Isaiah No.10 Good news for poor people

Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be the name of the Lord, Most High. When the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous are lead into it, they are saved. The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour and the day of vengeance on our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called Oaks of Righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated.

They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. Aliens will shepherd your flocks, foreigners will work your fields and vineyards, and you will be called priests of the Lord. You will be named ministers of our God.

You will feed on the wealth of nations and in the riches you will boast. Instead of their shame, my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, they will rejoice in their inheritance. And so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfulness, I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples.

All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed. I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels, for as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteous and praise spring up before all nations.

Looking our way through this prophecy during these last few weeks since the turn of the year, just taking not odd chapters in the sense of them being disjointed, but a sample of chapters from this great book which helps us to understand more of the greatness and the grandeur of our God. We make no apology for asking folks if they have a Bible always to bring them along to the tab and for you to follow what the preacher is saying or to share in the word from someone sitting alongside because this is the most important thing. It's God's statement to the world.

That's why we were so bold as to take a page in the local newspaper this past week and just put down what the basics are that God wishes us to live our lives by. We are not supposed to be uncontrolled individuals in this world, spinning around with no pattern, with no form in our lives. The Lord Jesus wasn't like that.

When our Savior came on earth, there were specific controls that He acknowledged. Let's shift the word control and bring in another one to help us. Let's take the word blueprint.

Our Lord, whenever He was engaged in His public ministry, would have one eye, so to speak, on God His Father and the other eye on the Old Testament Scriptures. They became for Him the blueprint by which He lived His life within the Old Testament. You get so much evidence concerning the coming of the Messiah into the world.

So when we find ourselves in this 61st chapter, we might well ask the question, and it's easy to answer, of whom does the prophet speak? What or who is he referring to? And the answer is, of course, He must be referring to our beloved Lord. There is a sense in which maybe Isaiah had some thought of himself as a preacher anointed by the Holy Spirit, but Isaiah pales into insignificance when you think of the way our beloved Lord fulfills what is found within this chapter. So when our Savior is making His preaching debut, when He first engages in public ministry, He's in the synagogue, I remind you, in Nazareth, His hometown, at least where He was brought up, and He creates a sensation.

He asks that a scroll be brought to Him from the Scriptures, the prophecy of Isaiah, and He unfurls the scroll. You recall it's all in Luke's Gospel in chapter 4, and He reads, "...the Spirit of the Lord, of the Sovereign Lord, is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor," and so on. Nothing sensational about that.

Ah, yes, but when He had returned the Scripture to the servant for it to be placed back with all the scrolls, our Lord said, this day, this Scripture is fulfilled in your sight. In other words, what is contained here is an indication of what He would be, the ministry of the Messiah. It's a happy coincidence that this chapter breaks itself open into three different divisions.

In the first few verses, verses 1 to 3, a reference is made, if you please, to the Savior. And then from the fourth verse down to the ninth verse, there is some reference to the Saved. And then the tenth and the eleventh verses, the song.

So the skeleton suggests itself, it's easy for you to follow. The Savior, the Saved, and the song. As to the Savior, well, let's look at these opening verses, because first of all, we are presented with one who is definitely a preacher, one who is not just a preacher in his own strength.

Now, this is the interesting thing of our Lord, and one of the aspects that I particularly wanted to write on when I offered a book to the Christian public recently, and that is that even our beloved Lord, before the commencement of His ministry, needed to have an endowment of power placed upon Him by none other than the Holy Spirit. Now, don't misunderstand me, our Lord was born of the Spirit. I mean, it was as a result of the Spirit's activity that He was brought into this world.

But nonetheless, the day came when He was baptized, and coincident with the baptism was the descent of the dove, which came on the shoulder of our beloved Lord, a symbol that the Holy Spirit would be upon Him, empowering His ministry. Differing from you in that our Lord's ministry, it knows the Spirit in fullest measure, but a pattern for you and me, for no man can engage in the ministry of Christ, be it witnessing in the street or engaging in a prayer ministry, without knowing the enhancement of the Holy Spirit. Here is the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord projected as being upon the Lord, enabling the Lord Jesus Christ to preach the gospel.

Do you know anything about the history of preaching, particularly the history of expository preaching? Actually, it doesn't go back to the Puritans. It goes back way before the Puritans. You have to go back to the days when Isaiah is actually writing this prophecy.

