Jubilee

I look forward to sharing the word with you this morning.

We as an elder team feel like the Lord's given us three specific words for 2024.

So last week we talked about encounter, and we believe that God wants to encounter us by the work of his Holy Spirit.

He wants to encounter us with his presence.

How many of you have enjoyed his presence this last week in your own life, in the car, at home, wherever it is that you're at, because he's with us, right, and he lives in us by the Holy Spirit.

This week we're gonna be looking at the word jubilee.

Another word that we use in the place of that is freedom.

So jubilee, or freedom, and then next week we'll be looking at prepare.

So jubilee, specifically, is an expression of living our lives in the freedom that Christ has provided for us.

Let's look at Luke, chapter four, verses 16 through 21.

For those who have been following along with our Bible reading plan, you will recognize that this passage was in our reading this week, and so it's kind of cool that the message is going to be coming out of that.

We have over a hundred people who have joined the Bible reading plan for 2024.

We're so grateful for that.

Many of you have been making comments, young and old, and all the comments are really, really good.

So I encourage you to continue to be a part of that and if you haven't yet it's not too late, you can still do that.

Let's look at Luke, chapter four, verses 16 through 21.

And this is the word of God.

It's talking about Jesus, about his ministry.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and, as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

He enrolled 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 recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Let's pray, father, god, in the name of Jesus, so grateful for your word.

We are so grateful also that we're able to gather together in freedom.

And we are thankful, even though things have become darker in America, that we still have the privilege and honor of meeting together in public.

And so, lord, we ask that you would move, continue to move in this country.

Lord, we thank you that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the nations and he's the Lord of the United States of America, and we ask, lord God, that you would continue to move in this land and cause your face to shine upon it.

Lord, in multiple ways, in glorious ways.

And, father, today, as you cause us to dig into your word, we ask that we would glean riches from it and, most of all, lord God, that the areas that we need to change and be transformed by the Holy Spirit, that we would be open to that and that you would do the work in us that only you can do.

And we ask that, in all things, that you would be glorified and lifted up in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.

Trinity Community Church started in a bunch of homes, believers meeting in homes in 1974.

And what happened was the Holy Spirit was poured out in the United States, as it had been poured out in the book of Acts, and many people received the filling of the.

They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and because of that, many of the traditional churches that they had been a part of were not ready yet for that particular expression of the gifts of the Spirit to be active in their churches, and so many of them, unfortunately, were actually asked to leave those churches, and so they found themselves gathering in homes and searching and studying the scriptures to discern what it is that God was saying, not just about Jesus, as important as that is, or the heavenly Father, again as primary and important as that is, but who is this person of the Trinity called the Holy Spirit?

And so, in 1975, that became a formal thing and the church was incorporated as Trinity Chapel and incorporated and Jack Wright was one of our original elders all those years ago, and we wanna give glory to God for him and for all of those who were part of that.

The church was founded upon a verse of scripture in John, chapter one, verse 13, which says who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

That's a good word, isn't it?

And so that's what Trinity was formed on, and I wanted to let you know that part of this word jubilee has to do with the fact that Trinity is turning 50 years old this year, in 2024.

Yeah, come on now, let's praise God for that.

That's great.

We have a celebration in store.

We're gonna be celebrating throughout the year, but we have a specific weekend June, the 1st and 2nd of 2024 that we would ask you to set aside.

Save the dates, mark your calendar so that you can be here to be a part of remembering what God has done, talking about what he's doing now and then looking toward the future and what God has in the future.

So it's gonna be a great time for all of those things to occur.

Why is that important for our text today?

Well, it's because this passage and this quotation that Jesus gives from the book of Isaiah alludes to something that is an Old Testament reality, called the year of the Lord's favor or the year of jubilee, and in the nation of Israel, god said it aside that every 50th year, on the eve of the day of atonement.

And what was the day of atonement?

It was the day, once a year, that the high priest would kill a goat and he would take the blood from that goat and he would put it upon the Ark of the Covenant and pray to God for the sake of the nation, that he would have mercy on them, that he would cover over their sin.

