Isaiah 61 - The Lord Comes to Save

Alright, let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah, the book of Isaiah.

We are only two months away from finishing our study of Isaiah.

We started in September 2024, and we'll be finishing uh right at the end of February, beginning of March of this year.

There are moments in life when you realize that the world isn't as it should be.

Sometimes you get a phone call in the middle of a night.

Perhaps a message in the day.

Sometimes you get a diagnosis you never would have expected.

And sometimes relationships break without warning.

The world just isn't the way it should be.

Sometimes those things come suddenly, and sometimes they come slowly.

Sometimes just continues to ache away in your heart, or responsibilities weigh on you that you've never asked to be burdened with.

Or sometimes just that sense of joy that you see others possess so freely just seems like an elusive dream, just outside the clutches of your fingers.

I just finished a book uh recently uh called When Breath Becomes Air.

I certainly recommend that book to you.

It's a book by Paul Kullinithi.

I hope I said that right.

It's a first-person account of a young neurosurgeon who's treating people daily with some of the most devastating diagnoses that this world could ever hear, until one day he himself receives one of those.

And he goes from being a physician and a caregiver to being a person in need of care, to a person who's offering hope and insight and understanding to asking the very questions that his patients were asking him.

And he writes about his career as he begins to journal about his cancer and the journey that he has.

And he said something that really stopped me cold when I was reading the book that he'd realized that his career, his whole life that he'd been building toward, had evaporated in a moment.

Listen to what he says.

Death, so familiar to me in my work, had suddenly become personal.

The future I had imagined, the life I had worked so hard to build, evaporated.

That's a pretty dramatic word, isn't it?

Evaporated.

And here he is talking about everything that his life had been centered on, is gone.

We can feel that sometimes, can't we?

Plans, expectations, hopes evaporating, certainties evaporating, strength and control evaporating.

And underneath it, all you wonder if there's any hope.

After all those things are gone, is there, you know, not just some sentimental hope, but that comes in and actually changes things, that rebuilds and grants something beautiful back into the evaporated wasteland?

Well, Isaiah 61 steps into that moment.

It's a prophecy projecting into the future, projecting to people who haven't even yet gone to exile, but talking about their return from exile, that they're going to come home to something, though, as they look at it, first of all, will be filled with rubble and the need of rebuilding.

But there's a hope beyond even the return of exile into a glorious future that rises beyond anything that they might be able to imagine.

And here Isaiah is instilling hope into the hearts of the people.

It didn't look like it at first.

When they did return, the walls were broken, the temple was not there, they needed to rebuild it.

And when they did, it was just a shadow of what it used to be, so much so that the older people who knew what it had looked like wept.

And often they were filled with discouragement and disappointment, disoriented by all of this, but meant to anchor their heart were these prophecies.

Because just coming back from Babylon wasn't the answer and it wasn't the fulfillment.

And into all of that disappointment, a voice speaks.

And it's not a voice of a prophet that's going to continue to scold them, or a leader who's going to try to rally them, or a politician who is simply going to make some promises that won't be kept.

No, there's a voice that's going to speak into their disappointment.

And it's a voice anointed by the Spirit.

And it's a voice that has something far different for them to hear.

It's not instruction or rebuke or advice that he's going to offer.

He's going to offer them good news.

He's going to announce that God Himself is going to step in and renew them in ways that they can't even imagine or picture.

And today we're going to look at that good news.

At the start of our series in 2024, I said that Isaiah was the fifth gospel.

And the longer we've been going through the book of Isaiah, I think I need to change my statement.

Isaiah is the first gospel.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the second, third, fourth, and fifth.

This is the first gospel.

And Isaiah 61 is a beautiful, beautiful demonstration of that.

Because the whole story of redemption is bundled up together here and gathered in one place.

The ache of the human heart and the promises of God and the person of Christ are all here in one place.

And so if you come this morning and you've wondered, is there any hope for me in the middle of my brokenness?

Does God have anything for me when everything's evaporated?

If you question whether God can restore what others or you have ruined in your life, Isaiah 61 has an answer.

And as we look at this passage of scripture, we're going to look at the whole of it, I want to see it in four different movements, four gospel movements.

We're going to see, first of all, the good news proclaimed, and then we're going to see the good news embodied, and then we'll see the good news multiplied, and then last of all, the good news celebrated.

The good news celebrated.

So let's listen to this wonderful passage of scripture with open hearts.