He's in Babylon, and in Babylon the synagogues were founded, and it was in the synagogues where the practice came about of the teachers, of the scribes coming along and not only reading the Scriptures, but expounding the Scriptures. And when the Jews came back from Babylon, the synagogue and the preaching was almost to be as significant in Judaism as the temple and the altar. And here is our beloved Lord in the synagogue, notice, in Nazareth, reading the Scripture and then expounding the Scripture, the Savior, the preacher.

Well, why is the Spirit of the Lord resting upon the sent one from God? If we look at the preacher, it's natural, logical for us to consider the purpose, and the purpose is immediate and also ultimate. I mean by that there will be an immediate fulfillment in the ministry of our beloved Lord, and there will be an ultimate fulfillment. There will be a day of grace, the immediate fulfillment.

And that day, called here a year, think of it symbolically as standing for a long period of time, has now spanned two millennia. The day of grace, in which an attempt shall be made to reach the needs of people, to bind, to bandage up the brokenhearted, to broadcast the message of deliverance, and to completely reconstitute the circumstances of many people, lifting them from darkness with its imprisonment into freedom with its light. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, but also, and the day of the vengeance of our God.

When our Savior came into the world, He says, God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I come not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Ah yes, but that was the first aspect of it.

This is the year of the Lord's favor. That is the immediate, and thank God we're still in the immediate, but don't you understand? The ultimate is to come, the day of vengeance of our God. And the year contrasted with the day, the speed, the finality with which God will bring in the day of judgment when every intelligent being who ever lived on planet earth will stand before a holy God to give an account for the way that they live their lives.

And on that day of vengeance, those who do not know anything of the grace of this sent one from God will call upon the rocks to cover them and wish that they could sink themselves into the depths of the earth to move from the vengeance of a God who is a God of justice and therefore a God of wrath, as well as a God of love. The preacher, the purpose, to proclaim the message of the Lord, the year of the Lord's favor and ultimately to bring in the day of vengeance. And in the interval, the procedure whereby salvation comes to those who are in need.

Look at verse three and here is a lovely triplet of contrasts. Those who are repentant, those who know what it is to sorrow over their sins, then He will bestow on them, instead of ashes, a crown of beauty. When a man was in distress in ancient times, He would heap ashes upon his head, indication of the hurt and the sorrow and perhaps even the shame.

So the oil of gladness applied to the place where the ashes previously were. The gospel dealing with the needs of ordinary people like ourselves. Instead of the ashes, the oil.

Instead of the mourning, the gladness. Instead of the nakedness, a garment of praise. Instead of the anemic spirit of despair, for that is what the original Hebrew seems to indicate, is the way we comprehend this term, a spirit of despair.

God will wrap around those who belong to Him a garment of praise. And you see the consequence of all this in the procedure is that these people will change. I'm talking, don't misunderstand me, let me go back, I'm talking about people who live in the day of the year of the Lord's favor.

People who in Old Testament language have heard the Lord's anointed blow the trumpet, for the idea is of jubilee. And the concept of jubilee, if you read the book of Leviticus, is that one day every fifty years the trumpet would blow and those who were enslaved would be freed. Those who had lost their property would have their property restored.

It is the concept of the restoration of the people of God. Now don't you understand that in the Old Testament you get a picture, remember what I've taught you along with Brother Tim all these weeks, you get a picture, a negative of what becomes crystal clear in the New Testament. Our Lord Jesus with the clarion call of the gospel proclaims the year of the favor of the Lord, the jubilee.

This is the gospel message to mankind today. And those who have responded, well they have a new name, they have a new nature. They will be called great trees, oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His favor.

A planting of the Lord, read Psalm 1, read Jeremiah 17, read what the gospel has to say in Matthew 15 and verse 13, that when a person becomes a Christian, when they are born again, when they are made righteous, they are taken from one lifestyle and they are planted into another. Their roots go deep, the fertile soil by which they are planted alongside the river of salvation nourishes them and they become strong, different from what they were. And notice how Isaiah puts the emphasis where it really belongs.

These people are a planting of the Lord. It's the Lord who has brought about their salvation. Good news for poor people? Well, it's good news of a Savior, a Savior who is a preacher, a Savior who has a purpose and a Savior whose procedure in bringing about that purpose is metaphorically described here in this 61st chapter.

Well, let's move on. These compartments are not watertight because we've touched on the benefits of the saved, but from verse 4 right through to verse 9, these benefits are heightened. What will the saved do? Well, when you go to verse 4, the obvious and immediate reference is, of course, to the people who were in Babylon, the Jews who were there for seven decades.

They will be released from Babylon and they will come back to Jerusalem. They will come back to the promised land and they will rebuild the ancient ruins. And that came true historically.

