I abandoned you all last week and went to hang out with my baby brother,
and we had a good time, and the Lord's doing cool things in the Treasure Valley.
But it's always good to come home, and we're going to look at the shortest sermon in the Bible,
so we'll pray and then dismiss.
If you have a Bible, turn to Luke chapter 4, would you? Luke 4.
And I entitled this message, Jesus goes to church.
And if Jesus had the custom of going to church, I think maybe we should take his
and follow his lead.
But we're going to start in verse 14.
I'm just going to read through verse 20.
And we'll get rolling on this.
We remember last time, before we get started here,
last time it was kind of the template for spiritual warfare.
And so when Satan came against Jesus,
and when Satan comes against us,
it would do us well to battle the same way that he did, right?
It is written.
A knowledge, having a working knowledge of God's word.
And from Genesis to Revelation, right?
You don't need to exclude anything because it's the full counsel of God.
And it's alive and it's powerful.
And it's going to change your life if you'll press into it and learn it.
And so when you don't, psychosis sets in.
That's why we're all crazy.
We don't read the Word of God.
And so Jesus used the Word of God as a sword against the enemy, Satan,
which also tried to use the Word of God in a twisted or perverted way, right?
And when we know it and it's deep in our hearts, we can combat the enemy.
And so Jesus is his purpose.
passed the test so to speak. And here we see in verse 14, it says, then Jesus returned in the power of
the spirit to Galilee. And the news of him went out through all the surrounding region. And he taught
in their synagogues being glorified by all. And so he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.
And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was,
handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place
where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to
proclaimed the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant
and sat down and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.
Now, the great theologian, R. C. Sproll said the text you have just heard is of critical importance
to understanding the person and work of Jesus in his.
His earthly ministry.
And so it is imperative that we hear this word and receive it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, we ought to pray.
Lord, we come before you right now.
Holy Spirit, we need you.
We need you to open our understanding.
Lord, just as your word says that without you, Holy Spirit, somebody can't even say that Jesus is Lord.
And so, Father, I just ask right now that you would teach us, that you by your Holy Spirit,
as your word tells us, we need no man to teach us, but you will do it by your Holy Spirit.
Through your word that you have given us.
And so, Lord, as we look at these words, especially the ones written in red,
may they sink deep in our hearts, Lord.
May we be truly changed by what we see in the great things that we see in the truth of your word.
And we pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Amen. So Jesus went to church. Notice right off the bat, it says, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
That's where all the power is, is the Holy Spirit of God. You and I have no power. We're powerless.
Apart from him. And just as I said that scripture, I believe it's in 2nd Corinthians, that
apart from the spirit of God, a man, a woman can't even say that Jesus is Lord.
And so Jesus has passed the test.
He's been walking in the spirit.
He battled in the spirit.
Have you battled in the spirit?
What's that like for you?
Some of it's just keeping your mouth shut.
Right?
That's a sign that the Holy Spirit is.
is working in you. A fruit of the spirit is self-control. You can control what you say.
And how many couples over the years I've seen that their marriages just fell apart
because they could not bridle their tongue. And they so wounded each other with the words
that they spoke that it dissolved their relationship. Listen, the old the old theologian,
Disney theologian, Thumper.
You remember Thumper, right?
He's sitting there thumping his little foot.
Now Thumper, his mom has given him instruction.
Now, thumpur, what did your daddy say?
If you can't say something good, don't say nothing at all.
There's a lot of power in that, right?
But it's a bottle, right?
We get stirred up.
We feel like we got to talk.
especially girls.
Because you guys have so many more words to say than what we do.
Us poor guys, sometimes we're dumb down to, uh,
right?
And, uh,
but there's power with the Holy Spirit.
The Bible said anyone who can't bridle their,
their tongue, their religion is vain.
Right, it's empty.
It's not real to you.
And I know the Lord had to put a bear trap on my mouth because it was so foul.
And I remember my mom, you know, writing down how many times I said this certain word,
and I can't even admit it to you, but it was terrible.
It shocked me.
