If you would open your Bibles to Luke 4 this morning. Luke 4, we're going to be doing verses 14-21. Is this water for me? That's a gift of hospitality. Thank you for practicing that. Okay, if you would read, I'm going to read starting in verse 14, Luke chapter 4.
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. 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 of the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Let's pray. Lord, the depth of what that meant, we cannot fathom. I pray that You would speak through me in this message, that we would understand just a few inches of the depth of this text. Lord, apply it to our lives. Glorify Your name through this. In Jesus' name, amen.
In 2009, the internationally broadcast TV show Britain's Got Talent had a contestant on that was the most unlikely of contestants. Perhaps you saw it. There's a 47-year-old woman who came onto the stage, was a bit socially awkward, not very attractive, and you could see clearly as the camera panned the audience that they were skeptical. And then the camera looked at the judges and they were skeptical. The audience laughed when she said she wanted to become a famous singer. You could just see the skepticism all over. But people were not prepared for what they were about to see and what they were about to hear. Just seconds into singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables, the audience spontaneously stood to their feet and started clapping of what a beautiful voice was coming out of such an unexpected person. Susan Boyle went from no one in a small British town to a mezzo-soprano voice star immediately. One of the judges said that he acknowledged, I've never seen anything like this in the 3 years on the show. I was the most shocked right just now of ever before. And the same, same year she did that 2009, Amazon.com had a pre-sale record 3 months before it even became available of her first album. YouTube clips, that YouTube clip had 146 million views. That's a lot of people. She went from an unknown woman to an international star and no one expected it.
We have a very similar story unfolding here right now in Luke chapter 4.
Because we're in the setting of a little town called Nazareth. It's a little one-stoplight town of less than 500 people. And it wouldn't even be on the map if it were not for Jesus. In the world's eyes, Jesus was a nobody. He grew up here. He was one of Joe's and Mary's kids. He'd learned to play and older folks knew who he was. They would squeeze his cheek on the way over. You know, this was the little kid Jesus that grew up here. But suddenly, some miraculous things had started happening. And there was a stir. Jesus was in northern Israel. And he was going from town to town teaching in synagogues. And he was even performing miracles. What is going on?
It had been hundreds of years, if you think about the text we have from the Bible, it had been hundreds of years from the time we had written prophecy from God to this day that Jesus is doing this. What was God doing? John the Baptist had arrived recently and he broke the silence calling people to repent and believe that the kingdom of God is at hand, and now Jesus is about to shock the community with statements and actions that they're not prepared to hear. This nobody was rapidly becoming the center of attention. So this text, this Isaiah text, the scroll that was given to Jesus, He opened it and read it, and this text from Isaiah is part of God's promise. Promise of mercy. To the people of Israel. Because in Isaiah's day, these prophets were writing from God's— God's message to the people was, "Repent! You have abandoned Me." God warned Israel that judgment was coming because of their wickedness. Much of the Old Testament is story after story of evil kings that disobeyed and led the people into disobedience. They did things like They neglected the poor. Isaiah chapter 1, "You neglect the poor and you have injustice among you." And then they committed adultery. They worshiped false gods. And one of the worst things, they sacrificed their own children. I can't imagine. Sacrificed their own children to false idols. They basically spit on the divine hand that had given them a promised land and a promise that He was their people and they were in relationship with Him.
6 · The pastor traces the fulfillment of Isaiah's warnings through the Babylonian exile — 500 years before Jesus — showing that God's judgment was as certain as His mercy
And so this book of Isaiah is a mix of judgments saying, "This is going to happen to you because of these despicable things you're doing to me," and mercy saying, "But I will have mercy on you." And Israel continued in sin. And God judged as He said He would. And He captured— had them captured by the Babylonians and taken. 500 years before Jesus is standing there, the Israelites were taken from their land. Many were killed and many were taken to Babylon to be under house arrest and imprisoned for hundreds of years. Clearly, God was judging sin. He took away their precious promised land. He took away their king. Everything that made their identity as being God's people was taken away from them.
