God sent save more people. And what I'm trying to tell you today is what we're doing right here at our church, it actually matters, like what's happening right now. Do you realize that just by opening up the scroll of Isaiah, and just by telling people who God is and who we are and how Jesus came to save us, do you realize that that can actually change people's entire lives? I mean, that's what Kelly is telling us. That's what her testimony is proclaiming, that she went to the park here in Huntington Beach, all the way at the ends of the earth, hundreds and thousands of years after Jesus read that in Nazareth. And Shane was there at the park, and he'd go to Isaiah 59. Look at it with me, Isaiah 59 and Shane's preaching about the holiness of God, and he's preaching about our sin. And she heard this verse, this verse right here, verse 2, that her “iniquities had made a separation between you and your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you, so that he does not hear.” And what did Kelly say in our testimony to our entire church? She said, and after I heard that verse, I kept thinking about it, and he opened my eyes. She said that the problem wasn't what's God's problem. The problem was with me. I was still in my sin that was hindering me and God, that was separating me from God. And she went and confessed her sin, and Kelly, God saved everybody. Do you realize that she is now alive in the presence of the Lord Jesus? Because she heard somebody open up the scroll of Isaiah, and it changed everything about her. It gave her this life that even death cannot take away the life of Jesus Christ. I mean, that's what's going on in our youth group. That's what's happening here in our church. We are unrolling the scrolls. We are saying who Jesus is and good news is going to the poor. The prisoners are being set free. The blind are having their eyes opened, to people who were oppressed by the evil of this world, are finding the justice and righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is what's happening, and this is what you and I are here to see, to be a part of, to praise the Lord for. We're not here to run Jesus off the cliff like we're already good people. We're here to stand amazed. Why would Jesus come to save sinners like us?
Look at what he's doing. He's still doing it to this very day. In fact, I think he's just begun to do it here among us. Wow. I want to be a part of the year of the Lord's favor. I want to be living in the day of salvation. I want to keep praying for Jesus to save more souls. Let me pray for us right now.
Father in heaven, I just thank you so much that we can open up the scroll of Isaiah together, and we could hear Jesus say who he is, and then we could hear Jesus say who we are. And God, I just pray for all my brothers and sisters that you would remind us of our value, that you would remind us that our worth comes completely from the riches that we have in Jesus Christ, your Son, that it is only through Jesus dying for us that we could be considered righteous and that we had a debt before you that none of us could have ever paid off, and Jesus paid it in full, that we would all still be stuck in the cell of ourselves. But Jesus called us to come out, and in the light of Jesus, he said to us, “appear,” and we emerged from the shadows. So, God, I pray that we would all find our identity in Isaiah 61, in the words that Jesus read to his hometown crowd. I pray that we would be those who stand amazed at Jesus, the Nazarene, and we would never try to run him out of our lives, thinking we've already got it figured out and we don't need his help. And God, I just want to thank you for real people that you're saving here in Huntington Beach. Father, I want to thank you for saving Kelly Reed, and I pray that, as we leave here today, that we would not think of her as someone who died, but we would think of her as someone who's saved, who's really alive, one of the One. That Jesus came for we saw it happen right here. We saw it right in front of our eyes. A young lady turned around through the scroll of Isaiah and let the name of Jesus be praised in this place. Let our hearts take hope and let us be ready to see you save more souls. Father, we pray that this would be a great time of your favor, a day of your salvation, and that we would all be amazed at what Jesus is doing here among us. We pray this in his name, amen. Amen.