The Promise Fulfilled

[0:00] A minute about my work as a preacher. Here's something you may not have known. This is not a one-sided arrangement.! This is not me to you, where I do all the work, and you passively sit and watch.

[0:14] Which is kind of like how baseball works, or, you know, it's football season. I was kidding with John Chapman a few minutes ago that he's wearing a very divisive shirt today. If you're a Bears fan, you probably would disagree with me, because that's what John's shirt says.

[0:29] But if you're a Packer fan, you might be offended. And fellowship is difficult this morning. You know, as we watch football, it's passive. We're sitting in the seats, and the guys in the field are bashing each other's brains out.

[0:42] That is not, actually, what should be happening here is I come up here and deliver God's Word to you, or John does, or Tim does, or Jack does, whoever the case may be. This is actually a shared experience.

[0:54] So I'll tell you in three areas. One is with the prep. As I'm doing my studying, I spend a lot of time in prayer, reading, talking to God about what I'm learning, but I also interact with the great saints of the church as I read their books.

[1:10] So there's more people involved in that. I may pick up the phone and say, hey, to John or Tim, or to Jack, Jack and I have had these conversations, or to people I've known over the years, hey, this is what I'm seeing.

[1:22] Am I crazy? Because I'm not seeing this in the commentaries I'm reading. Is this accurate? Is this true? I've had conversations with some of you along those same lines. So the preparation work is actually a community effort, rather than individual.

[1:37] And then the third one, which is going to come up later in the sermon, is that in the delivery and the application, I'm not here for my own entertainment, or for yours for that matter.

[1:49] Now don't get me wrong, I love preaching. I love delivering God's Word. I love crafting something that is tight and clear and logical. But more importantly, like Paul, there's a goal here.

[2:05] And the goal is to introduce you to Jesus in a deeper way. To move you closer to Him by the end of the service than you were at the beginning. And your role in that is to think about what I've said.

[2:19] To evaluate, to think. Not evaluate it like you're a film critic. You know, you give me three rotten tomatoes or 97 rotten tomatoes. But to look at from, is this true?

[2:31] Is what he says consistent with Scripture? And then, what should I do with that? Is John's application relevant to me? And if it is, what do I do about it?

[2:43] Now there's another part as well that I deeply want to encourage you to exercise. This may come as a shock. Brace yourselves. I'm not perfect.

[2:55] I know. It's shocking. You know, the search committee went through this process. They were very careful. And you thought you got the perfect guy. Nope. And the flaw wasn't with them.

[3:07] The flaw is with me. I'm not perfect. There are times I make mistakes in the delivery of a sermon that I don't portray something accurately.

[3:18] I'm not clear in what I'm trying to say. Or I take something out of context. Or you just don't understand what I said in any of those. I need you to talk to me.

[3:31] Some of you have. And I'm grateful. Because you challenged me about something I said. And I realized I did not, I wasn't clear. I wasn't accurate.

[3:42] And I need to clarify. And I'm going to do that real quickly. And then we're going to get into Luke and Isaiah. But this is actually relevant to what Jesus is doing in Luke chapter 4.

[3:54] Several weeks ago, I think it was, illustrating the point about that we need to be engaged in helping the poor. That part of carrying the gospel into the world is engaging with the poor.

[4:05] And I made the statement that the reason God punished Sodom and Gomorrah was not so much because of their sexual sin, but because of their failure to, their failure to care for the poor in their community.

[4:24] And the way I said that was not accurate. And I tell you, one of the things that is an asset for me and is a liability, I really know the Bible pretty well. I've got a really good memory for the text.

[4:39] What I don't have a good memory for is where stuff is found. And so I made this statement off the cuff. It wasn't part of my study. It came to me as I was delivering the message, which happens sometimes.

[4:51] And what I conveyed was not accurate. And then when I explained it, my explanation wasn't accurate. So I want to clear that as an illustration of how you bless me by picking up the phone or stopping me on a Sunday morning.

[5:06] So in Genesis, there is one reason why Sodom and Gomorrah is punished, and that's sexual sin. They were horrible people. They committed rape.

[5:18] They were flagrantly practicing homosexuality. They were disobeying God's plan for the place for sex, which is in marriage.