7 · The pastor acknowledges that God fulfilled His promise to restore Israel from exile through Ezra and Nehemiah, but the restoration was incomplete
But in His great mercy, He fulfilled many of those promises and allowed them back. And we have record of that through Ezra and through Nehemiah, of them being allowed to return and rebuild. But still, there was this sense that It's just still not quite right. The glory of the temple is not what it used to be. And we don't own the land the way we had before. But that fulfillment was not complete. And even in Jesus' day, that fulfillment was not complete.
8 · The pastor describes the oppressive political reality of Jesus' day — Roman taxation, Herod as a puppet king, the arrest and beheading of John the Baptist
And the Israelites were back in their own land, but families were painfully taxed. There was King Herod, the puppet king, giving feedback to Rome. He couldn't just do what he wanted to and give the land to the people and let them do whatever they wanted. So the people were imprisoned that way. But even Herod, if you said King Herod and King David in the same sentence, it was an insult. King Herod was no king of God. In fact, he had John the Baptist arrested because he had taken his brother's wife and eventually had John beheaded. This is the kind of king— the land was there, they were in the land, but it was locked. They had a king, but he was no king. And no one could guarantee that life was going to be good tomorrow, any better than it was today. The unpredictability of life was rampant. You couldn't rely on anything.
9 · The pastor articulates the theological question at the heart of Israel's situation — where is shalom, the peace that comes when everything is as it should be? They wondered whether God was still angry, still judging them despite the partial restoration
They were most likely thinking, Where is shalom? Shalom is the Hebrew for peace, but it doesn't just mean peace the way we think. It means peace in a way that everything is the way it's supposed to be. Where is shalom? Where is God? And they likely were tempted to ask questions like, is God still angry at us? He gave us these promises and we're back in our land, but it's not. It's not right yet. Is God still angry? Is He still judging us? They were in this gray area of not sure. What does God think of us?
10 · The pastor applies the Israelites' theological question directly to the congregation's contemporary struggles — medical diagnoses, job loss, inability to engage in worship amid suffering
Perhaps you are in circumstances this morning and you're tempted to wonder, what does God think of me? Why am I going through this? Is God angry at me? What is going on? Why am I going through these circumstances that are so hard? Perhaps you've received a totally unexpected medical diagnosis and it's shaken your world. Or you've lost a job. And it was not expected. Now you don't know what you're going to do. Maybe you've had this experience like I've had where you're here on a Sunday morning, you're in worship, And you see lots of people singing joyfully and their hands are in the air and you think, "Ah, I want to be there." But you think about your trials, you think about what you're going through right now, and you just can't engage. You think, "I'm sorry, God, but I'm just not feeling this right now." Maybe you think to yourself, "God, if you can show some more faithfulness, then I'll feel better." about worshiping You.
11 · The pastor pivots from application back to exposition, asserting that Jesus' reading of Isaiah was His claim to fulfill God's promise of mercy
This passage is for You. Many in Jesus' day were waiting for God. And He had promised to send a Savior to rescue them. They still had that promise. But they still wondered, is God still judging us? And Jesus, by reading this text, by reading this text, choosing any text He could, This text, He is saying to the people, "Do you see this promise of mercy? I have come to fulfill it." He is here to show mercy. He came to tell the people that they could rest their hope in Him and to keep His promise. And this text is here not just for them, it's here in Scripture because it's for us. He has come, and He's come not just to hold our hand, not just to empathize and say, "I'm sorry it's so hard. I agree that you're in a tough spot." He came to do something about it. He came to do something. And so we can have hope. We can rest our hope in Jesus because He has come to show us mercy. And Jesus came to fulfill that. But you think, you know, it's been 2,000 years. And there's still suffering and there's still oppression. So what does it mean for us to rest our hope in Jesus if all that's still true? To answer those questions, I want to look at 3 things this morning in this text. First, that Jesus was sent with anointing. Second, Jesus was sent to announce. And third, Jesus was sent to accomplish. Those three points. He was sent with anointing, sent to announce, and sent to accomplish.
