Isaiah 61 | "Gospel Gifts"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Have your Bible, I encourage you to make your way to the Gospel of Isaiah, Isaiah the prophet in chapter 60.

Sorry, chapter 61.

And as you do, tell you a story about my childhood.

As a child, I seem to have had a different kind of Christmas experience than most people.

I never looked forward to Christmas Day in the way that most kids do.

I remember anxiously waiting, waiting to put up the Christmas tree, waiting for school to be out for the Christmas break, waiting to open the gifts under the tree, and then immediately beginning to wait for the next Christmas.

But I distinctly remember my experience as different than most kids.

Because I always thought that waiting for Christmas Day was strange.

It was a little weird.

You see, I looked forward to Christmas Eve, specifically the evening of Christmas Eve, because that's when we opened our gifts as a family.

We opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, so I had to wait all through the day to get to the end of the day to finally open gifts and then go to bed.

Isn't that weird?

Sometimes Christmas Day was spent with our family, but often Christmas Day was like a Sabbath, a day spent playing with the toys opened the night before.

And there's a similarity between my childhood experience and the final passage in Isaiah in which we find the word translated as gospel or good news.

The last passage in Isaiah containing a reference to this gospel, this good news, is Isaiah 61.

And it displays the reflection of someone contemplating God's good gifts.

This unidentified person receives a special anointing from God to bring what I'll call gospel gifts to his world.

Now this section of Isaiah is a little bit different.

It's as if Isaiah was writing this today, thinking about yesterday, thinking about Christmas Day.

But the gifts of God's grace that we find in this chapter are events that had not yet happened in Isaiah's time.

So on the one hand, he's sort of reflecting backwards while at the same time anticipating something that's still coming.

In the same way, we look back at the giving of God's Son with reflection.

But as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we still look forward to his coming again, do we not?

In the end, this passage, I think, becomes very clear to us because of the rest of the Bible.

But let's start with Isaiah 61.

If you have your Bible, I'll read that.

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

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, so that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified.

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations, they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks.

Foreigners shall be your ploughmen and vine dressers, but you shall be called the priests of Yahweh.

They shall speak of you as the ministers of our God.

You shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.

Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion.

Instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot.

Therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion, they shall have everlasting joy.

For I, Yahweh, love justice.

I hate robbery and wrong.

I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Their offspring shall be known among the nations and their descendants in the midst of the peoples, and all who see them shall acknowledge them that they are the offspring Yahweh has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh.

My soul shall exult in my God.

For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

Amen.

So this is the fourth section in Isaiah that includes a reference to the good news that Isaiah wants the world to hear.

So far, we have seen that the gospel, according to Isaiah, beginning in chapter 40, declares that this good news that God is bringing would be surprisingly.

That reigning the first time was not by means of a glorious reception, but by means of being lifted up as a sacrifice to pay for sin.

Then we saw in chapter 60 that Jews and Gentiles will praise God for the good news that He's coming to redeem.

And his coming would be like light flooding the darkness.

And now here in the last section in chapter 61, we begin to see some of the results of the coming of this Redeemer.

See, the chapter begins with the bringing of good news.

And in the end, we see rejoicing because of the fulfillment of the gospel in salvation.

Putting all four passages together into a condensed statement is difficult because no matter how we do it, we leave something out.

But I had to try anyway.

So here's my attempt to put all four passages together.

The sovereign of all would come to redeem a people, a people from all nations, all tribes, all languages.

How would he do that?

By atoning for the sins of the redeemed.

Being high and lifted up, he in whom no darkness exists would bring light to a dark world through his own redeeming presence.

And the end result of all of that is that everyone who looks to him in faith with humble hearts will receive the Lord's favor in the form of his salvation.

Now I expect you to be able to repeat that at lunch.

There will be a test, but I'm going to make it easier for you.

That's a long summary that covers the main emphasis of each section that we've looked at.

But I think we can make it even simpler.

The most succinct summary that we can give of the gospel according to Isaiah might be two words.

Two words.

We can condense all of that to two words.

Actually, two proper nouns to be exact.

Two names are recorded in the first pages of Matthew's gospel.

Do you know what those two names are that are important here?

Both found in Isaiah.

Emmanuel.

And Jesus.

Well, you say, Jesus isn't found in Isaiah.

Well, not the name exactly, no, but the meaning is God saves.

God saves.

Jesus was given that name because he would save his people from their sins.

So the first Sunday in December, we started in Mark's gospel.