[5:28] They were disobeying it, and it was a symptom of this deep, deep rebellion against God to a degree that God had to punish them. That's in Genesis.

[5:41] Now the other point that's another symptom is in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel, talking about Israel, Ezekiel says, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, you don't take care of the poor.

[5:54] You don't care at all about the needy among you. And so just like Sodom and Gomorrah, Israel, you're in danger of judgment. So what I conveyed in my sermon was not this, but that, which was not right.

[6:11] What is accurate biblically is both. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were in rebellion against God. That rebellion was expressed in sexual sin.

[6:22] It was also expressed in a total disregard for the people who were needy around them. And you actually see that in the person of the angel of the Lord.

[6:33] If you remember the story, the angel of the Lord visits Abraham and Sarah and then goes down to Sodom and Gomorrah. And what do the people of Sodom and Gomorrah do?

[6:45] They knock on Lot's door and says, we know you have visitors. We want them because we're going to rape them. They're going to rape them. That's an illustration of both sins I've been talking about. One is obvious.

[6:57] But the other one is that in that culture, people who were traveling were always vulnerable. You're vulnerable. That's why Lot invited them in. And so what we see modeled there is sexual sin and neglect.

[7:12] The rebellion against God. And so that's what I should have said several weeks ago. What I want you to take away from this first is a better understanding of Scripture. But number two, I want you to feel empowered.

[7:25] Talk to me. If I'm not clear, I might push back if I disagree. But I'll be nice. Just be nice to me. But let's talk these things through.

[7:36] Does that make sense? So, keep that in mind because this comes into play with Jesus. Turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 4, verses 16 through 21.

[7:48] Now, you might be curious. It's Christmas. And yet we're starting the story, the series of sermons, the next three weeks, at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, not with the nativity scene.

[8:06] And my own explanation to that is it's all relevant. And you'll see how this ties into the Christmas story here in a second. Okay. Isn't that a neat slide?

[8:21] Libby makes these slides every week. She does a great job. All right. Luke chapter 4, starting at verse 16. He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read.

[8:36] And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he opened it. And he opened the book and found the place where it was written.

[8:48] The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. He set free those who were oppressed to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

[9:05] And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

[9:19] And all were speaking well of him and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips. And they were saying, is this not Joseph's son? And he said to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself.

[9:35] Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. And he said, truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land.

[9:53] And yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

[10:08] And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things, and they got up and drove him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw him down the cliff.

[10:20] But passing through their midst, he went his way. And just as a side note, here's a great example of how deeply the search committee failed when they hired me.

[10:32] Because I didn't want you to go through verse 21, we need to go to verse 30, because that's relevant and I forgot to put it on the slides. It's a good thing if you opened your Bible, that's a good practice. So let's talk about this passage.

[10:45] So this is the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. He was born, he grew up. You know the story where he went to the temple. I believe that it was at that time when he was 12 that Jesus realized, oh, I'm the son of God.

[11:00] Joseph is my stepfather. And how do we know that? Because Jesus went to the temple and was talking to the priests and the learned men.

[11:11] His parents headed for home, thinking he was in a different part of the caravan, and then realized, where's our son? And then they went back and when they said to Jesus, why would you do that to us?

[11:24] He said, well, it makes sense to me. Wouldn't I be in my father's house? So he had grown and realized that these things are referring to me.

[11:36] So he grew up. He was baptized by John the Baptist. John the Baptist said, whoa, whoa, I should be baptized by you, not the other way around.

[11:48] And Jesus said, nope, we need to follow the course of events. We need to do what is right. And so Jesus was baptized. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus and the voice of God speaks from heaven.

[12:00] This is my beloved son. Actually, he says, you are my beloved son. That phrase appears in different subtle differences in the gospels. In this one, everybody heard it, but it was for Jesus.

[12:15] You are my beloved son. God is reinforcing to Jesus, you are my son in a unique, special way. Jesus needed to hear that.

[12:27] And then he was immediately taken into the wilderness. He spent 40 days in the wilderness without food or drink. At the very end, he was tempted by the devil. Three different ways. He addressed the temptations each time from the scripture.