Again, you remember my illustration of telescope in understanding prophecy. At least three different sections, the immediate fulfillment politically in the day of Isaiah. And then you pull it out a little more and you see a grander fulfillment, the like of which Isaiah could never have completely understood.

And then the ultimate fulfillment in the second coming of our beloved Lord. This is the mystery of Scripture, you see. This is what makes this book so very wonderful.

Now, there is no way in which you can say that from the fourth verse through to the ninth verse, you have here the fulfillment to be seen just in terms of the return of the Jewish people from Babylon, though they did return, for God keeps His promises to the Jews as He always will. But here is an even grander fulfillment. It speaks of the church.

It speaks of the glory of what will happen when the church moves into all its potentiality and acts as the people of God. What will the church do? It will engage, I say, on a ministry of reclamation. They will rebuild the ancient ruins.

You see, the message of Christianity can deal with every breakdown of the past, however long standing that breakdown might have been. However many generations it may go back, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ can invigorate a person, can change a community, can transform a country. Not just a ministry of reclamation, but also, if you please, a ministry of absorption.

Look at verse 5, aliens will shepherd your flocks, foreigners will work your fields and vineyards. Now again, Isaiah has gone into the realm of the metaphor and into the realm of the spiritual. He speaks about a day that he was not to know himself physically, but he speaks accurately of a time when the blessings of God to Abraham would go through his seed and by Christ Jesus be deflected throughout the whole world so that when men and women respond to the gospel and express a similar faith as did Abraham, then they will be gathered into the company of the redeemed.

They will become citizens of God. Those who are afar are made nigh. Those who are not of the commonwealth of Israel, they shall be made as sons of God.

And aliens shepherding the flocks, foreigners working the vineyards, here is the ministry, I say, of absorption. But even more, here is the ministry of ordination. You will be called priests of the Lord.

Did you listen to that historic service from Bristol Cathedral yesterday? Interesting in all its pageantry. Thank God for the amount of scripture that was read. This is quite a cataclysmic thing that has happened within the Anglican Church.

And I would blush as a nonconformist to make any further observation than this. It was a pity the question was never asked. What is a priest? What is a priest? It's a pity a supplementary question wasn't put up.

What is the biblical distinction between the laity and the clergy? And if you were to go back to the writings of John Calvin, you would find that he argues that every man and woman who has been, as it were, planted by the river of salvation, who has become an oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord, has, by the very nature of being called into the community of spiritual Israel, been ordained. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. That's not Calvin, that's Peter, the apostle Peter, inspired by the Spirit.

You will be called priests of the Lord. When Moses was bringing the word of God to the children of Israel in his final sermon before he was taken away as the leader of the ancient Hebrews, he indicated that one of the sterling characteristics of the ancient Jews, if they ran parallel with the purposes of God, would be that their lifestyle would be so different that people would take notice that they are a nation of priests. You will be named ministers of our God.

You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. You see, Isaiah has got an amazing understanding of the future of the world and the sovereignty of God. I mean, he has told us in earlier chapters, has he not, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

Now here is my question. How will that happen? Ah, you say, it will happen when our beloved Lord returns, and indeed I would grant that. But during this age of grace, this period of the Lord's favor, before the day of vengeance, how does this happen? The answer is it happens through His people.

These people who instead of their shame, their guilt, verse 7, have received a double portion of God's Spirit, who instead of being paid in the same way as they have invested by the generosity of God, they have received in fullness His grace, and instead of disgrace, the opposite of grace, halfway down verse 7, they will rejoice in their inheritance. The Lord who hates robbery and iniquity recompenses from the largesse of His heart those penitent sinners who have made their peace with God, and in faithfulness He rewards them, verse 8, and makes an everlasting covenant with them, and, verse 9, their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the people. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.

And notice, would you, from verse 8, the introduction for I. This is God speaking. Have you got the picture? With all the verbiage that spilled out of my lips then, did you miss it? You see, here is God speaking of these people who have responded to the ministry of the anointed one. They have known this experience of having the ashes removed and the oil anointing them.

They have been enveloped with this garment of praise. These are the people who have got a new constitution, who are referred to as the oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. Now if they are that, logic demands you to conclude that these people will make an impact, and thus the heart cry so often from this pulpit, let the church be the church, the envisioned, empowered community of the redeemed, the unstoppable force which took South Korea in these last 90 years to the extent that prior to the turn of this century, there was hardly a handful of Korean Christians, but now they're unstoppable.

Take the country of China with a few hundred thousand Christians in 1950, and now have a look at the church in China, 50 million, perhaps 100 million, unstoppable. Don't tell me that I am speaking about things which are so removed from our comprehension. If they are removed from your comprehension, it is simply because you are not a global Christian.