12 · The pastor defines anointing not as healing prayer but as God-initiated inauguration for specific purposes — prophets, priests, judges, kings
So first, Jesus was sent with anointing. When you hear anointing, you might be thinking of the James 5 passage that says, if anyone is sick, you can have the elders come and anoint him with oil and pray over him and he'll be healed. But that's not the kind of anointing we're talking about here. This is an Old Testament sense of a God-initiated inauguration that would be God saying, I want you to anoint someone because I have a purpose for them. So prophets, priests, judges, and kings of Israel were all at various times, you can see in Scripture, they were anointed for their purpose. In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet Samuel anoints David, and it says in that Scripture, "The Holy Spirit rushed upon David." So you didn't just decide you wanted to be anointed. You didn't just say, "You know, I think I want to be a prophet. I'll take some olive oil and pour it on my head." There you go. This was God saying, "I am going to do something and I'm going to do it through you."
13 · The pastor clarifies that anointing was for service, not self-glorification
But another thing about an anointing is that it wasn't about you. You were in service. You were anointed for service, to be a servant. Many Old Testament prophecies said that someone would come anointed by God's Holy Spirit to bring mercy and salvation. Isaiah spoke again in Isaiah 41 about that One anointed by the Spirit saying, "Behold My servant whom I uphold, My chosen in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him. He will bring forth justice to the nations." A yet unknown servant who would bring justice, and that's what the people were waiting for.
14 · The pastor describes the Jewish expectation of the Messiah — a powerful political revolutionary who would overthrow Rome and restore Israel's national sovereignty
So there was a high expectation among the Jews that whoever this guy is, we have all this Scripture, we have these promises from God that at some point someone is going to come and bring salvation to us. And He is going to have power, He is going to be powerful, He is going to have authority, He is going to bring justice, He is going to have international clout, He is going to stand up to our enemies, all kinds of things that we can— man, this guy is a revolutionary that we can expect to come and dominate our enemies and take over. That was the expectation.
15 · The pastor identifies Jesus' baptism as His anointing by the Holy Spirit and poses the interpretive question: what kind of anointed one is He? Prophet, priest, king — or something more?
So we need to have that mindset as we're going into reading this text this morning. And before chapter 4 starts, Luke tells us that Jesus was anointed. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism. He was anointed. So does that mean He's a prophet? Does that mean He's a priest? Does that mean He's a king? What did this anointing mean?
16 · The pastor re-reads verses 14-18, emphasizing Jesus' return in the power of the Spirit, His teaching tour, and His deliberate choice to read from Isaiah 61 in His hometown synagogue
So in verse 14, it says, "And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. 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 is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me."
17 · The pastor unpacks the cultural practice of synagogue teaching and highlights Jesus' shocking claim: not 'this will be fulfilled someday' but 'today this Scripture is fulfilled' — a direct claim to messianic identity
So Jesus stood up, He read the 700-year-old text, and then He sat down. And the context here is when you are speaking in a synagogue, you read the text, out of reverence for Scripture you would stand. And then you'd sit and then talk about it. So He sat down and what did He say? People's eyes were all fixed upon Him and He said, "Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing." He could have sat down and said, "God will be with you and He'll be faithful to His promises." He could have said, "Put your hope in the God of Israel." or "Your Messiah is coming." But He said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." He was saying, "It's happening today. It's today. And I'm your man."
18 · The pastor describes the evidence supporting Jesus' claim — His miracles surpassing even Elijah and Elisha — while acknowledging the cognitive dissonance
That was probably one of the last things they expected Him to say. But there's evidence that He's right. You see Him now anointed teaching in synagogues, doing miracles, And He's doing significant miracles. Can you imagine the headlines? You know, if they had newspapers back then, headlines going from village to village. Look at this, Nazareth man instantly turns 150 gallons of water into wine at a wedding. You know, that's headline stuff. He's greater than Elijah and Elisha. But what's going on? Could this really be the Anointed One? Could this really be Him? Is this what I picture? It's not matching up. He's not wealthy. He's Joe and Mary's kid. He's certainly not a king. His class may have voted Him to be the most likely to be a rabbi, but they definitely didn't make Him— they wouldn't have said He's most likely to be the Anointed One of God.