[12:39] And then when he came out of the wilderness, that's when his itinerant ministry began. Itinerant meaning he was going from synagogue to synagogue teaching, which is what rabbis typically did.

[12:52] He was a young rabbi. He didn't have a following yet. But he was out going to the synagogues and teaching. And that's the scene that we see in Nazareth. He's working his way through Galilee, which is the northern part of the country.

[13:08] And then he went to Nazareth, his hometown. He visits Nazareth twice. If you recall, a few months ago I did a sermon on Mark chapter 6.

[13:20] That was his second visit. This is the first. It's very important because of what he reads from Isaiah and what he says. And why he says what he says.

[13:33] So he's back in Nazareth. He's come back. And he's going to read to them Isaiah 61. Let's take this opportunity.

[13:44] Turn your Bibles to Isaiah 61. You can tell where I did my studies because my bookmark is a Starbucks napkin.

[13:55] And so Jesus reads this passage from Isaiah 61.

[14:06] He only reads a verse and a half. Now understand, the verses came much later. So he didn't have these verses. He was very intentional about where he stopped.

[14:16] We, being kind of obsessive-compulsive, you can't just read half of a verse. It's not the whole verse. The verses are not divinely inspired.

[14:31] The text is divinely inspired. And Jesus was very intentional about where he stopped. Hard stop. Hard stop.

[14:51] That's where he stopped. Now if you look, the next phrase, whoops, helps if the guy up front hits the forward button. To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, the rest of the sentence is, and the day of vengeance of our God.

[15:06] But Jesus didn't read that. And we're going to talk about why here in just a second. So I want to read one of the, I think it was the last hymn that Brian and Wensie led us through.

[15:20] O come, O come, Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God with us. It's one of the names for Jesus. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.

[15:32] That's exactly the scene that's going on in Nazareth. These people are under the iron fist of the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire brought in a lot of good things.

[15:43] They built roads. They built cisterns. They did amazing things. But make no mistake, it was a tyranny. And if you were one of the subject peoples, you were not an equal.

[15:53] You were less than. And that's where the people of Israel were. And they had a weird monotheistic religion that wasn't in sync with any of the rest of the Roman Empire.

[16:05] So they were truly mourning in lonely exile, even in their own land. Now they didn't understand.

[16:22] They didn't understand that part. A first century Jew would have said, Come thou rod of Jesse. The stick. The expression of authority and power.

[16:35] You hit people with a stick. Come thou rod of Jesse. Which is a reference to David, the greatest king that they ever had. Free your own from tyranny.

[16:47] That's what a first century Jew would have said. Free me from tyranny. Set me free from these people who were oppressing me. That's what they were expecting. And Jesus says, Nope.

[16:59] You got it wrong. So the Jews... I shouldn't have left Luke chapter 4. Bear with me here a second. So look at the Jews and what they respond to what Jesus read.

[17:14] Now understand, this is one of their favorite sons coming home. They knew Mary and Joseph. They knew James and the rest of Jesus' brothers and sisters. He was speaking to the home crowd.

[17:25] And I'm sure they were... Look at that Jesus. He's a rabbi. Because they're proud of that. And the community is proud of, you know, homeboy done good. He's a rabbi. He's teaching us.

[17:36] And if you notice, he reads the scripture. He reads the scripture. He sits down and everybody's watching. Why are they watching? Because an itinerant rabbi was a teacher.

[17:51] They expected him to expound on what he read. And all he says is, Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all were speaking well of him.

[18:05] They weren't listening. Do you remember what I said about how I need you to listen critically to my message? Let me tell you an area where you can be a fault since we aired my dirty laundry pretty thoroughly.

[18:19] What happens often is we hear a message that we've heard over and over again. And we don't actually think critically about what the passage says. We just lazily filter it through what we think we know because it's become a cliche.

[18:35] And we don't engage. And that's exactly what the Jews were doing. Oh, isn't that nice? Homeboy is reading us from Isaiah 61. And that's exactly what we want.

[18:47] We want the afflicted to hear good news. We want the brokenhearted wounds to be bound up. We want to see the captives made free. We want the favorable year of the Lord. Thanks, Jesus.

[18:59] Good message, brother. Love ya. Love ya. Yeah. We're so proud. And then they go on and they're wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips.