And we saw how that very first sentence of the Gospel of Mark says that the story of Jesus Christ is found in the gospel according to Isaiah.

We heard on Christmas Eve, Isaiah 8:8 speaks of Emmanuel, God with us.

Isaiah 8:8

It's interesting that in the Gospel according to Matthew, Matthew connects Jesus with Emmanuel.

He quotes from Isaiah chapter 8, verse 8, thus bringing in Isaiah itself.

Isaiah 8:8

And he alludes in the name of Jesus to Isaiah 43, 25, where God says that he will forgive his people's sin for his own sake.

Emmanuel, God with us coming to forgive our sins.

There is the gospel according to Isaiah.

In two words.

Each of the four New Testament gospel writers refers to the gospel according to Isaiah.

You see, the gospel, according to Isaiah, is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is God with us.

That's why Isaiah is sometimes called the greatest Old Testament evangelist.

When the writers of the New Testament speak of the gospel, they didn't invent something new to say.

They're merely showing how God had already laid the Old Testament foundation, and now Jesus is here, and they're pointing to everything that Jesus fulfills in what God has already laid out.

We're getting it off track.

Let's go back to Isaiah 61.

The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me.

Because Yahweh has anointed me to bring gospel to the poor.

That sounds excellent if you are a 600 to 700 BC Jewish person.

You've spent decades listening to prophets like Isaiah preach about impending judgment and exile.

Jeremiah will preach about doom and judgment so much that they will tell him to shut up.

I know we're not supposed to say that, yes.

We're not supposed to say that.

It's not a good thing to say.

But they said that to Jeremiah.

They said, stop speaking that way.

Don't be giving us that message of doom and judgment.

Be quiet, they said.

So as a Jewish person, you have pressed through the dark language of pain and loss and doom.

And now you finally hear good news.

You hear gospel.

A gospel that says all bad things will be undone, so that God might receive glory.

Because an anointed one, that's the word from which we get Messiah, by the way.

An anointed one would bring all of these good gifts listed in verse 1, and verse 2, and verse 3.

All of these gospel gifts.

The gospel according to Isaiah was good news to the Jewish people.

It was a gospel of a coming redeemer.

God would rescue, God would redeem, God would save.

But God's timing is rarely on our schedule.

Have you ever experienced that?

The history of God's people is one of patience, it's one of perseverance.

It's one of continued trust and hope in God's faithfulness.

For Israel, the hardship of exile would come first.

Discipline and judgment were on the doorstep.

Decades of stress and anxiety and hopelessness were in front of them.

In fact, in fact, there would be hundreds of years in front of Isaiah of looking and hoping and yearning for the gospel to be fulfilled.

God's people have often suffered through times of spiritual drought and uncertainty.

Why is that?

We have to remember that we only see in part.

We only get part of the picture.

We are a part of a much bigger war going on.

And we often fail to recognize how that war, how that battle works itself out in life.

We know that Satan likes to deceive.

And it's so tempting, it's so tempting to buy into that bait and switch scheme when trusting God has been drawn out and become hard, has become difficult, and hope has been stretched thin.

One way that Satan succeeds is by drawing our hope to false anointed ones.

This happens in world events all the time, where leaders, human leaders, become something of a false messiah.

And it's nothing new.

Take, for instance, what the Jewish historian Philo wrote about Caesar Augustus.

You remember Caesar Augustus, right?

Most of you read the Christmas story, I'm sure, in the last few days.

In the days of Caesar Augustus, right?

This is what Philo said of Caesar Augustus.

This is Caesar, who calmed the storms which were raging in every direction, who healed the common diseases which were afflicting both Greeks and barbarians, who descended from the south and from the east and ran on and penetrated as far as the north and the west.

This is he who did not only loosen, but utterly abolished the bonds in which the whole of the habitable world was previously bound and weighed down.

This is he who destroyed both the evident and the unseen wars which arose from the attacks of robbers.

This is he who rendered the sea free from the vessels of pirates and filled it with merchantmen.

This is he who gave freedom to every city, who brought disorder into order, who civilized and made obedient and harmonious nations which before his time were unsociable, hostile, and brutal.

They just needed Facebook.

Lastly, this is he who is the guardian of peace.

Now never mind that history shows that some of that is untrue and exaggerated.

If you just think about what that Jewish historian wrote of Caesar Augustus, it's astounding.

This is the Caesar who calmed the storms, who healed diseases, who came down, who abolished bonds, who destroyed all wars and battles, who rendered the sea a free, thoroughgoing place, who gave freedom to people, and who's the guardian of peace.