First of all, the good news proclaimed.

And we'll see this in verses 1 to 3.

And when Isaiah begins here in this chapter, he doesn't begin with a command or a warning.

He begins with a comforting voice.

Listen to it.

This is the servant speaking.

This is the Spirit-annointed redeemer that's been promised throughout Isaiah.

We've looked at the servant songs earlier, but here the voice of the servant breaks in again.

And the first thing he does is he proclaims his commission and the contents of his mission.

He proclaims that God is sending him to do something, that he has come with the purposes of God in hand.

The source is God, and the empowerment comes by the Spirit.

And the substance of that is wonderful.

Good news, liberty, release, comfort, favor.

Just look at the cascade of these kind of words in these next three verses.

To bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, freedom to the prisoners.

Let me drop down just a little bit to the end of two.

Comfort for those who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, festive oil instead of mourning, splendid clothes instead of despair, and they will be called righteous trees, planted by the Lord to glorify him.

That doesn't sound like our nightly news, does it?

And he doesn't speak some vague, distant salvation.

He speaks personally and with great detail and particularity down to the heart level of restoring grace that's coming from God to people that are broken.

And listen to what he does.

He doesn't just take away their ashes, he gives them beauty, he doesn't just stop their mourning, he gives them gladness.

He doesn't just lift the faint-hearted, he clothes them with praise.

There's such a revolutionary change here.

Now, to a lot of us, this sounds like simply poetic language.

And it is poetic in its form.

But for a Jewish person, this would be signaling something very, very real and tangible.

This is what we call Jubilee language.

You see, the Jubilee was one of the most dramatic and hopeful ideas the whole Old Testament could speak about.

Many of us today are very, very unfamiliar with what Jubilee means.

In Leviticus chapter 25, God commands Israel to observe a special year that's called the Year of Jubilee.

Leviticus 25 · chapter mention

And what happens in that year is quite dramatic.

It's a great, a great reset, if you will, of all of society.

In the Jubilee year, all that the debts that people had would be canceled.

Imagine that.

No more credit cards you have to pay off.

No more bank mortgages that you have to dish out and pay.

All of the land that had been held by others that you had given way in order to secure help in times of need would be returned into your hands.

And any Israelite who had given themselves to another because of their neediness and was put into servitude would be released and given back their freedom.

Imagine the implications of all of that.

This would distinguish Israel among all the nations of the world and in very significant and very tangible ways.

Socially they would benefit.

Families that had been broken would be reunited.

People who were shamed by their poverty would now be released from that tangible display of that shame and would receive back dignity.

It would stop there being a permanent ruling class and a permanent serving class, because all the wealth would have to be restored back to families.

Theologically, they would understand that God controlled the movements of life and business and the land.

The land itself would receive rest, reinforcing that the rhythms of life come from God Himself.

Legally, it would build into the system of the courts a concept of justice like no other nation ever knew it.

And emotionally, it would help people to be filled with humility and hope instead of fear or driven by greed, because it would all be reset.

In other words, the Jubilee was God's way of saying that his people would not be permanently crushed by their failures.

They would not be permanently held down by their debts.

They would not be permanently constricted by their circumstances.

He built into their lives and into their society a rhythm of restoration and renewal.

Now, with that in mind, listen again to Isaiah 61.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

What Isaiah is telling us is that when the servant arrives, he is going to announce the ultimate Jubilee.

Not just another Jubilee, but the ultimate Jubilee.

And he's telling us that this Jubilee that's coming is not going to be a date on the every once a 50-year calendar.

It's not going to be simply an economic policy.

It's going to be an ultimate Jubilee that's not just a calendar event, but a person.

But a person.

And here the servant of the Lord is saying that he will restore people beyond their economic, beyond their societal, legal, agricultural, and emotional needs.

He is going to be the Jubilee when he comes.

And so Isaiah is telling the people when you come back from Babylon and you enter into the land, this isn't simply about restoring the old patterns, but to anchor their heart in the hope that something greater is coming.

And he said, What's coming is a person that you need to look for.

And this person is going to forgive debts that are far deeper than financial ones.

That this person is going to set captives free, that is far greater freedom than the chains that might be around their ankles or their wrists.

That he's going to restore an inheritance that's far bigger than the piece of land that you might have gotten earlier.

Look for someone that's going to do something greater than all this, who's going to undo sin and reverse the curse and bring people really home.

Look for this one.