[19:12] And they were saying, is this not Joseph's son? Now, I don't think they were saying that critically. I don't think they were saying it in a demeaning way. I think they were saying it from the idea that Joseph's son is really doing well.

[19:25] It might have been kind of demeaning to Joseph. Who'd have thunk that Joseph could have produced a rabbi? Wow. Anybody could be a rabbi then. But they were wondering at Jesus.

[19:39] So, Jesus wants them to actually engage their minds, listen to what he's saying, and engage with it in some way, shape, or form.

[19:52] Now, I want to take you back for a second. I'm going to pause right there. I want to take you back to the several sermons that I gave where we talked about the confusion that the disciples and the Pharisees shared.

[20:05] And the confusion was, who are you? The Jews were expecting a triumphant king to come to Israel to kick butt and take names and to restore the kingdom of David.

[20:17] That's what they wanted. But what they kind of shied away from, this is the Bible scholars of the day, was that there's this whole line of prophecy that talked about a suffering servant.

[20:28] Psalm 22, Isaiah 53 being the most notable examples. And they kind of pushed that off to the side and came up with a more spiritual interpretation of those passages, but they really liked the triumphant king passages.

[20:44] And so, there was confusion. And the disciples had the same confusion. And we talked about that again and again, how Jesus kept stirring that pot and even letting them wallow in their confusion for a while.

[20:57] And that's exactly where we are now. We're actually seeing it for the first time. And Jesus is going to shake them to help them see that this doesn't mean what you think it means.

[21:11] So, Jesus said to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Now, Jesus isn't saying that they're going to say heal himself as in, oh, I cut my arm.

[21:22] He's healed. I don't know that there are sound effects. But what they were saying was, you did this work in Capernaum. We've heard of you. You started this healing ministry.

[21:32] Do it here. Let us see that you yourself actually do this. And so, they're challenging him. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.

[21:45] And he said, truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. Now, why would that be? What's a prophet's job?

[21:57] Remember, they see Jesus as an itinerant rabbi, a teacher. Sent to expound on the word of God. That wasn't a prophet's job.

[22:09] A prophet's job was to call people back to God. To expose where they were off course. And whatever it took, whether a kick in the butt, a stick or the carrot, you've got to come back to God.

[22:24] Jesus said a prophet is not welcome in his hometown, especially in his hometown. Why? Because they take the guy for granted. They think they know him. They think they know what message he's going to bring.

[22:34] And they're wrong. So, Jesus says, you think I'm a rabbi. I'm a prophet. I'm here to move you back to God.

[22:45] To following God the way he intends to be followed. And so, look at what Jesus does. And I think this is the beginning of the good news to us who do not have a drop of Jewish blood in their veins.

[22:59] That would be me. Two of my boys did, you know, Ancestry and Me, or whatever it is, Ancestry.com and 123DNA code, whatever it's called. They did those things and found out we are United Kingdom people.

[23:13] Period. There's no Jewish blood here. But what we're about to read is great news for people like me. But for a Jewish audience, this is really offensive.

[23:25] And Jesus is doing it to punch them between the eyes and make them listen. Wake up. Pay attention. I'm a prophet. There's a prophet in your midst. So, what does he say? But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was shut up for three years and six months.

[23:43] Side note. If you don't remember why there was a lack of rain, it was because Elijah specifically prayed that it would not rain. Because Ahab the king and his wife Jezebel were two of the most despicable people in the entire Bible text.

[24:02] They were horrible people. And they were leading Israel into idolatry and disobedience. And so, Elijah prayed that God would fulfill his promise from back in Moses' writings that when the people of Israel disobeyed, God's blessing would be removed.

[24:17] They wouldn't have rain. And that's what happened. It didn't rain for three and a half years. When a great famine came over the land. Now we're in verse 26.

[24:28] And yet Elijah was sent to none of them. None of the Jewish widows. But only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. So Elijah goes away to the north, to the coast of the Mediterranean, and meets his widow.

[24:46] And she's the one that he cares for. Ignoring all the Jewish widows. That you just read Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

[24:58] Because I've been anointed. This is Jesus speaking. Isaiah speaking about Jesus. To proclaim the good news to the poor.