Then he would also take another goat and the high priest would lay his hands upon that goat and ask that the iniquity and all of the things that come from the sin of the people that they had committed would be put upon this goat, and then the goat was sent out to outer regions as a scapegoat.

It was called a scapegoat and so that was the day of atonement, a recognition, a day when the entire nation would recognize their need really for a savior, even though they couldn't experience what we have experienced in Jesus yet, because Jesus had not yet come.

But they could understand the concept of that because God built that into their system of religious experience and religious practice.

So that day of atonement was really important.

And on the 50th year, at the end of the day of atonement, there was something that would happen.

Do you guys know what a shofar is?

Now, some of you probably know a shofar by this, and that is somebody attempting to play the shofar that doesn't know how to play it.

Okay, a shofar is a ram's horn that was used to sound like a trumpet.

It's supposed to be like.

I don't know if I can even make the noise.

Is there anybody out there that can make the noise?

There it is.

Yeah, I just heard it.

I don't know who that was, but there it is.

There it is, thank you.

Thank you, we got it.

So that's kind of what it was supposed to sound like.

I was pastoring in a church in North Carolina and there was a man in the church that had a shofar and he came to me one week and said the Lord told me that I'm supposed to blow the shofar before every service to kind of start the service.

And the problem that I had is I had already heard him blow the shofar, or attempt, I should say, to blow the shofar, and about eight out of 10 times it didn't sound like that.

It sounded more like the whiff, you know, and so I was like, well, god hasn't really spoken that to me yet, but I'll take it into consideration, thank you.

Unfortunately he didn't make it very long in the church because we weren't gonna be blowing the shofar, but anyway.

So the trumpet would sound and that would mark a change.

That was an amazing transformation that would occur within the nation of Israel.

Here's what would happen it would be a year of release from all indebtedness.

Whoa can you imagine?

All debts were wiped out, all types of bondage were taken away, all prisoners and captives were set free, all slaves were released, all debts again were forgiven and all property was returned to its original owners.

In addition, all labor was deceased for one year and those bound by labor contracts were released from them.

And another benefit of the Jubilee was that both the land and the people were able to rest.

What a tremendous concept, what an amazing thing, and why would God put something like that in the practice of those who were under the old covenant, in the Old Testament?

I believe that you can't look at that concept of the year of the Lord's favor or the Jubilee without thinking about another situation in the New Testament, where Jesus Christ Himself would leave the throne of heaven, humble Himself to come to this earth and live a perfect life, to die the death that we deserve, to be raised from the dead on the third day, to prove that he was King of kings and Lord of lords defeating Satan and death and hell and the grave forever and ever and ever more.

He has provided for us Jubilee.

He is our Jubilee.

So I wanna look at a few concepts from the passage and then we'll get into our main points.

First thing I want you to recognize is Jesus went to church.

Jesus went to church, it says, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.

Now, if there's ever a person who's ever been born to this planet throughout all of history who could honestly say I probably don't need to go to church, it could have been who?

Jesus.

He's God in the flesh.

If anybody could have opted out or said I really don't like hanging out with those people, it could have been Jesus.

Can you imagine how difficult it must have been at times for Jesus to sit and to listen to other people try to explain himself because he is the word of God, to explain the word of God to other people and to get it sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

I can imagine how difficult that must have been for him at times.

And yet he chose, as an activist will, to be a member of a local church.

I know that it's become a popular trend in the world that we live in to cast off restraint when it comes to church attendance.

I also know that I'm speaking to people who are at church this morning, so I'm not pretending to, I'm not trying to say to you that you're doing something wrong what I am saying to you.

Let's not give into the pressure that the world puts on us, and even Christians are attempting to break apart or to say that church life is no longer relevant or important.

Let me tell you this at some times it feels the same way to me, and here's why there are a lot of churches who are not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so in some cases, you can understand why there are people who no longer want to attend a local church.

There are also churches, unfortunately, who have had leadership failures, and we see that all over the board, where people have looked up to one person and that one person has fallen away from what they know to be true and has walked in a direction that has caused other people in their congregation to be very deeply hurt.