And so, at the very outset of his ministry, before all of the other things that we read in the Gospels, in Luke chapter 4, Jesus is in a synagogue and he goes through the scroll and stops right here.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

And he reads, The Spirit of the Lord is on me.

And he reads through this, and he ends with these words to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And he sits down.

Well, he sat down to teach.

That's why he sat down.

He didn't sit down because somebody else was going to do something.

He sat down so he could teach.

And so everybody was glued on.

What's he going to say about this passage?

And he says to them, Today, as you listen, this scripture has been fulfilled.

What does he say?

He is saying in no uncertain terms to those who understood the text and the context of this passage, I am that Jubilee that you've been waiting for.

I am him.

He said, I am the one who has come to bring this lost and longed for restoration.

It goes beyond just releasing captives and it goes into recovering sight and lifting the oppressed and returning inheritance.

All of those things are converging on him.

And so when we read about the life and the ministry of Christ, what do we see him doing?

We see him canceling the deepest of debts, sin's unpayable ledger against us.

We see him forming us into a new family and bringing us into an eternal home.

We see him restoring us into fellowship with God.

We see him even saying that he's going to renew the heavens and the earth and make a new creation.

And personally, he tells us that there's no brokenness in our life beyond his restoration.

There's no bondage that is stronger than his ability to release us.

And there's no exile that can keep us away from home.

You see, the servant isn't just proclaiming good news.

This passage begins with the servant saying that he is the good news.

In a day of doubt, John the Baptist in prison, because things aren't working out quite like he expected, calls for his companions to go to Jesus and ask him this question Are you the one?

In a moment of doubt and despair, John the Baptist is wavering, and he says, Are you the one, or should we expect somebody else?

And what does Jesus reply to him in Luke 7 in verse 22?

He says to the messengers, Go and report to John what you've seen and heard.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, and the poor are told the good news.

Jesus' reply to John is, John, Isaiah 61 is happening right in front of you.

Yes, I'm the one.

Now I want you to catch the significance of what he does here.

He moves toward the broken, not away from them.

This is the opposite of how we act often.

We like to gravitate toward people with power and connections and abilities, great personalities.

But here he moves with freedom and release and inheritance and liberty to the poor, brokenhearted captives and mourning people.

Gone are any statements of hope to the self-sufficient or to the proud or those who think they're free or fine.

The Pharisees asked him, What about us?

And he said, Do you see or are you blind?

And they're like, How dare you call us blind?

He said, Well, you'll never see then.

This good news, this good news proclaimed tells us that our stories aren't over when they're shattered.

Our lives aren't completely crushed.

He goes on, though.

He goes on to talk about not only this good news proclaimed, but also this good news embodied.

And we'll move a little more quickly through the sections here.

In verses four to seven, he takes a he shows us how all of this takes a hold in God's people and what the servant creates in them.

And verses four to seven are really hope saturated lines.

Some of the most dramatic in scripture.

Verse 4: They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the former devastations and renew the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners will be your plowmen and vine dressers, and you'll be called the Lord's priests, and they will speak of you as ministers of our God.

You will eat the wealth of the nations, and you will boast in the riches.

In the place of your shame, you'll have a double portion.

In the place of disgrace, they will rejoice over their share.

So they will possess double in their land, and eternal joy will be theirs.

What an idealized restoration this is.

Talking to us of the deep, deep, deep, transformative nature of this good news.

And it doesn't leave people where they are, and it doesn't just simply patch them up to continue on.

It recreates them.

It gives them more than they could have ever expected.

He releases them from pain and puts in them purpose.

Now notice the purpose.

In honor.

Now, this is not about getting a title, it's about a purpose.

Priests in the Old Testament stood between God and the people, and they represented God to the people, and they represented the people to God.

And here the Lord is saying to these that are broken, that are captives, that are prisoners, that are poor, who are mourning, that are filled with despair, that they're going to be ministers of God, that they're going to be put in such a vital role with such a profound and holy purpose that they'll be known as the representatives of God, the priests of God, the carriers of his presence, agents of his mercy, instruments of his healing, voices of his good news.

The New Testament takes up this language.

And in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 9, Peter writes to the church and he said, You are a royal priesthood.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Not just a couple among you who aren't married for the rest of their life and wear clothes that nobody else wears the rest of the week.

Every one of you are a royal priesthood.