Sounds like it could be an embellished paraphrase of the gifts of Isaiah 61.

The nephew of Caesar, Julius Caesar.

Caesar Augustus was born with the name Gaius Octavius.

Somehow he thought that wasn't enough, and so he changed it to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.

The scribes must have gotten tired of writing that out because eventually he just shortened it to Caesar.

Caesar, the August one.

Caesar Augustus was eventually given a divine name.

He was labeled by his people as divine, and in many ways he was the counter to God's program.

He was Satan's offer of salvation to the world through Pax Romana, the Roman peace.

But God's ways are always true and right, and Satan's counterfeits always fade away.

Isaiah's gospel would come to fruition some twenty years before the death of Caesar Augustus, when a child was born in the forgotten village of Bethlehem, that old home of a shepherd king named David.

And while a son was born far away, an August son of the gods walked in the marbled halls of Rome.

While in Bethlehem, a true redeemer was given.

He was called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

But what is Isaiah talking about in Isaiah 61?

More specifically, who is the me?

The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me.

Because Yahweh has anointed me to bring the gospel to the poor.

To bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty.

Year of the Lord's favor, comfort all who mourn.

Who is this me?

There are three possibilities if we stick just to the context of Isaiah.

One is God Himself.

God is the last one speaking at the end of chapter 60.

So maybe he's continuing to speak.

The second is Isaiah.

Maybe it's the voice of Isaiah speaking of his prophetic ministry.

And the third is God's servant.

It gets even more confusing later on in the chapter in verse 8, where Yahweh is clearly identified as the speaker.

For I, Yahweh, love justice.

He's speaking.

But then it seems to change again in verse 10 back to the original speaker of verse 1.

I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh.

So let me say that differently.

The person greatly rejoicing in verse 10 seems to be the same person blessed with the anointing in verse 1.

And that voice is the primary speaker of the chapter, but is interrupted in the middle by Yahweh speaking in verse 8.

I think that leaves us with two options.

The me is either Isaiah or God.

God's servant.

I'm not sure that we can reach a definitive conclusion this morning about who this is in Isaiah's context.

My conclusion is that it's most likely the servant.

I would argue that we can't be definitive.

Because it was written that way intentionally.

Because it was waiting for the rest of the Bible to tell us who the me really is.

You see, the gospel according to Isaiah points to someone coming.

Someone not merely human, but divine.

Someone who would come to deal with sin.

Someone to bring light to darkness.

Someone to clothe God's people with righteousness, as it says in verse 10 here.

Someone who is a true Son of God, the King of kings, high and lifted up.

Isaiah 61 describes what that coming looks like.

The promised person would bring gifts, gifts of good news to the poor, comfort for the brokenhearted, liberty to captives, the dispensing of Yahweh's favor, comfort for those who mourn.

But Isaiah doesn't speak of these as earned benefits.

He refers to them as the results that come from a special anointing by God Himself, an anointing on a very particular person that results in these gifts being given to those in humble positions.

Now let's see how the rest of the Bible makes this perfectly clear.

We began in the Gospel according to Mark.

We will conclude in the Gospel according to Luke.

So make your way to Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

As you're making your way there, I'll give you some context.

Luke chapter 3, verses 21 and 22 record Jesus' baptism, where the heavens were opened, right?

Luke 3:21

And the Spirit of God descended like a dove on Jesus, and God the Father affirmed his sonship vocally.

That's the end of chapter 3.

Then chapter 4 begins, interestingly, with these words.

Again, this is Luke 4, 1.

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan.

He returned from the Jordan after his baptism, so that he could be led out into the desert to be tempted by the devil.

After being tempted by the devil in verse 14, Jesus returned, how?

In the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and word goes out.

And that's where we pick up the story in Luke chapter 4, verse 16.

Luke 4:16

And Jesus 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, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And he rolled up the scroll, and he gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And all the eyes of in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus is deliberate here, isn't he?

He chose to read from the scroll of Isaiah the prophet.

That's a big scroll.

And he purposely unrolled the scroll, and in case you don't know what that means, that's the equivalent of flipping through your pages.

Unrolling this long scroll to get not only to Isaiah, yeah.

Not only to the place where Isaiah talks about the good news, not only to the place where Isaiah talks about the servant, but until he gets right to Isaiah 61.

And they didn't have chapter divisions in their scrolls.

He opens it up until he finds what we know as Isaiah 61.

Let's not miss the importance of this.

Prior to this point, we hear scripture quoted by Jesus in the desert when he's tempted by Satan.