19 · The pastor uses a hypothetical Twitter scenario to illustrate the skepticism and shock Jesus' claim would have provoked in His hometown
So He says, This has been fulfilled today in your hearing. If they had Twitter back then, you can imagine a Twitter feed. You won't believe what my neighbor just said about himself. #MessiahComplex.
20 · The pastor transitions from establishing Jesus' anointing to exploring what Jesus came to announce through the Isaiah text
So what did it all mean? If He is the Anointed One, what was He saying about Himself and what is He saying to us? So that brings me to the second point. Jesus was sent to announce.
21 · The pastor emphasizes that Jesus was not merely acknowledging suffering but announcing His intention to address it
By quoting this text from Isaiah, Jesus is speaking of real ills, real suffering, real poverty, real oppression, real blindness, real captivity. And He's connecting Himself to that text, affirming that it's true. Saying, "Yes, I see this is real. This is true." There is suffering and it's real. And then he says, when he reads that text, he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He 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. He was not just posting true statements here. He wasn't just saying, "Yes, this is real stuff, this is here." For those who had ears to hear, this was not a notice on a stop sign pole. This was a guy on a corner with a megaphone saying, "Yes, I see it, I'm here, I'm going to take care of this."
22 · The pastor exegetes each phrase of the Isaiah text Jesus read
So what specifically was Jesus coming to announce? Let's look at the text, some of these lines, and see what he was referring to and how can they impact us. The phrase, "He was sent to proclaim good news to the poor." The poor used in Luke and in Isaiah refer to people who are just in a bad situation. They are God-fearing people. But they're in poverty. But they call upon God and say, "Help me. Have mercy on me." In fact, some people call them the pious poor. Those who are God-fearing but in various forms of poverty. They're victims of injustice. And so, Jesus, when He read those words, the Jews would have heard Him, would have related, The economy, if you can imagine the economy at that time under Roman rule, and on top of that, so the Roman taxes and then the taxes from King Herod to build his palace, the people were oppressed. And if you couldn't pay your taxes, who knows what they could take from you. So they understood this. But what this shows us is that There's a compassionate heart to God. He understood well what the exile would do, because with this text being written originally to the Israelites who were going into exile, He understood what the exile would do to their hearts. He understood what His judgment would do to them and the consequences of their own hearts living in idolatry. But He understood also the difference between what's worse. To live in pleasure or to live in poverty, but to have your soul right with God. So Jesus is coming back saying that he is going to proclaim good news to those people. The next line: He was sent to proclaim liberty to the captives. The word captives here literally means taken by spear. Imagine, so imagine in your own situation, if we were to leave church today, you'd walk outside and you're arrested just as you go out the door. You're arrested and locked in a van and driven blindfolded, you don't know where you're going, and you're taken for hours and then put under house arrest in some unknown place, you don't even know where you are. And you're allowed to live there, but indefinitely, who knows what's going to happen. And your heart aches, you don't even know where your children are, you don't know what your— if people are just looting your house because it's been abandoned for so long. But this is a similar situation to what the Israelites would have experienced in Babylon. They saw those guards coming, those warriors of Babylon coming, and that was it. And if they weren't killed, many Israelites were captured and taken like that. So even though that was hundreds of years earlier than when Jesus is reading that to the people that day, the Jews could imagine and understand because they were still awaiting God's salvation and they still had this oppression over them. And so Jesus is saying He is going to proclaim liberty to the captives. Next line, he was sent to proclaim recovering of sight to the blind. This can also mean opening for prison for those who are bound. Opening from prison for those who are bound. But it carries the same sense because there are people in prison of blindness. Blindness is a kind of prison, but it's a play on words because there's another layer to this that God is speaking about. In Isaiah 6, God tells Isaiah to proclaim to the people that because of their hardness of heart and disobedience, they will experience spiritual consequences. Their hearts are hard, their eyes are blind to their spiritual condition. It was as if God was saying, "Alright, go ahead, just go ahead and be that way, and your heart will be hard and your eyes will be blind." But again, this text was before the exile. And Jesus now is saying that restoration of sight is coming. And it's going to affect not just sight, but hearts. He's going to affect hearts.