And so we understand that there is this reality of hurt that comes church, hurt that comes from leadership that have failed, or even maybe you've seen a lot of hypocrisy in churches, where people say one thing but then they do something else.

By the way, whenever you see a hypocrite, make sure that you're looking in the mirror too, because how many of you realize that, even though we may be walking in the light and in truth in many areas in our life, there are still areas where we're not fully obeying the commandments of the Lord or walking in truth as we should be, and so we all honestly could say Lord, forgive me, for I am a hypocrite, right?

So for us to blame other hypocrites is a little hypocritical in itself, isn't it?

Leadership failures, and then also there are many churches who are embracing cultural norms that are completely in opposition to the scriptures, and so we understand that it has become somewhat popular and again for some good reasons in some senses for people to say I don't need the church anymore, I'm over the church.

Here's the deal.

We're still required to obey God's commandments, regardless of how we feel or what the world around us is saying or the philosophy of the crowd.

Right?

And Hebrews 10, verse 24 and 25, it says and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another in all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:24

What day is that?

The day of the Lord, the day of Christ's return to this planet?

He will return, and I don't know about you, but if you take 33 AD and you add whatever years you need to add to get to 2024, we should be closer to his appearing, shouldn't we?

So we are getting closer and closer to his appearing.

It's more important now than ever to be a part of community within a local church that isn't perfect, but that is following after God and attempting to present truth that comes from him, amen.

The second thing that I want you to glean from this passage is that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit.

What does it say?

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.

The spirit of God was upon Jesus.

Isn't it interesting?

Jesus is standing in front of his home church.

He opens the scroll of Isaiah, begins to read it.

At the end of the reading, what does he do?

He hands back the scroll, he sits down, he waits for a second and then he says today, this is fulfilled in your hearing.

Wow, talk about a mic drop moment.

Right, jesus lived, but you gotta recognize that before this time in history, jesus had lived for 30 years in obscurity, in relative obscurity.

What do we know about Jesus except for his birth?

We have an indication of something that happened when he was 12 years old.

Do you guys remember the story?

Jesus and his family traveled to Jerusalem in order to celebrate the feast and when they got there, jesus found himself in the temple.

And what did he do in the temple?

He began to have conversations with those who were the religious leaders and the rulers in the temple, and they began to be amazed and confounded.

And in fact, this didn't just happen for a few minutes or an hour.

This went on for days and days.

And the family of Jesus, having finished their festivities, leaves Jerusalem and, somewhere about a day's journey away, mary and Joseph look at each other and say I think we lost the son of God.

Can you imagine that feeling?

I can't even imagine or fathom what that must have been like for them.

They turn around and they go back to Jerusalem.

They're searching everywhere, high and low, and they can't find him, and finally they think maybe, maybe, just maybe he's in the temple.

And they go there and they find him and they begin to reprimand him.

And Jesus said where did you expect for me to be?

I must be about my father's business, right?

Just an example, just a small picture into who Jesus is and who he was and his development, even as a 12 year old young man.

But then it says Luke 2, 52 says and he grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and with man.

So from the age of 12 to 30, basically, there's no record, there's no description of anything else outside of those, that thing that happened, his birth and the fact that Joseph took the family, because of the angel, on escape to Egypt, and then they came back to Nazareth, and then the 12 year old temple story and then beyond that, there's nothing heard of him until he's 30 years old.

Interesting, isn't it?

He lived for 30 years in relative obscurity.

He was living a life of humble obedience to his heavenly father, and then one day he's walking out in the wilderness and he hears the voice of a wild man.

Who was this wild man?

John the Baptist, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

I can imagine him dressed in.

My grandfather was a mountain man in Wyoming, so he wore deer skin leather.

I mean, he wore leather.

He had a knife and a gun and a skunk hat and an elk tooth necklace and a bear claw necklace and he would have sworn that he killed him with his bare hands.

I don't know if any of that was actually true probably not, but anyway, the point being, I understand what it's like to go into a red lobster with a man who was my grandfather dressed like that, because everyone in the restaurant looked at him like who are you and why are you here?