[25:09] To bind up the brokenhearted. Et cetera. So, wait a minute. Why are you talking about Gentiles? In the context that you just read Isaiah 61.

[25:21] Which is for us. So they're starting to know, What are you talking about? And then he goes on. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet.

[25:33] And none of them was cleansed. But Naaman the Syrian. At that time the Syrians were oppressors. So it's not, If it's not enough that he's a Gentile, He's also the commander of the Syrian army, Who is oppressing the Jewish people.

[25:53] And Elisha heals him. Ignoring Jewish lepers. Now just to be clear, That the Jews got the point. Let's look at the next verse.

[26:05] Verse 28 of Luke chapter 4. And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. They got the point. So the question you might be asking is, Okay, we're not getting the point.

[26:21] I'm not getting the point. That's alright. Because as soon as I get a drink of water, I'll tell you. The point was, The last line of God's covenant to Abraham Is easily missed, especially if you're Jewish.

[26:44] God said to Abraham, And through you, Through your seed, All the nations of the earth will be blessed.

[26:56] What they didn't understand, Because they were resolutely Jewish, In their identity, As God's people, Was that the Messiah, Was going to open the door.

[27:11] And it wasn't a promise for just the Jews. What Jesus was conveying to them, Was that the good news, Is for all of the afflicted. It's for all of the broken hearted.

[27:23] It's for all who are in captivity. It's for all who are prisoners. And they didn't like it. They didn't want to hear that news.

[27:35] What Jesus is doing is two things. Both of which are very important. Because he was, He's the one, If he had been a candidate for, Pastor of Tri-State Community Church, I wouldn't have been hired.

[27:47] And he was brilliant in how he used language, And how he used his oratory skill, To communicate truth. And he's doing two things at the same time. One is he's rocking the boat of his audience.

[27:59] He's making them uncomfortable. He's making them angry. So they'll listen. And think. But he's also making a proclamation to all of us.

[28:10] His point here is, Just like Elijah went to the widow of Zarephath, Just like Elisha went to Nahum in the Syrian, I'm going to you and then to the world.

[28:22] The gospel, the good news, Is for the entire world. And that's good news for us, Brothers and sisters. Because otherwise, This would be just a 21st century synagogue.

[28:34] But it's not. It's a church. It's comprised of people of every tribe, Nation, color. That's the way we're supposed to be. Because Jesus was opening up the gospel to the world.

[28:49] Now why did he stop? Let's come back to that. In his reading of Isaiah 61, He stopped mid-sentence. Which, by the way, If you spend time talking to me about Some of my frustrations with How we interpret the Bible, One of my frustrations is oftentimes We base whole doctrines Around a sentence fragment And miss the next sentence.

[29:13] Or the next part of the sentence. I'll give you an example. In John chapter 8, Verse 52, You will see this all over the place. You'll see it on mugs, You'll see it on t-shirts, Album covers. You will know the truth, And the truth will set you free.

[29:26] That's a great phrase. And it's mostly true. But it's the second half of the sentence. And the first half is really important.

[29:37] Because Jesus started by saying, If my word remains in you, Then you are my disciple, My apprentice.

[29:49] Then you will know the truth. And then the truth will set you free. There's a bit of a difference there. Because it tells us How we know the truth.

[30:02] It knows us that God has a plan For how we learn the truth, And then how it becomes Into a place in our lives Where it can set us free. But if you only get to the second half, You miss really important stuff.

[30:14] And yet Jesus, Of course he has a license, He's the author, But Jesus cut off the sentence. Why? Because there's a reason. Of course.

[30:25] Jesus said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the poor, He has set me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives, And freedom to prisoners, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

[30:37] He stops there. The next phrase, All the way to the end of Isaiah. And the day of vengeance of our God.

[30:47] From that point on, There's a gap between those two phrases. We're in that gap. Right now, That gap is running around, I think it's about 2,500 years, Since Isaiah wrote that passage.

[31:01] You know what's really cool about that gap? It's that's the gap that allows us To come to a relationship with God. If you recall, In the Mark series, We talked about this, And I talked about it a few minutes ago, The suffering servant, One line of prophecy, And the triumphant king.