23 · The pastor identifies 'the year of the Lord's favor' as an allusion to the Year of Jubilee — a time when slaves were freed, debts were canceled, and land was restored
The next line, "He was sent to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." This is very likely an allusion to the Year of Jubilee. In the Old Testament, the Year of Jubilee was a time that God instituted that said if you have any slaves, they're to be set free. And if you have any land that's been taken, you've been financially in a bad situation and you had to give your land to your neighbor, he has to now give it back to you. It's a time of restoring everything to the way it's supposed to be. And Jesus right here is saying He was sent to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. This is it. It's imminent. It is coming. The year of the Lord's favor means He's going to put things right. And He's coming. The salvation of God is here.
24 · The pastor transitions from what Jesus announced to what He accomplished, posing the interpretive question: if Jesus is the Messiah, where is His army? How will He overthrow Rome? The answer will subvert expectations
And with Him saying "today," that's significant. But what would this salvation look like? Where's the army? You have this victor, the Anointed One is coming. Where's His army? How are they going to take care of Herod? How are they going to take care of Rome? Something bigger has to happen here first. But that brings us to the third point. He was sent not just to announce, Jesus was sent to accomplish.
25 · The pastor notes that Jesus' language is proclamatory — 'to proclaim' rather than 'to do' — but argues that with God, word is deed
Notice that in verses 18 and 19, those statements are proclamations rather than actions. So He says, "Proclaim good news, to proclaim liberty, to proclaim sight." He didn't say, "I came to heal the blind." He said, "I came to proclaim sight." So He could have said, "I'm coming to give sight." using a verb, an action. I'm going to give it. But instead He said, "I came to proclaim it." There the verb is just speaking. He's just talking about it. But that is consistent with the nature of God because in the following chapters of the Gospel of Luke, we actually see Jesus. He says, "I'm proclaiming sight." But now what do you see Him start to do? He gives it. He gives it. He's not just talking to people about it. We see Him actually bringing freedom because with God, His word is as good as His deed. His proclamation isn't just news. Stuff happens. He spoke the universe. The Lord said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He said, You will have sight. And they do. He's speaking again. And He's speaking, now He's speaking this time in the flesh as the Son of God, as the Word. But even though that's true, it's important to comprehend how different His actions were and appeared than what people were expecting. He didn't have that army. He wasn't teaching against foreign rulers.
26 · The pastor uses John the Baptist's doubt from prison as evidence that even those closest to Jesus struggled with His unexpected approach to messiahship
If Jesus was the Anointed One, He sure didn't look the way people expected. And you know, I take great consolation in Luke 7, where even John the Baptist, his own cousin, the one who the Holy Spirit was poured on him, and he knew, he said, "I knew that he was the Anointed One." Well, now he's questioning. Luke 7:18, from his prison cell, John directs his disciples. Now John has been arrested by King Herod. He's in prison. He doesn't know what's going to happen to him. And then he asks his disciples, "Can you go and ask Jesus, 'Are you the one to come, or should we look for another?'" Why was he asking that question? He was replaying the tape in his mind. "What am I missing? I thought he was the one, but it's not working out. Why am I in prison?" So Jesus responds to John. But what does He say? John 7, Jesus responds and says to His disciples, "Go and tell John what you have heard and seen." Okay, He alludes to Isaiah again. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news preached to them." and blessed is the one who is not offended by me. But you can imagine John thinking, but Jesus, I know the rest of the verse. What about freedom for the captive? Or liberty for the oppressed? What about me? Jesus, I don't understand. You're doing all these things for other people, but what about me?