So I can imagine John the Baptist, this wild man eating locusts and wild honey, crying out at the top of his lungs, baptizing people in the Jordan.

Everybody's coming out to see this.

What is this crazy guy doing now?

And all of a sudden, jesus shows up on the shore of the Jordan and the same spirit that caused John the Baptist in Elizabeth's womb to jump with joy when Mary came to visit Elizabeth and Jesus was in her womb, that same spirit rose up in John in this moment.

And he looks at Jesus and he says behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Wow, what a divine revelation.

And then Jesus, of course, says to John I need you to baptize me.

And John says, oh, this would be a great.

I'll put this on Instagram.

This will be.

I mean, can you imagine the type of crowd we're gonna gather after this?

No, what did he say?

I'm not worthy to even bow down and untie your sandals.

I should be baptized by you, and yet you're asking me to baptize you.

And Jesus said it must be done in order to fulfill the law and prophets.

And so John stretched out his hand and helped Jesus into the water.

And Jesus comes into the Jordan, john baptizes him and as he comes up out of the water, the Bible says that heaven opened and the spirit of God descended upon him in the form of a dove and heaven.

There's a voice from heaven, the heavenly father, that said you are my beloved son and you I am well pleased.

Before Jesus ever did any miracle, sign or wonder, anything that could be counted as something that he was doing as part of his ministry or a work, heavenly Father said to him good job, my friends, should we accept that same kind of it?

Should we embrace that same kind of thought?

Works are important, but they are not the establishment of relationship with God.

They're an outworking of our relationship with God.

We know that Jesus, being filled with the Spirit, was then taken by the Spirit into the wilderness.

Satan came, attempted to tempt Jesus and Jesus slammed the door on that every time.

And then from there Jesus went about doing his ministry and for a year signs and wonders and miracles were following.

He was teaching the crowds, he gathered his followers around him and then, a year into his ministry, he comes into his hometown of Nazareth.

So if Jesus was filled with the Spirit, do we need to be filled with the Spirit?

Yeah, followers of Jesus Christ are baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ.

First, corinthians, 12, 13,.

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we're all made to drink of one Spirit.

We cannot become a part of the body of Christ unless the Holy Spirit does His work.

He's the one who does the work of bringing us into, to be a part of, the body of Christ.

But followers of Jesus Christ not only need to be baptized into the body of Christ, they also need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit.

Continually filled Ephesians 5, 18, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

And if you read this in the context of what it's actually saying in the original Greek, it says but be being filled with the Spirit.

In other words, this is a continual thing that needs to occur.

If any of us, if all of us, were to hop in the church fan which would be a miracle in itself then we were going to head out to California and we're going to just believe God to get there right.

How far would we make it on this first tank of gas?

We might make it to Nashville or a little bit further beyond that, but eventually we're going to have to refill, aren't we to keep on going?

It's the same way with us.

We need more and more of the Spirit of God in our lives.

It's interesting because in the book of Acts, chapter 2, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell upon those who were waiting for him to come, they were filled with the Holy Spirit there.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

But then, several chapters later and many times in the book of Acts, they cried out for boldness, for courage and to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Are you content with the level of fullness that you have right now, or do you want more?

I want to walk in the fullness of the Spirit, just like Jesus did.

So let's get into his actual message now.

Jesus came to deliver a message of good news.

You've heard the term gospel before, the word gospel.

That word actually means good news.

That's what it means.

How many times in a given day do we receive good news?

Yeah, not very often, right?

We're in the Word, and maybe from our spouse, or maybe from, and occasionally you go into work and they say you know what we want?

You're working too hard for one thing, so we want you to work a little less hard.

If you could take Fridays off and we want to double your pay because you're just so valuable to the company, right?

Would you consider that that'd be good news, wouldn't it?

We don't necessarily hear that.

We hear you need to do more work and more hours, and we're not able to give you a raise right now.

We're probably going to have to give you a little bit less than what you were given before, but it's going to be great, it's going to be fine.

You still have a job.

Be thankful, right?

Good news is a rare thing, but Jesus came to deliver a message of good news.