I'm going, really, I said it that many times.
Yeah.
But there's this power that God wants to.
give us. We read when we do spiritual battle there in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 where it talks about
the weapons of our warfare, they're not carnal, right? They're not a big bicep, right?
But they're mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. That's spiritual strongholds.
And some of us, we've all had these weaknesses, right? And yet so much of our battle is right up here.
in our mind.
And it tells us that we can cast down arguments,
this power of the Holy Spirit.
It helps take our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.
That's good, that's good scrapping.
That's good spiritual warfare.
And we're all in it.
If you're breathing, you're in a spiritual battle.
Now you might be getting your spiritual tail kicked, right?
You might be just getting a whooping,
but we're all in the spiritual battle.
And how you doing?
How are you doing?
Praise God, his mercies are new every morning,
and we need a lot of grace and mercy to get through this thing.
But Satan never takes a day off, folks.
Why do we think we can?
We think we can.
I need a little R&R.
Throughout Scripture, when we see people taking R&R,
they get in trouble.
How about David?
Right?
It's the time.
You notice, it's very specific in that scripture passage when David, it's a time when kings go to war.
Well, David wasn't at war. He wasn't on the battlefield. Where was he? He was kind of kicking back, right?
Sipping on a cup with a little umbrella on it. You know, seeing the girl bathing. And, oh, who's that?
Oh, that's your wife's well send her to me. He's the king. He can call for anyone he wants.
Destroyed his family. He destroyed it.
because he got a spiritual tail kicked.
Because he thought, oh, I need to take a break.
Spiritually, you don't ever take a break.
You don't ever take a break, spiritually speaking.
And so Jesus is filled with his spirit.
He's engaged in this spiritual battle.
And because he had been tested, right,
it's time for him to enter into his ministry.
And now we don't know how much time he elapsed.
from the time that he started his ministry and the time that Satan tempted him.
Some scholars think it was up to a year.
But notice he was making some waves because it says there in those first couple of
verses we read 14 and 15.
It says, then the news of him went out through all the surrounding region
and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all.
People are going, wow, when this dude talks, it's powerful.
right and you remember
the soldiers that were sent to arrest him
and they came back and they said
why do you? How come you don't have him?
They said because we've never heard anybody speak like this man.
His words were powerful.
That's why it's important to write on your tongue
because your words are powerful.
See, we're created in the image of God, folks.
I remember being a little boy and my mom telling me,
oh, Scotty, honey, now we're sticks in stones,
we'll break your bones, but words will be.
never hurt you. That's a lie. Right? That is a lie. And why is that words are so powerful? The
Proverbs tell us that life and death are in the power of the tongue. You can speak life into somebody,
a husband or a wife or a child or a friend, or you can speak death into them. And because God's
word is so powerful.
Everything we see, he spoke into existence.
We are created in his image. That's why our words
carry so much weight and so much power.
And so
Jesus is
the living word. The word become flesh as it tells us in
John.
And he's
going from church to church.
Synagogue to synagogue.
They're in the Galilee area around Nazareth, where he grew up.
There's Copernum.
That's where he moved his ministry to.
And there was Cana where he did the wedding, you know, and turned the water into wine.
And he's going from synagogue to synagogue.
And some think that the synagogues kind of came into play after Solomon built a temple.
Some think that it was more launched when during the captain.
The Assyrian and the Babylonian captivity where the people could come together,
where two or three could gather together and to pray and to seek the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Synagogues just are a Greek word for church or assembly, right?
And Jesus saw a fit to go assemble.
And I'm glad you're all here today.
We're assembly.
Right?
We're synagoguing.
We're churching here this morning.
and it's always good.
It's always good to fellowship and to encourage one another
and to bear one another's burdens, it says, in the scriptures.
And so he's been teaching, and it says he was very successful.
Everybody glorified him.
It says there that I think there's the word fame.
and the fame of him.
Fame must have been of NIV.
That's the nearly inspired version.
Just kidding. I'm just joking.
Okay.
But the word fame, actually, it's a Greek word.