In Revelation chapter 1, talking about the Lord Jesus, he made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

And then in that glorious demonstration of the heavenlies, where all the peoples of the earth are gathered from every tribe and trung and nation, they are gathered around the throne and giving praise to God and to the Lamb who was slain, and they make this proclamation: you made them a kingdom and priests to our God, every redeemed person.

How does that work?

Well, it works from what God does in us, and then what he means to do in us is meant to flow from us to others.

And so we become, like I said, those who are representatives of God and his mercy.

We're carriers of his presence, we're speakers of his truth, we're agents of his mercy, we're representatives of his character, we're instruments of his healing.

God means for all of this bounty to be spread, to be spread.

And so he tells us in Matthew chapter five: blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the merciful, right?

Because we are doing things in this world.

We're reconcilers.

Now, not every relationship might be able to be reconciled, but we're the first ones to reach out, right?

We're the ones that offer confession of our wrong, we're the ones that offer forgiveness to them.

And whenever we meet somebody captive to sin, we can talk about the bondage that we've been released from, to instill hope in their hearts.

Whenever we see someone coming, mourning and broken and drawn out by the pangs of life, we understand that.

We can meet them at the door.

We can give them a bulletin and a cheerful hello.

And we can say, Look, I'll talk to you after the service.

Can I pray with you?

Notice how this multiplies.

This good news proclaimed, this good news embodied becomes a good news multiplied in verses eight and nine.

I want to begin, however, by telling us why it does in verse eight, the why of multiplication before we talk about the contents of multiplication.

And here in verse eight, the Lord's own voice speaks, not just the servants.

I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

I will faithfully give them their recompense.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Why is all of this happening?

And why is it spreading around the world?

And why is it multiplying?

Because the Lord loves justice and the Lord hates oppression, and the Lord acts faithfully.

Take a look at the end of verse 8.

I will make a permanent covenant with them.

Now that's not a new phrase for us in the book of Isaiah, and it's not a new phrase for us in the scriptures.

He goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 17.

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

And in Genesis 17, Abraham is told, By God, I will confirm my covenant.

It is a permanent covenant to be your God.

From the very beginning, God's intentions weren't simply to bless people, but to bind himself to people, to make them his and him theirs, and to enter into a relationship that's meant to endure.

And we're going to celebrate here in a few moments the new covenant in which he says, I will be your God and you will be my people.

It's inaugurated through the death of Christ.

In Isaiah 55, we read these words when we studied it.

These promises are going to be enacted through a son of David.

Promises of a kingdom and of a king and of a rule of righteousness.

There's one hiccup in all of it, though.

And we read it before in Isaiah 24 and verse 5.

They have broken the permanent covenant.

And this is the tension of the Old Testament.

God says he's faithful to his promises.

The people, however, are not.

They break God's promises, they break their own promises, they wander away from what they said they would do.

They rebel against the God who says, I will be your God.

They fracture the very relationship that was meant to define them.

What's going to happen to this permanent covenant?

Can it survive with these persistently unfaithful people?

Listen to the announcement.

There's a reason why God speaks in the first person here so dramatically.

I, the Lord, love justice.

I hate robbery and injustice.

I will faithfully reward my people.

I will make a permanent covenant with them.

God here doesn't lower his standards and he doesn't cancel the covenant and he doesn't replace his people with a better one.

What he says is, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to repair those things that are shattered.

I'm going to restore those things that have been forfeited.

I'm going to bind those things that are broken.

And he's going to bring a permanent covenant.

And that permanent covenant is going to come through the one who lifted his voice and spoke in verse 1.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

He is the one going to enact God's purposes.

And so we see Jesus, the son of David.

And we see him, the servant.

We see him, as Hebrews says, the mediator of a better covenant.

In fact, in Hebrews 13 and verse 20, it's called the blood of the everlasting covenant.

Hebrews 9:12, eternal redemption, 9 15, eternal inheritance.

Hebrews 9:12

Chapter 7 and verse 24, a permanent priesthood.

Hebrews 8:6, a covenant established on better promises.

Hebrews 8:6

All of this in Isaiah 51 is brought to bear in Christ.

It's multiplied.

Now let's take note of it in verse 9 and see this multiplication.

The descendants will be known among the nations and their prosperity among the peoples.

And all who see them will recognize that they are a people the Lord has blessed.

We are talking about a people that live on a territory that's 35 miles tall and 25 miles deep.

Rhode Island would look down on this little country.

Right?

Long Island is bigger than this country.