27 · The pastor draws a direct theological parallel between the Jews' misplaced expectations of the Messiah and our own tendency to define what God's faithfulness should look like
John and the rest of the Jews had expectations of what the Anointed One would be like and what He would do for them. And we too can create expectations, can't we? This is what it looks like for God to be faithful to me.
28 · The pastor shares his sister's childhood medical crisis — a rare blood disorder requiring a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy at age 8-9
One of my sisters has an extremely rare genetic disorder and it affects her blood. And because of that, every 3 weeks she had to have a blood transfusion because her blood would break down She needed new blood, but after several years, the doctors said, "You can't, you're going to die if we keep doing this. The iron content is going to be so, it's going to destroy your liver with all these transfusions," and nothing else was working, and so they said, "You're going to have to have a bone marrow transplant." And so at 8 years old, 9 years old, my sister went through this extremely long, painful process, 9 months in a hospital with my parents at her side, experiencing chemotherapy to destroy her body, to basically replace parts in the airplane while it's flying, to kill her marrow and then reboot her body. She's almost dead and her hair was falling out and all those things happened, but what she experienced through that.
29 · The pastor interprets his sister's story theologically: we often equate God's faithfulness with physical health and happiness, but God's faithfulness was revealed in his sister's deepened trust in Him through suffering, not by removing the suffering
You could say my expectation is that God will be faithful and that looks like good health. That looks like a happy life. That's what that looks like. And if it's not happening, then God must not be faithful or I must be doing something that's evil and He's judging me for it. And these are misunderstandings. She experienced the goodness of God in her trust for Him. She knew Him and trusted Him in a way never before after she came through that. God is doing something. And He was with her in a very special way, but what about your situation?
30 · The pastor applies the theological claim directly to the congregation's specific sufferings — unexplained illness, death of a loved one, wayward children, prolonged singleness, marital suffering
Are you tempted to ask God, "God, don't You see? Don't You see my ailment that the doctors don't understand?" The pain as I watch a loved one die. My late-night grievings over a wayward, rebellious child. Don't you see that I'm still single and I've been single for so long, so much longer than my friends? Lord, don't you see my suffering in my marriage? It wasn't supposed to be like this. Now I'm stuck.
31 · The pastor asserts that God does see our suffering and is both sovereign and compassionate
But he does see. And He's sovereign and He's compassionate. God knew that just fixing those problems without relationship was not the answer. In sum, Jesus came to announce mercy, but more importantly, through that mercy, He came to announce friendship with God. And then He went from announcing it to accomplishing it. And so because of that, we can trust Him.
32 · The pastor re-reads the Isaiah categories — poverty, captivity, blindness, oppression — as spiritual realities rather than physical ones
Because we have all, every one of us, been impoverished in spirit and we have no hope. We had no hope. We have all been captive to our own sinful desires. Now think about it, listen back, and you're going to hear those same words from Isaiah again, but in a spiritual context. We've been impoverished in spirit. Poverty. We've been held captive to our sinful desires. We've been blind to our need for God. We've been all oppressed by spiritual forces around us. But God knows that the curse of sin cannot simply be undone. And for the Jews, the curse of sin couldn't just be undone by Him coming to be this anointed King, get rid of the Romans, get rid of Herod, Jesus now on the throne. But people's hearts are still the same. It won't work. People will still rebel. People will still die in their sin. We need forgiveness and spiritual healing.
33 · The pastor transitions to Isaiah 53, introducing the suffering servant prophecy that remained unfulfilled until Jesus and is still debated by non-Christian Jews today
And so there was another prophecy in Isaiah 53. And up until Jesus' time, this prophecy had not been fulfilled either. And the Jews in fact debated, they still debate, today, if they don't trust in Christ, Jews that are not trusting in Christ debate the identity of this suffering servant from Isaiah 53.