We hear him spew out quotations one after another.

But this is the first time in the gospel record that Jesus reads from the Bible.

And the place he chose to read was the very last text in Isaiah that speaks of the promise of the gospel.

He's been teaching in the Jewish synagogues, verse 15.

That's not unusual.

But here in his hometown, he announces the fulfillment of God's promise of the good news.

So Jesus is the me of Isaiah 61.

The moment everyone, for which multitudes had longed for, was suddenly there.

God had anointed his son to give good gospel gifts to his people, gospel gifts for the poor, freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, the bestowing of God's favor.

But we tend, like many of Jesus' first listeners, to miss some of the underlying messages here.

Because Luke is known to be a very particular writer.

He's particular about his history and his facts, and he's known to be a very accurate historian.

But he's also known to choose his words carefully.

And here, in referring to Isaiah 61, he uses words that he will go on to use throughout his gospel and in the book of Acts to point to not mere physical gifts, but spiritual gifts.

And so the poor become the poor in spirit on the Sermon on the Mount.

Those granted freedom are freed from the power of sin and death.

Liberty is granted to those enslaved to darkness.

Sight is given to those spoken of by Isaiah as those who had eyes to see but could not see until Jesus came to give them sight.

The Lord's favor becomes the righteousness of salvation by his grace alone.

My friends, the gospels of the New Testament shine floodlights on Isaiah the evangelist.

Jesus is the God for whom John the Baptizer prepared the way, declaring, Behold your God, from Isaiah 40.

Jesus is the God who is high and lifted up in holiness in Isaiah chapter 6, and who reigns in Isaiah 52, but suddenly becomes high and lifted up to atone for sin in Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Jesus is the God of Isaiah 60, who looks around at the darkness and sees no one to intercede, and who decides to bring light, his light, the light of redemption, to a dark world.

And Jesus is the anointed herald of the gospel of Isaiah 61, who brings eternal gospel gifts to a needy world.

Maybe you're still not convinced.

Even the voice crying in the wilderness needed some verification when the prophecies didn't seem to turn out as he thought they would.

In Luke chapter 7, John the Baptizer sent his disciples to Jesus asking, Are you the one who is to come?

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Or shall we look for another?

Fair question.

But shouldn't John know?

Shouldn't John know what Isaiah the evangelist said?

Jesus answered John's disciples with the gospel, according to Isaiah.

He answered them with Isaiah 61 and an allusion to Isaiah 8.

This is John's or Luke 7, 22.

Jesus answered them.

Go and tell John what you have seen and heard.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have gospel preached to them.

Blessed is the one who's not offended by me.

The writers of the New Testament gospel accounts are often referred to as evangelists.

They're referred to as evangelists because they proclaim the good news, the gospel.

The gospel of Jesus, the anointed one.

But as we've seen, they're merely pointing back, showing how God knew what he was doing all along.

And for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, he has proclaimed his good news of a coming Redeemer all along.

He announced seven centuries early that one day he would come.

He would come bringing gospel gifts to his people.

Gifts that we still have today.

So the question becomes, what will you do with this?

According to the Apostle Paul, the free gift still exists today.

The Apostle Paul says, everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And the wages of sin is death.

But the free gift of God in Christ Jesus is eternal life.

It's a gospel gift.

It's there to be merely opened and received.

By faith, trusting in the one whom God promised would come.

Will you receive it by faith and open it to receive its precious contents?

Or will you continue to have eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear?

For my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, will you read the first testament, looking at it with fresh eyes, to see all that speaks of Jesus?

Maybe I should ask it more challengingly.

Are you ready to share the gospel from Isaiah?

It can be done because the apostle Philip did it.

He was taken on a desert road where he found a man returning from Jerusalem to his home in Ethiopia.

God's Spirit told him, run and catch up with that chariot.

He did, and he found the guy sitting in his chariot reading from Isaiah.

Philip asked him, Do you understand what you're reading?

And the man said, How can I unless somebody interprets the Hebrew for me?

So Philip got up in the chariot and sat down and said, Let me tell you about Jesus.

Let me tell you about the gospel according to Isaiah.

But finally, my friends, if anything, Luke's gospel shows us that we ought to come away from the gospel according to Isaiah, filled with joy for the fulfillment of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you, hearts open to receive your good gifts.

Thank you for your promised work, work that was promised, made clear, and fulfilled according to your loving kindness to us.

May we go forth from here today with joy, filled with a fresh understanding of your word, to the praise of your glorious grace.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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