[31:20] Both of which are referring to the Messiah, But there's great confusion About how they come together. What does that look like? And what Jesus is teaching, Is that I'm both. Suffering servant first, Isaiah 61, 1, Isaiah 61, 2A, And I'm the triumphant king.

[31:40] Isaiah 61, 2B, To the end of the book. And my role is different, My job is different, What I'm going to do is different. And in that gap, God is preparing a people That are ready for his rule.

[31:54] If there wasn't a gap, He wouldn't have anybody to rule. Because he had to do work In the hearts of men To prepare us for his reign. And the centerpiece of that work Was Jesus' death on the cross.

[32:08] Because that's in the gap too. That's in the gap too. So praise God for the gap. Because that means life for us.

[32:19] That means hope. So he said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. It's really cool. We see the Trinity right there. The Spirit, Holy Spirit, Of who? Of the Lord God, The Father, Is on me, The Son.

[32:36] Just kind of a side extra note. We see that theme throughout Scripture. Genesis 1.1. You see the Trinity. You see it repeated here. God is three in one.

[32:46] How that works? I don't have any idea. But we have one God Who appears in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And they're all active in our salvation. That's the point That we start with in Isaiah 61.

[33:01] The presence of God's Spirit Is what empowered him. It gave him authority To speak. Remember, Some of his last words In Matthew chapter 28. The beginning of the Great Commission Is all authority Has been given unto me In heaven and earth.

[33:15] And what he does Is he gives us that authority. Because as we come to faith in Christ We have the Holy Spirit Residing on us as well. But it gives him authority. He is, When he speaks, When Jesus speaks, God is speaking.

[33:31] He has that authority. And it gives him power. The Spirit is what worked through Jesus To do the healing That his friends in Nazareth Were saying, Hey, Why don't you do here What you did in Capernaum?

[33:42] It's the Spirit that gave Jesus The power to heal people. To cast out demons. To teach effectively. Just like with us. So the Spirit of the Lord Was upon him And he received power.

[33:56] I want to read you this passage From 1 Corinthians chapter 2. This is Paul talking to the Corinthians About when he went to Corinth. And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech Or of wisdom Proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

[34:14] In other words, He didn't come all slick With a presentation And a deck of slides And the whole song and dance. For I determined I determined to know nothing among you Except Jesus Christ And him crucified.

[34:29] That's it. That's all we need. I was with you in weakness And in fear And in much trembling. There's a pretty solid body of evidence That says that Paul was Totally unimpressive as a man.

[34:43] He wasn't some tall, good looking Mega church pastor type of guy That everybody would be drawn to. No, just like Jesus actually He was not very impressive. He was with them in weakness And fear and in much trembling.

[34:58] And my message and my preaching Were not in persuasive words of wisdom. Which was important In Corinth in particular Because it was a Roman city. Based on Greek beliefs.

[35:09] And intellectual stuff Was really important to them. My message and my preaching Were not in persuasive words of wisdom. But in what? In demonstration of the spirit And of power.

[35:19] So that your faith would not rest On the wisdom of men. But on the power of God. That's why it's important That Jesus had the spirit of God Upon him. And he was anointed by God.

[35:31] That anointing was a symbol. This is my son. This is the king. This is the priest. This is who Jesus is. And so Jesus was sent With a very specific mission.

[35:42] And what is that mission? Well first Let's pause for a second And talk about What is the good news? Now you don't know it But I'm about to take A huge risk.

[35:56] Huge risk. Early in my preaching career I was doing a sermon And I said Everybody knows John 3.16 And apparently in that moment of time Everybody except me.

[36:07] Because I didn't turn there In my Bible And I could not remember The first word of John 3.16 Are you nervous for me? Are you kind of nervous?

[36:18] It's okay. For God so loved the world For God so loved the world That he gave his only begotten son That whoever would believe in him Would not perish But have eternal life.

[36:37] That's the message. That's the good news That Jesus is proclaiming to the poor. Turn over a couple of pages To Isaiah 53. This is going to be Pastor Jack's text next week.

