back to index2022-03-27 Preparing for His Coming Pt.2
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If you can turn your Bibles with me to Isaiah 61, and I'm going to be reading the first 00:00:12.640 |
Again, starting last week, we want to help prepare us for Easter that's coming and for 00:00:26.480 |
And we want to look at the hope of the Messiah that was embedded into the Jewish culture. 00:00:32.480 |
And hopefully as we go through that, it will help us to prepare for Christ and what He 00:00:39.440 |
So I'm looking at Isaiah 61, I'll be reading the first three verses. 00:00:46.040 |
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news 00:00:51.920 |
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom 00:00:56.540 |
to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our 00:01:00.880 |
God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead 00:01:06.100 |
of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of 00:01:12.020 |
fainting, so they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified. 00:01:23.060 |
Heavenly Father, we pray that your word would speak to us, sanctify us, rebuke us, encourage 00:01:33.180 |
us and build us up as you are the potter and we are the clay. 00:01:39.060 |
Make us Lord God into the image of Christ, that these words Lord would open our eyes 00:01:46.140 |
to better prepare our hearts Lord for the work that you are doing. 00:01:53.180 |
You know a few years back, you know I started to search the internet to find out like when 00:02:01.460 |
You know, it ranges all the way from 40 to mid-50s. 00:02:12.020 |
You know, but you know like whenever that is, I was looking it up because I could see 00:02:18.340 |
you know people around me, some people in their mid-40s, some people in their early 00:02:22.220 |
50s kind of wrestling with you know what is the purpose of life and I understand going 00:02:28.460 |
through that stage myself, I can understand why, especially men, I don't know you know, 00:02:34.100 |
I don't have personal experience for females, but for men why they go through mid-life crisis. 00:02:40.100 |
And it's kind of like you kind of hit a point in your life where you start to think 00:02:43.860 |
that the end is much more real than it was ever before, right? 00:02:48.420 |
Not that it's not real in your 30s and 40s, but it's much more real. 00:02:58.420 |
We've lived more than we're going to live going forward. 00:03:01.680 |
And so when that thought breaks in, the natural thought is what did I do with my life, right? 00:03:11.300 |
And so a lot of kind of like soul searching and maybe even discouragement and disappointment 00:03:17.620 |
and so you know, people do strange things during that period to make them feel like 00:03:22.700 |
a makeup or whatever it is, I'm just going to do it, you know. 00:03:26.860 |
I think you know, depending on how much time and effort and energy and money that you spent 00:03:31.780 |
to build that up and when you get disappointed, the degree of disappointment is greater. 00:03:38.100 |
So whether that may be, maybe some people who came from a difficult family thinking 00:03:42.300 |
like you know, once I get married, you know, we're going to have a new life and then you 00:03:45.580 |
get married and then realize the same difficulty that you saw when you were young, you start 00:03:52.600 |
Or whether, whatever that may be, maybe in your kids. 00:03:55.020 |
It's like, I'm going to make sure that my kids are going to have this and they're going 00:03:59.680 |
And then time passes by, you realize the struggle of just even raising kids. 00:04:04.540 |
And so whatever it is that you put time and effort and money to invest in, and if it doesn't 00:04:10.620 |
turn out the way that you wanted, the disappointment that comes in as a result of that. 00:04:16.380 |
Now all the disappointments that I could possibly think of, the national disappointment of the 00:04:22.900 |
Messiah, I mean you can't be exaggerated how disappointed the Jews must have been when 00:04:29.620 |
they thought to themselves that this is not the Messiah that they wanted. 00:04:35.260 |
The same group that was so excited about Jesus being the Messiah ended up rejecting him at 00:04:40.940 |
the end of his life when he was headed toward the cross. 00:04:43.280 |
The text that we looked at right now in Isaiah 61 verses 1-3 is probably one of the most 00:04:50.780 |
clearest presentation of what the Messiah was going to do. 00:04:55.920 |
In fact, this is the text that Jesus opens up at the beginning of his ministry. 00:05:00.180 |
He goes into the synagogue in Nazareth right after he comes back down being tested for 00:05:07.440 |
This is the very first thing that he does when he starts his ministry. 00:05:09.980 |
He opens up the text of Isaiah chapter 61 and then he reads this text and after he reads 00:05:15.980 |
this messianic promise, he said, "Today this is fulfilled in me." 00:05:26.640 |
So when he said that, some people looked at him and said, "Isn't this Joseph's son? 00:05:35.360 |
Maybe some of the adults said, "We remember that kid. 00:05:39.260 |
And then some of them responded by saying, "Man, is he? 00:05:43.860 |
So for the next three years of his ministry, they watched him carefully. 00:05:52.600 |
And everything that he did proved over and over again. 00:05:57.220 |
So you remember when Jesus feeds the 5,000 that this stirring of the crowd got to the 00:06:03.680 |