Now many people, when they hear Jesus quoting this passage in Isaiah, they think that he's talking about social justice and, by the way, social justice is very important.

We need to stand for those who are marginalized and find themselves in positions where they are being taken advantage of Amen.

That's something that the church needs to be a part of helping in those areas.

But Jesus is not limiting this message to those particular categories of people.

He's speaking to everyone, in every category, across the board, right?

He's also not giving a political speech.

He's not attempting to incite a rally and have a bunch of people who would start a grasp for its movement to change the climate of life in the first century in Israel.

He's not looking to overthrow Rome at this time.

None of that stuff is trying to be done here.

That's not an undercurrent, even in his thought.

He is here and he's got a purpose, a very important purpose.

Let's not limit him by our own mindset or our own way of thinking of things.

The message of the gospel is preached by Jesus has to do with man's sinfulness.

You and I, all of us, have been born dead to God and we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and because of that we deserve God's breath.

We deserve for God to punish us because of the sins that we've committed, and the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death.

We should be eternally separated by death from God because of the sins that we've committed.

But how many of you know?

The gospel does not end on that note, because it says that not only did Jesus come, but Jesus came to live the life that we could not live a perfect life and to die the death again that we deserved and to raise again on the third day, proving that he had defeated Satan and hell in the grave.

The message of the gospel is for those who, by the work of the Holy Spirit, become aware of their need.

What does it mean that Jesus came to preach the gospel to the poor?

He came to preach the gospel to those who recognize that they need it, those who acknowledge their need.

Matthew 5, verse 3,.

Matthew 5:3

Jesus is giving probably his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, and he starts his words by saying blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, the poor in spirit, those who recognize I cannot fix myself.

I've tried and I've failed.

I've tried to be faithful, I've tried to be good, I've tried to be kind, I've tried not to be angry or earlier in the service I've tried all of these things and I cannot do it, but just for a moment in time.

And even when I do it for a moment in time, inside of me I want to do it.

We will not receive the grace of God in our lives until we first acknowledge our need.

Thank God, part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to help us to understand our need.

What a great gift it is that he gives us.

Poverty is something that I wish we could alleviate, but you know, it's interesting.

When I first went to Haiti, I learned that there were a lot of.

I saw, I observed that there were a lot of people there that, in my from my observation, were very poor.

They had absolutely nothing.

In fact, they had less than nothing, it seemed, because they owed things to people.

The biggest industry in Haiti at that time was a hut that was in every village.

That was the lottery hut, and at the end of every grueling day of work, people would bring their hard earned money, as small as it was, and they would put their money in that lottery hut, hoping that maybe their name would be drawn so that they could receive some of the some of the money that had been given to the lottery hut I will take.

I will say this there was at least one wealthy family in every village, those who owned the lottery hut, but when I what I recognized when I went there is that these people did not recognize how poor they were.

They had no clue Because to them it was Monday, it was just another day, and unless I would say to them do you not know how much you're missing out on?

I actually thought that I could fix Haiti by just bringing some money down there.

It's a spiritual issue.

Jesus is the only one who can fix anything, including nations like Haiti, and he is always faithful and he has been moving and is moving and will continue to move Amen.

The second thing, and one of the things that I want us to understand, is that, again, a lot of people think that Jesus is talking about different aspects of his ministry.

As he's quoting from Isaiah, I think he's talking about the gospel the whole time.

I think he's saying that the power of the gospel does these types of things in people's lives.

It's a further explanation of what the good news does in the life of somebody who accepts and acknowledges their need for a Savior.

So one of the things Jesus says is that we can be free from the power of sin.

Jesus sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives.

How many of us understand what it means to be captive to sin?

All of us were born in a proverbial way with a ball and chain attached to our foot and over time and over life, as we've experienced life and we have sinned and continue to sin, that ball and chain, the ball on the end of it, continues to get larger and larger and heavier and heavier.

Many people, many of us, are still trying to carry the load and the weight of that sin and the bondage that it causes us to be in.

The good news is that Jesus came to make us free from the power of sin.

You can imagine the nation of Israel as they had been in captivity for 400 years in Egypt.