It means fame.
It means to report the news of, fame of, or the rumor.
Let's just say that Jesus at this point is the talk of the town.
right he's the
talk of the town and he
should be should he not
the Bible says he's created all
things all things were made by him
and for him
you realize that's why you're here
that's why you're here
that's why you're drawing breath
is for him
he created
you for his good pleasure
to have relationship with you
to show you
life's purpose.
You know, it's funny.
You talk to people all the time.
I talk to people in their 70s.
They still don't know what they want to be when they grow up.
I'm going, hmm, I guess I'm with you.
But ultimately, no matter what you do in this life,
is the name of Jesus on your lips.
Is he your life source?
Is he the source of your love?
Because I know I don't got the kind of love Jesus God.
But I know that I can be a vessel in it.
And if I choose to and yield and surrender
and put away my flesh and just let myself be a vessel of his love,
I can do that.
but it's he that does it.
And I don't know why he does that.
Because in doing so, I am extremely blessed
when I allow myself to be a vessel of God's love.
And sometimes people mistake that.
They say, well, man, Pastor Scott, you're so harsh.
And one guy called me, he's mean.
He said, I was mean for telling him the truth.
Because it hurt.
The truth does hurt, right?
Because we're so flawed and we have so much yuck in our life.
And yet, Jesus' fame is going out in spite of that.
And people are faced, no doubt, with their own.
When you come in contact with Jesus, it's like, you know,
there's some kind of conviction that goes on.
It was kind of like when we were reading,
about John the Baptist and he was proclaiming the word of the Lord and telling people to repent for the
kingdom of heaven as an end. It's like, oh, I need to get right with God. I need to be right with God.
I wake up every day thinking that. I need to be right with God. Because I know that if I don't do
that on purpose, if I don't pursue him, if I don't seek him, if I don't read his word and put it in my
heart, then I go do my own thing. And my own thing is never good. It's always a mess when I do
my own thing. And like I said before, we see it throughout scripture when when people start
to do their own thing. So now he shows up in his hometown. He's there in Nazareth and he went to
synagogue. He went to the assembly. It was his custom. Right. He was his custom. Right.
Have you noticed that when you go to church, you have to kind of do it on purpose?
Right?
You kind of got to, okay, we're going to church.
When Jesus radically saved me and my wife and I got married,
I just like, we got to go to church.
Right.
And then you're married for a little while, you know, and the chafing begins.
Right?
You just kind of rub each other the wrong way, you know?
And I'm thinking we really got to go to church now because we're in trouble.
And then you throw a couple kids in the mix.
You got all these sinners under the same roof.
And it's just absolute chaos.
Right.
And the most chaotic is Sunday mornings right before church.
And why is that?
Because we have a real enemy that does not want us to go into church.
Right?
It's a real deal.
I remember I was thinking, why is it mean her kid in the most?
knock down, drag out, worse.
Fine, if you ain't going, I ain't going.
And then I thought, oh, bingo, I know what it is.
So we kind of kept our distance.
Right?
She gave me my schedule.
This is what I need you to do on Sunday morning.
I need you to help me.
Right?
We had four kids.
Right, we were wiping hindis and noses.
And, you know, if you have a butt kicking down in,
it's just chaos.
So we have to do it.
We had to go to church on purpose.
I remember one time our kids were little.
Back a couple of them were sick, and my wife stayed home.
And I went to church.
I went to church by myself.
Actually, all the kids stayed home.
And I went to church by myself.
And I get back home and we're Saturday.
We're going to go to church the next day.
And I can't remember if she got sick or something,
and she didn't go.
And we got to talk in about a week later.
And she says, you know, that first time, that first Sunday,
I missed. I really missed it.
She goes, the second one, I didn't miss it near as much.
Right?
It's a slow fade.
And I think we saw the impact of that during COVID when they shut things down, you know,
and that we couldn't get together.
And listen, we're a body.
We're a body made up of a bunch of cells that make up the body of the body of Christ.
Right.
And some are stinky.
Right?
Some are hard to love.