You do not know what God is doing in various parts of the world. And what, my beloved friends, we need to be asking is that God will move amongst His people in this country in the way that He has moved in history and in modern times in the story of the church. Their descendants will be known among the nations.

All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people that the Lord has blessed. The Savior, are you getting the picture? The saved? Let's hasten to a conclusion. The song.

And here we're in difficulty, but it's a nice difficulty. Good commentators clash. Generally when they clash, the best thing is to run with them both.

Who does the singing? Alec Mortier, who has, by God's grace, written one of the most remarkable commentaries on Isaiah, this century and perhaps throughout the whole of church history. He suggests that the song is that of the Lord's servant. In other words, it's the Savior's song.

Another Puritan commentator I was reading late last night, he says, no, it's actually the song of the saved. And then I thought when I was running this morning, there's a lovely verse in the Old Testament that brings this all together. When the promise is made, I will put a new song in their heart.

And you ask, where does the new song come from? It comes from the inspiration of God. Here is our beloved Lord, and indeed it can be said of him, I delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God.

But then that can be said of his church. He has anointed the church with the oil of gladness. He stimulates their praise.

I'm suggesting that the hymn book of our Lord Jesus and our hymn book have a parallel section and we can plunder what he sings. Because a lot of what he is and what he has done has been transferred to our account. I delight greatly in the Lord, of course I do.

My soul rejoices in my God, of course it does. Why? Because there is a mantle and a ministry that our Lord represents, which has been passed on also to his church. Yes, a mantle.

You see, the 10th verse takes us into the wardrobe, and the 11th verse into the arena of witness. The 10th verse, the mantle is described. The 11th verse, the ministry.

He has wrapped me round with garments of salvation. I love the picture of the infant Christ in swaddling bands. You remember the Authorized Version's lovely description? Ah yes, but there were bands of delight that also enveloped the Christ of God.

And when he walked the streets of Palestine, he brought delight to the heart of Abba Father. He has clothed me with garments of salvation, arrayed me in a robe of righteousness. Which one of you convicts me of sin? And no one picks up the gauntlet.

No one responds to the challenge. And have not the blessings that are epitomized in that young baby been applied to you? You will call his name Jesus, Jesus' salvation, for he shall save his people from their sins. His righteousness has been transferred to you so that we can say of the blessed Christ that he has been made unto us righteousness and salvation and wisdom, all the blessings.

So the song of the Savior becomes also the song of the saved. When you get married, you go out and you buy yourself a new suit. The bride gets attire that's in keeping with the wedding.

When you get ordained as a priest in the Old Testament, the same obtains. And here is a fusion of both ideas, for there is such a high statement of marriage in both the Old Testament and the New Testament as ideally presented in the Bible. As a bridegroom adorns her head, as a priest prepares for ordination, so our beloved Lord prepared himself for his ministry.

And so the church is being prepared. There is an everlasting covenant to see. Look at verse 8, and this has been offered to the church through the grace, through the perfections of our Lord Jesus Christ as a church, or rather as our Lord, so the church.

He is beautiful in his array and the church is to know the beauty of holiness. The mantle, verse 11, the ministry. As the soil makes the younger plant come up in a garden and ceases to grow, so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

What was the purpose of our Lord coming into the world? Well, you've already heard, to make for himself a people who are different, a planting of the Lord. And here the metaphor is taken up in verse 11 and enlarged, the soil makes the young plant come up, a garden causes seeds to grow, so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. And when you take the message of Jesus to the heathen, the heathen in worthing, and they respond, what happens? Righteousness and praise springs up.

The Lord brings to himself people, enlarging the company of those who are the redeemed. So here, my brothers and sisters, in this 61st chapter of Isaiah, I argue you have this very interesting picture of a Savior who is a preacher with a purpose, and there's a procedure that you can follow in terms of his ministry. Here is a description of the saved of God who have a ministry of reclamation, a ministry of absorption, a ministry of recognition.

Here is a song sung by our beloved Lord and by his people who wear the mantle and also exercise the ministry as he delighted in the Lord. So may you and I delight in the Savior. Let's stand.

I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God. 268. I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God.

269. I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God. 260.

He has broken ground, He has broken ground. There is power in the name of Jesus. We are saved, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of Jesus, we believe in his name, we are saved, by the name of But there is no other name that is higher than Jesus.

But there is no other name that is higher than Jesus. He knows what matters, He knows what matters. He's love and truth and He's right.

Praise the Lord for His love and truth. . .