[36:50] Isaiah 53 Verses 4 through 6 Because this Is how The good news Becomes actionable Surely our griefs He himself bore This is talking about The suffering servant The Messiah Surely our griefs He himself bore And our sorrows He carried Yet we are still Ourselves Esteemed him Stricken Smitten of God And afflicted But he was pierced through For our transgressions He was crushed For our iniquities The chastening For our well-being Fell upon him And by his scourging We are healed The wages of sin Is death Paul wrote For all have sinned And fall short Of the glory of God Punishment is deserved For sin Jesus took that For you The punishment That you deserve For your sin For your falling short Of the glory of God

[37:51] Jesus took In your place All of us Like sheep Have gone astray All of us We wander off Each of us Has turned to his own way But the Lord Has caused the iniquity Of us all To fall on him In the first chapter Of John It says For as many As received him Received what's being Offered To them he gave The right To be called The children of God The other half Of that sentence For the wages of sin Is death Is the free gift Of God Eternal life And not just Eternal life As in when you go To heaven When you die But eternal life An eternal kind Of life A life of communion And relationship With God That affects everything As we wrap up This morning We're going to look Very briefly And I want you To spend some time Thinking about this Because I don't have Time to do it justice What was

[38:51] What was the mission According to Isaiah According to Isaiah 61 To bring good news To the afflicted The idea of afflicted Is someone who's harassed Beaten down Poor In whatever way You want to define that Financially poor Morally poor Whatever the case may be To preach this good news That I just gave you To the poor To tell the poor You have hope If you don't have Jesus in your life Can I just tell you Definitively You're poor It doesn't matter If you've got all the money I don't care If you're Elon Musk Without Jesus You're poor And God is bringing The good news To you That Jesus Is giving you hope He became poor So that we could be rich In him To bind up The broken hearted You can't get Through this life Without your heart Being broken somewhere Our hearts are broken

[39:52] And yet the good news Of the gospel Gives us hope We hear the good news We apprehend it And take it as our own God binds up The broken hearted He heals us He gives us hope And not hope like I hope the Denver Broncos Win the Super Bowl It's hope as in I know That I My broken heart Has been Healed And will be healed In God's presence To proclaim liberty To captives Paul wrote That you're Captive to somebody You're either serving Sin Or you're serving God You pick But if you're not In Christ You're a captive Trust me You are a captive And Jesus is saying I'm coming To tell you You can be free You can be free And freedom

[40:54] To prisoners He really reemphasizes That point To proclaim The favorable year Of the Lord That's a reference To the Jubilee Every 50 years The people of Israel Had the year of Jubilee Where they gave Their fields a rest They gave Their servants a rest Actually Servants were set free It was actually A hard reset Of the entire economy But it was a year A full year Of focus on the Lord And if the people Would obey God God promised To care for them During the year of Jubilee He assured them That they could trust Him To make sure That they had enough Even though they were Taking a year off To proclaim The favorable year Of the Lord That picture Of one year in 50 The year of Jubilee Is a picture Of what we have To look forward to In heaven The year Except it's not a year It's forever Of Jubilee Of celebrating

[41:56] God's goodness Of seeing First hand Tangibly God's love for us Of telling each other Look at what God has done for us And in the Before the Lord returns Before we died Of telling the people Around us Do you know What you have Available to you You gotta check This thing out This is awesome The favorable year Of the Lord God's favor Rests upon His children And it's up to us To accept that offer And what did What did say in John I just quoted it As many as received Him to them He gave the right The power To be The children Of God If you're a believer This morning Your job Is to tell As many people As possible That they have The opportunity To enter into that That they can Experience God's favor Today And if you're not If you don't know You gotta get this right

[42:57] And if If I haven't made A compelling case Dig into the Bible Really look at this stuff Think about it Jesus is offering To you Wealth for poverty Not just a big bank account But a truly rich life He's offering To bind up your broken heart To set you free All you have to do Is trust and follow Christ That's all you have to do Let's pray together Lord we're so grateful For your work In our lives That you have You took the initiative Heavenly Father You sent your son Jesus you submitted To becoming a human baby And a man To die on the cross Holy Spirit You teach us You guide us You draw us To yourself God I pray That we would live In that reality That truth That we have been set free

[43:59] And God let's be changed For your glory We pray in Jesus name Amen