And all of a sudden, one day, god is so faithfully manifest these signs and wonders and Pharaoh himself says Go and take with you all of the riches of Egypt.

But for 399 years.

They had to wait.

It's hard to wait, am I right?

Because of Jesus Christ, we can forever be loosed from the bondage of sin, guilt and shame.

In John 8, verse 34, it says Jesus answered them.

John 8:34

Truly, truly, I say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The slave doesn't remain in the house forever.

The son remains forever.

So if the son sets you free, you will be free.

Indeed, jesus came to chop the chain off of us once and for all.

I was introduced to sexuality in a very negative way in my life and so, because of that, I became in some ways obsessed with sexual thought and with pornography.

I was trapped, I was oppressed, I was in bondage to that, and in my early 20s, the faithfulness of God came to me in the form of my wife, who said to me I'm with you, we're going to pray about this and God's going to break it out of your life.

By the way, that came on the heels of me being honest and real with her, which was the hardest thing, one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

But I thank speed of God that I did it and 25 years later I can say God broke the chain off of my life, amen.

And if he did it for me, he can do it for you.

I mean you could put any category, name a sin, you can put it in there.

Whatever it is that holds you in captivity, that you feel like you have no power to overcome, jesus came to set you free from the bondage of sin.

Be free in Jesus' name.

He goes on to say that we can be healed of spiritual blindness.

He said that he came to bring recovery of sight to the blind.

There are so many in this life who walk around like the walking dead, literally, who they just walk around aimlessly, completely devastated and dead in sin and trespasses, and it's easier for us to point them out.

But let's not forget that was once you and I blinded by the God of this world, no truth getting through.

Jesus came to help us and heal us from this helpless state, and his light brings life and rids us and frees us.

Excuse me from blindness.

Now, in the natural realm, jesus healed blind people too.

I'm thinking of the story of Bartimaeus Bartimaeus, this man who had been blind since birth, standing on the side of the road begging for help.

All of a sudden he begins, with his other senses to pick up the fact that there was a crowd around him, and he had already heard of this man named Jesus of Nazareth, and somehow he must have heard the murmurs or the whispers that Jesus was among them.

And so Bartimaeus, standing on the side of the road, did not want to miss his opportunity as Jesus was passing by.

And so he said Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

And the disciples being the good disciples that they were trying to protect Jesus, go up to Bartimaeus and say shh, stop, don't bother him.

I can even see Peter putting his hand up to his mouth, bartimaeus biting at him and saying Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

And for one of the few times ever found in the Gospels, it says that Jesus stopped.

And he walked up to Bartimaeus and he said friend, what do you want me to do for you?

And what did Bartimaeus say?

That I might see?

Jesus prayed for him and immediately his eyes were opened for the first time.

Can you imagine the rush of colors and motion and all of the things that he experienced through smell and taste and feel and hearing is now rushing at him and he's seeing it for the very first time.

And Jesus looks at him and says all right, you've received your miracle, now go, go your way.

But it goes on to say that Bartimaeus followed after him.

Bartimaeus understood, through the opening of his natural eyes, that here was a man who I needed to follow, because he there was something that I needed to glean that was much more important than just my vision.

Jesus came to open our eyes to the truth.

There's a song that some of you may have heard of before.

It goes like this Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.

Jesus came to open our blinded eyes so that we could see who he is and be saved.

The next thing Jesus says is that we can be delivered from Satan's oppressive influence.

He came to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

Oppression is the opposite of glory.

If you think about glory, which is the goodness of God poured out upon humanity, it feels weighty.

It feels heavy, but not in a way that causes you to have a burden.

It's something that you recognize.

There's something greater than me in the universe that is expressing himself to me in this moment and this time.

But oppression is Satan's attempt to do the same thing, but instead of something that lifts us up and causes us to come closer to God, oppression is something that burdens us down.

It's like carrying a sack full of cinder blocks that we can't put down.

It's always with us, it's always upon us.

Fear and torment and all anxiety.

Anything that you can think about that causes oppression mostly lies.

Satan is the father of all lies and he does everything he possibly can to attempt to convince us of lies to be true.