Some people you have to love from a distance.
But we need each other.
For a body to function, everything needs to be working.
And we are that body of Christ Jesus.
And so it's important.
And we see Jesus.
It was his custom.
Right.
If anyone could say, I don't need church, it would have been Jesus.
Right?
Jesus didn't need church.
Jesus don't need anything.
Don't need you, don't need me.
But he didn't. He showed up. And what did he do? He ministered people. He ministered to people.
And so he's there. Because of all his fame, they would invite visiting rabbis to read.
And so he stood up to read. And the usual order of service in a synagogue began with an opening prayer and praise.
had some of that going on here.
Then a reading from the law, the Torah,
which would be the first five books of the Bible,
that would be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The first five books of the Bible.
And then there would be a reading from the prophets,
and then a sermon.
Reading from the prophets.
Been reading through the prophets lately,
and it's powerful.
The things that point to Jesus.
And so they would have this sermon.
And what happened was the teacher would read and then he would sit.
And then the people would sit on the floor.
It's the idea of sitting at the feet, right, of a teacher, sitting at the feet.
Mary sat at the feet of Jesus.
And Jesus commended her for doing the better part instead of the nervous Nellie, Martha.
And so on this occasion, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus must have been the visitor and was able.
So they hand him the scroll of Isaiah.
So that would have been on the priest to decide whoever was ahead of the synagogue,
gave him the scroll of the book of Isaiah.
And he read,
The Spirit of the Lord is up on me,
because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
on me. This is very literal. He is talking about himself. Right here. And this is very, this was written
700 years before Christ was on the earth. And so here, the king of kings is reading the Bible.
Listen, if the king of kings read the word of God, and the kings in the Old Testament were required,
to read the word.
And yet when you read through the kings,
they were an absolute mess.
They got into false worship.
They married women who worshipped false gods.
They got drug down.
But that wasn't how it was supposed to be.
It was supposed to be different.
If you have a Bible, turn to Deuteronomy
chapter 17.
king. And this was the instruction to the kings. Now, there were no kings yet. Right, God was their king.
Would there be a better king than God? Do you hear that? Out of the mouths of babes.
Would there be a better king than God? And these two little ones go, now!
And so the instruction was for these kings.
Now, they hadn't had any kings yet.
It was going to be, it was going to be quite a while, right?
A couple hundred years before they were going to have any kings.
And the first king we know was King Saul.
But God gave Moses the groundwork for what a king was supposed to be.
And this is what he was supposed to be.
In chapter 17 and verse 14, it says,
now when you come into the land, right,
they hadn't gone through the Red Sea yet,
when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you
and possess it and dwell in it and say,
I will be a king, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me.
You shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses,
one from among your brothers.
You shall set a king over you.
You may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
But he shall not multiply horses for himself,
nor cause the people to return to Egypt, or back to sin,
or to multiply horses for the Lord has said to you,
you shall not return that way again.
Neither shall he multiply wives for himself.
Now, you guys know the story of the kings, right?
They all had multiple wives.
Solomon had 300 and 700 porcupines.
No wonder that poor burger fell.
They weren't to multiply wives.
People said, well, they did in the Bible.
Listen, they did a lot of things in the Bible
that were not instructed to do from Scripture.
Well, it's in the Bible, right?
Well, there's murder in the Bible.
There's homosexuality in the Bible, right?
There's thievery in the Bible.
There's eating of your own children in the Bible.
Nasty.
That's right.
But this is instructional right here in Deuteronomy, right?
It's instructional for the people that they shouldn't multiply.
He should not.
The king.
should not multiply wives to himself, left his heart turn away,
nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.
He's not supposed to chase after the almighty dollar.
One of my friends one time said,
making money is not the problem, keeping it is.
Right?
Because the Bible tells us that if you're rich is increased,
don't set your heart on them, because they grow wings and they fly away.
Mine does every month.
How about you?
Don't set your heart on that stuff.
Also, it shall be when he sits on the throne of his kingdom.