And they're sandwiched in between Egypt and Assyria and Babylon.

They wouldn't even have to lick their finger to crush them.

But these people will survive.

And the nations will say they've been blessed by God.

Because God has done this.

And this isn't self-promotion or triumphalism.

This is the display of God's glory and grace to undeserving people.

Now take a look at verse 11.

For as the earth produces its growth and as a garden enables what is sown to spring up, so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

This is a promise of multiplication.

This is not just some servant with some momentary revival and some respite to some people in his day.

No, this is a surge of spiritual energy that's going to spread out before all the nations.

A garden that grows so luxuriously, it's as if new creation has happened, that Eden has been restored.

And we don't have to guess how that happened.

The scriptures tell us.

And they were wondering what has happened here.

And the reverberations of the glad news of God's righteousness began to move into the nations as these people went back home.

And their transformation became a public sign that God is intervening, that the work of the servant is continuing, and that ripple moves to a Roman centurion called Cornelius, who's drawn in by the gospel, and an Ethiopian official who carries the good news down to the trade routes in Africa, and the Greeks in Antioch who believe and form the first multi-ethnic church.

And what begins with restored Jews who are surprised that Gentiles could believe is now turned into a worldwide movement.

And we all look back to those days and we remember the Jewish man Peter and the Jewish man James and the Jewish man John and the Jewish man Stephen and Paul.

And we wonder that this gift of righteousness has come to the Jewish people again.

And it's declared before all of our nations.

And we say, surely these are people who have been blessed by God because He has restored them from their ruin and he's turned them into His servants again.

Now, what does this tell us?

Again, and I made this point just a moment ago, but again, the grace we receive is not meant to fall into the cul-de-sac of our lives.

We are conduits, we are meant to be a highway of God's grace.

And when he restores us, he intends for that restoration to ripple out.

And when it ripples out, it will have an effect.

Because our healing is meant to be there for someone else's hope as well as our own.

And our forgiveness is meant to be someone else's invitation to receive forgiveness.

And our transformation is meant to be someone else's hope that they too could receive a transformation.

Now let's finish with these last words in verse 10.

Because, you know, even if we ended at verse 9 and verse 11 and skipped over 10, we would have a wondrous chapter to look at.

But Isaiah is not finished because verse 10 tells us something: that the restoration doesn't end just with rebuilding, and the renewal just doesn't end with mission, and grace doesn't end with just transformation.

It culminates in doxology and praise.

I rejoice greatly in the Lord.

I exult in my God.

He has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness as a groom wears a turban and a bride adorns herself with jewels.

This is the only proper response to God's activity through the servant, that of joy and celebration and praise.

And when he speaks here, listen to how strong these words are.

This is not polite gratitude, not even quiet appreciation.

This is not subdued thanks.

This is this is a shout.

The Church Royal and I dated and got married in was pastored by a guy who was not from Boston.

And he expected a congregation that was a little more vociferous than what cold New Englanders would give him.

And he said to them one day, he said, You guys don't say amen.

You just write it down.

And he even made a card once that said amen on it.

Do you remember that?

And when he was preaching, he was so full of joy in what he was preaching.

And the people are just sitting there like.

Verse 10, he there, he's clothed us with the garments of salvation and wrapped us in a robe of righteousness.

He doesn't hand us a needle and thread and says, you know, it's time to fix up the ripped clothes that you've got.

He doesn't give us a pattern and say, now there's the machine, there's some fabric, go sell your sew yourself a robe.

He doesn't give us a list that he tells us to fulfill.

He tells us, and we say, that he's clothed us, that he's wrapped us, that he's covered us.

And the things that he's covered us with are splendid and wondrous.

And they are something we don't deserve.

Because it's not self-made or self-improved or self-righteous.

It's a gift, this righteousness.

These garments come out of the wardrobe of the king himself.

And he said, take it on, it fits you perfectly.

And he puts us into a sphere that we could understand.

Wedding garment, kind of righteousness.

Verse 10.

Like a groom wearing a turban, and like a bride adorning herself with jewels.

Remarkable.

Those often will be the most bright and glamorous and glorious and special and expensive clothes that we'll ever wear.

The day we get married.

Except for the guys who rent their suit for fifty bucks from Yeah, no.

But he he grants us these splendid garments to wear.

What is it?

His righteousness.

It's like being dressed up for the most significant day of your life.

The day you get married.