Excuse me, can we stop listening to his lies, please?

Can we stop?

Jesus came to give us freedom.

We no longer have to be tormented in our minds any longer.

We no longer have to be continually hearing you're not worthy.

Of course I'm not worthy, but there's one who is worthy, who gave me a gift, the gift of grace of salvation, so that I could enter into his presence with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

What does worthiness have to do with it?

It's not my worth.

Acts 10.38, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.

He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

My friends, god wants to deliver you from your oppression.

It is not something that you have to grow comfortable with or become allies with.

Jesus came to create freedom in our lives and finally we can experience jubilee or freedom in our daily lives.

He came to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Jesus came to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the dawning of a new era for this world's sighing, sobbing multitudes.

He presented himself as the answer to all the ills that torment us, everything that we can think of that is evil and wicked and horrible.

Jesus came to deliver us from and to give us right relationship with God.

Christ is the answer to every ill that will ever face any person here in this planet.

He is the answer to our problems.

Hebrews 4, 9-11 says so.

Then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

There is a rest that is promised to us by God as we are in Christ Jesus.

There is a rest that some of you haven't experienced in a very long time, and I'm here to tell you.

It's available to you.

God has paid the price for it.

See, the jubilee of God looks like rescue, it looks like rest, it looks like remember, it looks like refresh and it looks like restart, but there's a striving.

What is the striving?

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.

What is the striving?

It's the striving of coming into a place of agreement with God.

There's a striving of faith that's required.

We must believe that what God says is actually absolutely true, and so, in conclusion, I want to make this point Unbelief is the primary way to miss out on freedom and jubilee.

Unbelief is the primary way to miss out on jubilee and to miss out on freedom.

Here we have Jesus.

Like I said, this mic drop moment.

He hands the scroll back to the person who was in charge of the scrolls, he sits down, he waits, he pauses, he takes a deep breath and then he says today, this is fulfilled in your hearing.

And for a moment in time, those that were around him were in awe.

They were all staring at him with mouths wide open.

What was this that he was saying?

What he was saying was I'm the Messiah, I'm the one you've been waiting for, I'm the Savior, I'm the healer, I'm the redeemer, I'm the deliverer.

I'm sitting right here in front of you.

You would have thought that this would be a moment of a huge eruption of praise and honor and glory and people bowing down on their faces and people recognizing and crying out to God in prayer Lord, thank you.

But instead one of them says isn't that Joseph's son?

Didn't he build a table for us a few years ago?

I mean, he was a good babysitter.

He babysat our kids.

He was like he kept them in check.

It was amazing.

You know how he did that.

Familiarity built can build contempt.

As I was preparing for this message, I felt like the Lord spoke to me two specific things I don't want to bring up at the end.

The first thing is this it's not enough to have grown up in a Christian home where parents loved you and taught you about the scriptures.

It's not enough to have been part of a local church.

Your entire life Never missed a service.

We're always there early and left late.

Those things are impactful and important and we obviously encourage those things, but that is not enough.

You can live your whole life around Jesus and yet when he says to you I'm your Savior, I'm your Lord.

You can say no, not today.

I'm going to live my life the way I want to live my life, and when I'm ready I'll let you know.

I understand what that's like.

I can't remember a memory of me not being in church, and I thank God again that I grew up in a Christian home, that I went to Christian school, that all of those things.

I thank God for those things.

But it wasn't until I recognized for myself that I needed a Savior that things really changed in my life, where my attitude changed, where my behavior changed, where my speech patterns changed, where I had my desires to help other people.

All of those things began to be changed and transformed when I recognized my own need for Jesus.

My fear and my concern is that Jesus returns for a church that's relying on God being a generational God.

But they haven't understood that you can't inherit salvation.

It's something that each individual must choose.

You cannot go to heaven because your parents are Christians.

You must choose this day who we will serve.

Everywhere else Jesus went, the crowds gathered.

The crowds would not leave Him alone.

The crowds wanted more and more and more.

But in His hometown, among His people, they couldn't get past religion history.

The other thing I want to say is that there are some in this room who you feel like that you're on your 49th year of waiting.