Listen, that he shall write for himself a copy of the law, of this law, in a book from the one before the priest, the Levites.
And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words.
of this law and these statutes,
that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers,
that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left,
and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom,
he and his children in the midst of Israel.
This instruction to the kings,
that instruction goes this way too, to you and me.
Notice what happens, right?
There's greed, there's relational,
dysfunction when you're not letting God's word direct your life.
There's a desire for power. That would be the horses.
Those were the Sherman tanks of the day.
And so, it keeps our mind right when we read the word.
Right? It's alive. It tells us.
Those of you who Bible scholars know, Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, right?
It is a sharp sword.
It's powerful.
Cutting to dividing bone and marrow
and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of our heart.
This word.
It's powerful.
And here, Jesus reads a very powerful passage from the Word of God.
And so Jesus says in Luke 2444,
then he said to them,
these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets in the Psalms concerning me.
He's talking about his words that are written and read that we have in our New Testament,
and he's talking about all the Old Testament, prophetic words pointing towards him.
And notice, it's in the law, it's in the prophets, and it's in the Psalms.
And it all points to him.
Thousands of years before he came on the scene.
He is the fulfillment of this, this powerful word.
And he's going to relay that message to these people.
So Rabbi Jesus, he read from the scroll of Isaiah, read six things.
Right. First was the gospel to the poor.
Remember when he said the beatitudes, blessed of the poor, what?
In spirit.
He's poor in spirit today.
You just don't have a confidence in the depths of your heart that you're good with God.
That's why Jesus came.
He says, no, I want to give you confidence.
I want you to know that you know that you're on your way to heaven.
John tells us in First John, these things are written that you may know, not hope,
not think so, that you may know that you have eternal life.
When you know you have eternal life, what can stop you?
Nothing when you know that.
But those who are poor in spirit are going through this life like a wish,
Wash a machine.
Wish she was.
We shie wash.
You don't know if you're coming or going.
Right?
Blessed is the poor and spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, he tells us in Matthew,
chapter 5, verse 3.
Back in Isaiah chapter 52,
a few chapters back from what he read there in the synagogue.
It says, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him,
who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things,
who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.
This is good news.
Do you know the good news?
Has it had that impact on your life?
It's news that you can be saved.
Jesus first came to save us.
Listen, he's coming again.
He's not coming as the nice, great.
gracious, merciful savior.
He's coming as a ferocious warrior.
That's going to execute the kings of the earth.
He is going to cut their heads off.
That's this Jesus meek and mild that so many people are confused about who he is.
Right?
He came as a loving suffering.
You see that through the book of Isaiah.
Savior.
To save you and me, we need saved.
You need saved.
These little ones need save.
They need to know Jesus.
Because he is the only salvation.
There is no other.
And so
it's good news.
And he brought this good news to the people.
Hey!
You can be saved. God wants you to be right with him.
He's willing that none should perish,
but that all would come to repentance.
But if you don't want to repent, his judgment's coming.
And it is ferocious.
He is a perfect judge
executing the just judgment that everyone deserves
and giving a pass to those of us who have accepted him for who he is.
And I don't about you, but I say, thank you, Jesus.
Right, that's the good news.
Secondly, right, he came to heal the brokenhearted.
I better get back there
lest I get lost here.
He sent me to heal the broken heart.
Think about that for a second.
That is a powerful statement.
Do you know any doctors that can heal a broken heart?
You seen them?
They would be the richest man in the world
if they could heal a broken heart.
Jesus came to heal the broken heart.
is because he can touch the part of you that nothing,
nothing else can touch and heal.
When Greg and Kathy Loria lost their son Christopher in a horrific car wreck,
I remember Kathy telling her story how this happened.
And he was a young guy.
I think his wife was pregnant with their second child.
He was 32 or 33 their son was when he was killed in a car wreck.
And she said she remembers standing in the heart.
hallway right in front of their front door.
And her mom walked in.
And she said, just the weight of it, seeing everybody and the weight of losing their son,
she just collapsed on the floor.
And she said her mom come over and tried to console her.
And she couldn't.