34 · The pastor reads key verses from Isaiah 53 describing the suffering servant who bears the punishment for our sins and whose wounds bring healing and peace
Reading excerpts from Isaiah 53: He was crushed for our iniquities, upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
35 · The pastor re-reads Isaiah 53 with emphasis on the servant's oppression, affliction, and innocence
He was oppressed. Now listen to the words again. He was the one oppressed. He was the one afflicted. And by oppression and judgment, He was taken away. They made His grave with the wicked, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth. But who is this suffering servant?
36 · The pastor identifies Jesus as both the Anointed One of Isaiah 61 and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53
We talked about the Anointed One, but who's this guy? And Jesus knew before He ever came that it was one and the same. To bring us healing, He had to be afflicted. To set us free, He had to be oppressed. And to give us true liberty, He had to be put to death. This is true salvation. This is what He came to accomplish for us. And this is what we need the most.
37 · The pastor extends the scope of salvation beyond Israel, citing Isaiah's prophecy that the Messiah would be a light to the nations, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth
And the great news also is that this wasn't just for the Jews. This wasn't just for the Jewish people. God said again through Isaiah, "I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
38 · The pastor asserts that all earthly conditions — freedom, health, ethnicity — are temporary, but eternal judgment is not
Every person will die eventually. Every one of us will die in our sin without help. Whether freed or slave, healed or sick, Jew or Gentile, These are all temporary things. They're temporal. And God knew that it would be a total loss if we were all healed and all given happy lives as unrepentant sinners and then die in eternal judgment. We could gain the whole world but lose our souls and have no relationship with God. And so just as the people, just as the people, as it says, they fixed their eyes on him. Jesus came and fixed His eyes on Jerusalem to go to the cross, because that's what He came to aim at.
39 · The pastor articulates the gospel: Jesus bore God's wrath for our sin, died in our place, and rose again to give us eternal hope
He came to bear the wrath of our sin for us. And then He fulfilled that promise of mercy. By dying on the cross, in your place and mine to pay the just penalty for your sin and mine. And He was raised to life again. He was raised to life so that you and I can have an eternal hope. Not just that we're set at level now, but we have an eternal hope. An eternal hope of complete healing, complete sight, complete freedom, and complete deliverance for eternity. And though we don't understand why God allows these sufferings in our lives right now, but because of Christ, because He came and did that, we know that it's truly temporary. It's truly temporary. So we set our eyes on that eternal hope in the midst of our suffering. And that, when we set our eyes there, that there's an eternal reality, that's how on a Sunday morning I can sing, "Lord, You're good," because I see the suffering, but I also know that You see it with me and You're taking me there, away from it one day. And the great news is you don't have to wait 700 years. He is merciful. He's merciful.
40 · The pastor addresses non-believers directly with an evangelistic appeal
So my word today If you are a teen or a visitor or a spouse that you're here and you don't know Christ, you've never put your trust in Him, you've never repented of your sin and admitted your need for Jesus to die on that cross for you, then you have no hope. There is no hope aside from Christ. And if you don't think that you need that anointed one, then God says you are one of those blind and you need sight. And all the suffering that we experience in this life is a shadow of the suffering of eternal judgment. Jesus said, whoever has the Son has life, but whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life because the wrath of God remains on him. So either you can bear the wrath of your own sin, or Jesus offers to bear it for you. That is a miracle. Jesus came to die in your place, so receive His credit of holiness and forgiveness to your account. Have your soul freed from the dark prison of sin and experience spiritual eyesight for the first time.
41 · The pastor addresses Christians with a closing word of assurance
The worship team could come up. I want to say a final word to you Christians. You can rest your hope in God. Be thankful. Since Christ rose from the dead, we can say like the Apostle Paul, "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" Death, you can destroy my body and destroy my life and give me grief and sorrow for only a few more years, and then I will go to be with my Savior, and you cannot touch me because He has redeemed me. Revelation 21:4 says, that not far from now, church, not far from now, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for former things have passed away. Notice that it doesn't say there will be no more tears. What does it say? He will wipe away your tears. We have a relational God. He will wipe away your tears. And so he says to you this morning, rest your hope in me because I accomplished what I came to do and I will not let you go. Amen.