I want you to know that the 50th year is coming, the year of Jubilee is coming in your life.

Some of you are about ready to give up on your kids and your grandkids.

Do not do it.

Do not lose heart or lose hope or lose confidence.

God is working in His way in His time.

That's the problem with God.

If we had to diagnose a problem with God, it's that he doesn't do it our way.

We think that our way is the best way, don't we?

If I'm being honest, my kids have learned that lesson well.

God's way, in His mind, is the right way.

It's one thing if you're teaching and training your kids.

It's another thing if you're acting toward God in the same manner.

Do not lose heart or give up, my friends, some of you.

God has promised you things in the past and none of it has come to pass.

In fact, you look like you've gone backward.

One trumpet sound, one moment in time.

God can turn everything around and he loves to do it.

He loves to do it.

The crowd Jesus is friends Got tired of what Jesus was saying because Jesus began to say to them well, if you don't want to accept it, I'll go to somebody who will.

He even mentioned Gentiles from Elijah and Elisha, stories that they went to and how God moved miraculously through the men of God in the Old Testament to minister to people outside of the Jewish nation.

They didn't like that when he said that, and so they tried to force him off a cliff.

They literally tried to kill the savior of the world.

That's what religion does you know what it says?

Passing through their midst, he went away.

Can you picture it?

All these good guys pushing up against him and all of a sudden he just excuse me, you guys might remember something called the Red Sea.

I was there, I did it.

If you just walks right through the midst of it and walks away, don't miss out.

Let today be your day of atonement, where you recognize your need.

Maybe for the first time, you're recognizing your need for a savior for yourself.

You recognize the fact that you've been in the circles, you've been around it, you know how to talk Christianese, all of those things, and yet your heart is far from God.

Today could be your day of salvation, but you might also be listening to Satan's lies and allowing him to oppress you when Jesus has come to bring freedom to the captives.

I was reminded Alex reminded me of the story of Paul and Silas in prison and in the midnight hour, when they should have been singing gloom, despair and agony on me.

Yes, I'm 50 and I show it.

What are they saying?

They sing praise and glory and honor to God, and the Bible says that there's an earthquake that shook that prison and all of their cells were open and the chains fell off.

That's the kind of freedom that Jesus provides.

Don't miss out today.

Repent, turn around, leave the past firmly behind, put your faith, hope and trust in the Lamb of God, jesus Christ, who takes away our sin and its power, who opens our eyes so that we can see the light of truth, who removes Satan's oppressive rule from our lives and who will help us to walk in freedom all the days of our lives.

And to finish, in Acts 3, verse 19, it says repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

Acts 3:19

God wants us to enter into a season of rest, into a season of blessing again by His definition, by His definition.

Are we ready for that?

Are we ready to let some things go?

Are we ready to engage again in faith toward God?

Some of you have been waiting for a miracle a long time in your marriage.

I believe that God wants to do that miracle.

He wants to bring freedom in your marriage.

Some of you have had physical ailments, some of you watching online.

Right now, I believe, by the Spirit of God, that he's reaching out to you and saying that this is your day of freedom.

We pray that for you.

Let's stand to our feet.

Our team is going to be here to pray for any kind of specific requests.

My father, we do pray in the name of Jesus that you would.

Lord, my heart is so burdened for those who have been eternally churched but have never been changed.

God, would you do that work today by your Spirit?

Would you open their heart and mind to see the truth, just like you were faithful to do in my own life?

Lord, would you do it in the lives of those who are here and those that are beyond this building?

Lord, we pray for those outside of the reach of our voice and the internet.

Lord, those that find themselves in harm's way today.

Father, we pray in Jesus' name.

Have mercy.

Have mercy, lord and Father.

I also ask that you would help us to live each day understanding the length and breadth and depth and height of your great love for us and how great a salvation you have provided for us.

Help us to believe that and to live like it in every day, in every way.

In Jesus' name and Lord, I pray a blessing now upon your people.

But you'd bless them and keep them and cause your face to shine upon them.

Be gracious to them, lift up your countenance upon them and give them peace.

In Jesus' name, we pray, amen, amen.