She said, nobody could touch my heart at that moment.
Except Jesus.
He was the only one that could really minister to me.
suffering such a great loss. In the Greco-Roman world, healing was often associated with various deities and
rituals. You've heard of the Greek gods. However, the New Testament presents Jesus as the ultimate healer
whose authority over sickness and disease demonstrates his divine power and compassion. The act of healing
was a sign of the
end-breaking kingdom of God
where the
restoration and wholeness
are central themes.
We just seem to do it over and over again
just making people complete
that were incomplete.
You feel incomplete today?
The Lord can heal your broken heart.
Because, honestly, you guys,
we have broken hearts.
It comes from different angles, don't it?
We have family members that break our heart.
We have loved ones.
We have fellow church members break our heart.
We break our own hearts.
Right?
We're a flawed, fallen people.
And Jesus has come to straighten those things up
and to make them right.
It's so cool.
It's so refreshing to know that that is our Messiah.
The use of this Greek word to heal, I can't pronounce it,
but in the New Testament underscores the belief in Jesus as the Messiah
who fulfills the Old Testament prophecies of healing and restoration.
And that's what he quoted here of Isaiah.
The people knew this was coming.
They knew that as this rabbi stands up and he begins to read,
they knew that he was reading a passage that pointed to the Messiah,
the one that would come and save.
They knew that.
And so he makes us complete.
He restores us.
Colossians 2, 9, and 10 says, for in him, that is Jesus,
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,
and you are complete in him.
who is the head.
You and I, we're complete.
You got Jesus?
You got it all.
I think there's a song about that, actually.
If I got Jesus, I got it all.
I got all I need.
And so the third thing he says, to free the captives, right?
We see him freeing people who are captive.
They were captive to infirmity and sickness and demon possession,
blindness, leprosy.
Remember, the world.
woman bent over for 18 years.
And that famous saying, what Jesus says to her, woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.
He's come to set the captives free.
What's got to captive?
Some people are captive by, they're taken captive by fear.
Some people are taken captive by their hatred.
What has you captive?
Some people are captive by the chasing the buck.
Right? Just get a little bit more.
Just get me a little bit more and I'll be happy.
No, you won't.
Right? They've already done.
Proved that. They went to all the billionaires and said, hey, how much money is enough?
Right?
You know what they all said?
The majority of them said, just a little bit more.
Just a little bit more.
But he's come to set you free from that, that nothing would possess you, that nothing would have
control over you.
Fourthly, to resource.
store sight. He healed physical blindness. But more importantly, he healed spiritual blindness. People are
blind. I am shocked at the people that come to church. That when I get to talking to him, I'm going,
you don't see it, do you? You're not seeing this. You're not seeing this. You're not seeing what most
people who follow the prince of peace, the light of the world. You're not seeing. You're
you're still kind of in some dark areas there.
You're not seeing it.
But Jesus came to take the blinders off.
Sin blinds us.
And the Messiah comes along to heal our spiritual and moral blindness.
How many people I talk to think, oh, you know, we're cool with you shacking.
No sense can get married.
Well, now wait a minute.
Now God's a God of covenant, right?
God's down with covenant.
So what you do when people are shocked,
and I don't need to just pick on you if you're shocked,
and God bless you, but get married.
It's easy fix, right?
What they're saying is, listen, what you're saying is,
you're calling something holy that God has called holy,
you're calling it common.
Right? That's the whole thing with homosexuality as well.
right?
If God had given us that freedom,
knock yourself out.
But he hasn't.
He's put parameters on our sexual life.
That is very healthy, by the way.
Just talking from experience.
But when you do that and you call something that is holy,
right, this matrimony that God covenants and then blesses,
as he blessed Adam and Eve saying being fruitful and multiply, he said that's holy.
Because the man is holy in his maleness, the woman is holy in her femaleness.
And that union in marriage or that actual sexual union, it's holy.
And people say, oh, no, it's common.
So I can do it with whoever I want.
Not before God you can and get away with it.
Right? Well, I've been doing it for years.