The day you come into a relationship that's going to be more intimate than you've ever ever had with anybody else.

That moment when a bride and groom come together and say, I'm yours.

No, I'm yours.

We're each other.

And God clothes his people with that beautiful beautiful garment and that wondrous promise I am your God and you are my people.

When he gives us Christ, he doesn't give us something that's half finished that we need to work on and make better.

He doesn't give us something that's barely acceptable, and he's waiting for us to sort of cooperate with it all in order to achieve something.

No, he robes us in righteousness.

He robes us in the beauty, he adorns us with honor.

He overshadows us with joy.

Because this righteousness he gives is a fitting righteousness for those that he dearly loves.

And so the gospel here, beginning with proclamation, ends with celebration.

It begins with ashes, but it turns to beauty.

It begins with mourning, but it begins ends with joy.

And it begins with brokenness, but it ends with a wedding.

A joy that isn't something we have to sort of engender and produce simply because it's expected out of us, or the pastor's waving a card.

But rooted in the unchanging character of the love of God toward us, anchored in the finished work of Christ and sustained by the work of the Spirit.

And this is why Isaiah speaks about God's people saying, I will greatly rejoice, I will extol in my God.

So this chapter, the first gospel, Isaiah, the good news proclaimed, the good news embodied, the good news multiplied now becomes the good news celebrated.

And he's inviting us into this story.

He's granted this to us so that we'll move toward him who gives us all these things.

And so if you're a believer this morning, think about the implications of this.

Your identity is secure in God who grants you all of these things.

Your past is redeemed, and now shame has been replaced with honor.

A couple weeks ago, I spent some time with some of my Air Force buddies I hadn't seen in over 40 years.

Some of the stories I wasn't so sure I wanted Royal around to hear.

We were together for a few days, and Royal said, Do you guys have anything more to talk about?

And I said, Uh, we have a lot to talk about.

Some things legal and some things not.

And one of their stories was talking about just a whisper away from being caught and thrown into prison because of what we were doing.

What does this undeserving sinner have?

Should be dishonor, should be shame, should be chains, actually.

What has God done?

He's turned every one of you who know him into people who are honored, who are the priests of God, who have the joy of God on your lips and in your heart, who's clothed you not with prison garb, but with righteousness.

What a beautiful thing this is.

And if you're here this morning and you don't know the Savior, the only reason you would be excluded is if you think you have your own beauty and you have your own gladness and you have your own praise and you make your own honor.

Go ahead and do that and see how long it lasts.

Because it won't.

Because life will crush it.

Believe me, it will crush it.

But if you feel like you're left in the ashes mourning, full of despair, perhaps even shrouded by shame, you don't need to clothe yourself.

There's a gift of righteousness.

And God clothes the brokenhearted with it.

What he calls you to do is not clean yourself up and come to him, but come to him brokenhearted and ask for this one who brings these gifts to be your deliverer, Jesus.

Let's pray.

Father, we want to come to you with grateful hearts, overwhelmed by the beauty of the good news that we've heard in your word here.

We want to thank you for sending the servant, our Lord Jesus, the one who said himself that he came to proclaim good news, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set captives free, and to announce the year of your favor.

Father, we thank you that in Christ what are our ashes can become your beauty, and what becomes our mourning becomes gladness of you.

And what has filled us with despair can be turned into praise.

We thank you that you don't leave us in our ruins, but that you clothe us not with garments we've sown, but with the righteousness of Christ Himself.

And Father, we pray for those of us who know you.

Help us to live out our lives as restored people, to be like what Isaiah spoke about, rebuilders in the midst of a ruined world, to be intercessors, priests who carry your presence and speak your mercy and reflect your character.

And Father, I also want to pray, and we want to pray for those that don't know you, that today would be the day they hear this voice.

That they hear the voice of the one who said he's coming, and of the one who claimed that he had come.

And Father, we pray that you draw them to Jesus Christ, the one who can forgive them, the one who can restore them, and the one who will clothe them with salvation and righteousness.

Father, I pray that they might taste the joy that we know.

We pray that they might know the security that we have that we're fully loved.

And Father, we pray that you would anchor all of our hearts in this permanent covenant secured by the blood of Christ.

This permanent covenant that cannot be broken, that gives us a hope that will never be shaken, and a joy that can never be stolen.

And may our lives and our words and our worship declare to the nations the Lord has done this.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus, our servant and our savior and our king.

Amen.