Yeah, but judgment's common, Bubba.
right there is a day of reckoning for all of us and praise god for the blood of jesus or i would be at the
front of line on the diving board into the lake of fire and so don't be blind don't be blind to your own
failure and your own sin own it right there's great freedom and
and owning your own sin, I screwed up.
God forgive me.
There's great freedom in that transparency.
Just be real.
Like you're really going to tell God a whopper
and he's going to believe it.
Seriously?
That's not the way it works.
He knows your very heart and the thoughts and the intents of it.
And which the Bible tells us is desperately wicked.
That's why when we ask Jesus to come in,
into our lives. We ask him to come into our heart.
Lord, you got to do something with this ugly thing.
And he will. He's faithful.
John 9 tells us, and Jesus said,
for judgment, I have come into the world, right?
That those who do not see may see.
And that those who see may be made blind.
Then some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words and said to him,
are we blind also?
And Jesus said to them, if you are blind,
you would have no sin.
But now you say we see.
Therefore, your sin remains.
They didn't get it.
They were like some of those people I was talking about.
They're not seeing it.
They don't see their wickedness.
They don't see that they need to get that right before the Lord.
That they need to embrace this Messiah, the one who came to save us.
The one who by his stripes, it tells us later in Isaiah,
who by his stripes, we are healed because of what he did.
the payment that Christ made for us.
Fifthly, he says, to set free the oppressed.
The oppressed, the word means to break, to shatter, to crush.
Life seems to do that to people, don't it?
I just had an opportunity to go pray with a family,
had a little girl last night, and she was, she was,
actually, she was getting mad, and she was holding her breath.
And she stopped breathing a couple times.
And this mom and dad were on the verge of being crushed, right, if they would have lost this little girl.
So what life does to a lot of people, right?
Crushes them, breaks you.
But God can bring beauty from ashes, right?
Second Corinthians 317, now the Lord is the spirit.
And where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
That God can set us free from that brokenness.
and deliver us. Sixly, this is where I'm getting. How am I doing on time? I better look.
Right on. Right on the money. The sixth thing he says, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Now, you Bible scholars, you would understand he's talking about Jubilee.
How many know what the year of Jubilee was all about? Right. A few of you. So the,
The year of Jubilee was powerful because it's when debts were released.
Actually, I can quote one of those theologians, a real smart guys in the Bible.
His name is Marvin Pate.
He says, Jesus came to preach the Lord's acceptable year, a reference to the year of Jubilee.
It is just possible that the reason Jesus returned to his hometown was because it was Jubilee year.
And in the year of Jubilee, slaves were set free, debts were canceled, and things
set to a new start.
It was truly a new beginning.
Right?
That's what Jesus came.
He goes, I proclaim to you this good news.
If you accept it, you have a new beginning.
And not only that, but you have new beginnings daily.
For his mercy is new every morning.
God's mercy.
I don't know how thankful you are for that.
but I am extremely thankful
that God's mercy is her new every morning
because I need a lot of mercy.
Because you know mercy is not getting what you deserve.
Grace is what you get when you don't deserve it.
So I used to have little kids that were nasty to their teacher.
And they would come into my office.
And I would think,
you want some grace?
And occasionally they would do this because they would do this
They didn't know what grace was.
They thought.
If I say yes and it's a swap, I don't want that.
So they would move their head like this.
I said, okay, I'll give you grace.
And I'd hand him a Snickers board.
That's grace.
Right?
Or I would ask him, do you want mercy?
This one little boy I asked him one time.
He was a frequent flyer.
And Pastor Scott's office.
His name was Nicholas.
I said, so, Nicholas.
should I give you mercy today?
And man, I mean, he was like this.
I said, well, Nicholas, what's mercy?
He said, mercy?
Murphy is like medicine.
Mercy is like medicine.
I said, mercy is like medicine?
You got it, dude, you got mercy.
Right?
I didn't give him a swat.
He had one coming.
Right?
But I showed him mercy.
Mercy is not getting what you deserve.
I am so.
thankful for God's mercy every morning.
Because it's available to you and me.
So, but what is so fascinating about this, this scripture,
is the period at the end.
If you're looking in your Bibles, how many of your Bibles, it's in red letters?
It's in red letters.
And there's a period after Lord, right?
The acceptable year of our Lord.
And there's a period there.
In Isaiah, it's not so.
In Isaiah, it's a comma.
It's a comma.
It's a 2,000-year-old comma.
Well, maybe let's go 2,700-year comma.
Because when you read what it says
and to proclaim the vengeance of our God,
he came as a savior the first time.
When the vengeance of our God is proclaimed,
it's when Jesus comes again.
right? And that's when he comes as a judge. And he had to stop it right there. He had to stop it right there.
I came to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord. In other words, that's why the Bible says,
it is the accepted time today. Today is the day of salvation. Right? That's when you get right with
God. You don't wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may not come. I've had a lot of friends. I do a lot of
funerals. And a lot of people's tomorrow's don't come. That's why the Bible says,
today is the day of salvation. And that's what Jesus came to proclaim. Today.
If you're not saved, get saved today. Well, how do you do that? Say, Lord Jesus,
Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Come into my heart. Lord Jesus, forgive me in my sin.
I turn from it and I turn to you. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Save my soul. In Jesus' name,
amen. A simple prayer like that, that is a prayer of sincerity from your heart.
Lord, God, I need you.
God's not into big flower of prayers.
He knows the condition of your heart.
And if you'll come to him and accept him, you're saved.
So, Jesus reads the Bible.
He sits down.
Everybody's looking at him going, hmm, there was an emphasis on me in this scripture.
Because it says the Spirit of the Lord is on me.
He has anointed me.
He has sent me.
Right?
There was an emphasis.
And so everybody's looking at Jesus.
In fact, there at the end of verse 20, notice what it says.
It says, and all their eyes were fixed on him.
So let's read the next couple of verses, verse 21 and 2.
It says, and he began to say to them, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
So all bore witness to him and marbled at the grave.
gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, and they said, is not, is this not Joseph's son?
So they hear what he's saying. They know this passage is about the Messiah.
And Jesus says, today in your hearing, this scripture is fulfilled. In other words, I'm right here.
The Messiah. He's making claim that he's the Messiah. That's why they say, wait a minute, isn't this Joseph's son?
no he wasn't Joseph's son biologically.
Joseph raised him. He was God's son.
Sent for you and me.
And so we'll look at it next time how rough that gets after that
and how people hear what the Lord says,
but so often they don't do what the Lord says.
And so
Today
just a little of self-examination of the things that we looked at in this passage out of Isaiah
Are you poor in spirit?
Are you broken-hearted?
Do you need set free?
Are you captive to someone or something?
Is there a spiritual blindness that hinders you?
Are you broken inside?
There's good news.
and his name is Jesus.
So simple, but so powerful,
because he has the power to set us all free.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you.
Thank you for your love.
Thank you for your word.
It is powerful.
So pointing to the future, Lord, that you're coming again.
Lord, and you've come to save us.
And even this day, this day, this accepted time,
this day of salvation that you've presented for us today.
Lord, where life and death is before us.
And you encourage us out of your word to choose life, Lord, that we would be fulfilled.
And so, Father, I just pray for any who need a prayer, Lord,
that they would just seek someone out, the prayer team.
I don't even know where we're going to be.
Probably down front here.
If that's you and you need prayer, you feel like the Lord is knocking on the door of your heart,
come and grab myself or one of the prayer team, and get right with the Lord.
and be set free from anything that hinders you.
So Lord Jesus, we just surrender this week to you that's before us, Lord.
May we go in the spirit and the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord.
Not leaning on our own understanding, but acknowledge you in all of our ways,
knowing that you're going to direct our steps.
And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let's all stand.
We'll close with the doxology.
Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him all creatures here below.
Praise him above all ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father, son and whole.
Holy ghost. Amen. God bless you guys. Have a great week in Jesus. See you back at the
Shiloh next week.