point where after he fed the 5,000, they were going to forcibly make him king. 00:06:09.920 |
And that's why Jesus was trying to escape the crowd because it wasn't time for him. 00:06:15.740 |
But this is exactly the kind of king that you would want. 00:06:18.940 |
If you were to imagine that the king was going to come and deliver you from the nation, I 00:06:23.740 |
mean, he's humble, he's powerful, he's compassionate, he's caring. 00:06:29.700 |
People who had no hope, he started giving them hope by the thousands. 00:06:37.420 |
But that same crowd, one by one, begins to turn against him when Jesus began to tell 00:06:46.380 |
"I'm giving you bread, but it's not the bread that I came to give. 00:06:50.100 |
I'm performing miracles, but this is not the reason. 00:06:53.580 |
So that it's not simply so that the lame could walk." 00:06:56.700 |
He said, "He performed all these miracles so that I can forgive you of your sins." 00:07:01.460 |
And once they began to realize that maybe Jesus wasn't going to fulfill their dreams, 00:07:09.260 |
And then when he actually went to the cross, they said, "Oh, he really is giving his 00:07:17.500 |
And so that same crowd that followed him for three years rejected him when he went to the 00:07:23.100 |
See, this hope of the Messiah for the king, it didn't start just with the nation of 00:07:32.500 |
In Genesis chapter 3, 15, right after the fall, God makes this promise, "I will put 00:07:37.500 |
my enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. 00:07:41.380 |
She shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." 00:07:45.560 |
And so the theologians call this proto-evangelium, basically means pre-gospel, that God said 00:07:51.900 |
from the very beginning that he was going to send the seed of the woman and he's going 00:07:59.060 |
You ever wonder why the Bible is filled with genealogies, right? 00:08:03.600 |
I don't know if you've ever really given yourself to study these genealogies, but these genealogies 00:08:09.620 |
They're there because every genealogy is the record of God's fulfillment of this promise. 00:08:16.780 |
So they're connecting that whoever is going to come down this line, that they have a clear 00:08:22.440 |
So they teach you, even though we may not fully understand, that when the Messiah shows 00:08:32.260 |
That's why if you open up the book of Matthew, right, the first thing that you see in the 00:08:36.980 |
book of Matthew is the genealogy, because this genealogy connects Jesus with the promise 00:08:42.380 |
of the Davidic kingdom, with the promise that he made to Abraham, the promise that goes 00:08:46.780 |
all the way back to the creation after the fall. 00:08:52.920 |
But you can understand the disappointment that after waiting for this Messiah to come, 00:08:59.460 |
after not only just hundreds but thousands of years of waiting, that he didn't turn out 00:09:08.100 |
You see, when Isaiah writes this, the book of Isaiah, he wrote it around 722 BC. 00:09:14.980 |
The northern kingdom has already fallen to the Assyrians. 00:09:19.840 |
And so he writes this saying that now because of your sin, the southern kingdom, the tribe 00:09:24.780 |
of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, is also going to fall. 00:09:28.460 |
And so he's predicting that the Babylonians that they were relying on to come and help 00:09:32.220 |
him, they're the ones who are going to take you into captivity. 00:09:35.060 |
And so all the prophecies that are said about the judgment that's coming happens about 140 00:09:43.340 |
So everything that he says actually gets fulfilled, that all their children get carried on to 00:09:49.220 |
Babylon and eventually they adjust and they start to live. 00:09:53.580 |
And again, you remember reading the book of Daniel and it tells us what their life was 00:10:05.480 |
And then the Persians, during the Persian reign, because of God's work, and as Isaiah 00:10:09.180 |
predicted, King Cyrus comes in and has compassion and says he allows them to go. 00:10:13.420 |
But by that time, the Israelites have been so accustomed to staying where they are, only 00:10:17.900 |
a very small percentage of them come back to build the second temple. 00:10:23.200 |
When they built the second temple, the people who remember the first temple were weeping. 00:10:28.280 |
Because this could not be the fulfillment of that prophecy. 00:10:33.560 |
Because the glory of the second temple was nothing like what it was in the beginning. 00:10:37.020 |
But the Bible says that the glory is going to far outweigh anything that they've seen 00:10:42.460 |
So the older people realized that this could not be the fulfillment. 00:10:47.980 |
So their momentary excitement goes right back into despair. 00:10:52.460 |
A couple hundred years later, Alexander the Great comes in and he comes and takes over 00:10:58.060 |
and they're under their oppression for a couple hundred years. 00:11:03.620 |
And so for over 700 years, they've been waiting specifically for this prophecy to be fulfilled. 00:11:12.500 |
You have to understand what their life was like, specifically under the Romans. 00:11:16.500 |
Romans did their best to kind of keep the foreign nations that they conquered under 00:11:22.660 |
And so they gave them enough freedom, allowed them to rule their little areas, but they 00:11:26.980 |
also wanted to make sure that everyday life was a reminder to them who the boss was. 00:11:34.700 |
So remember when Jesus tells in his parables and in his teaching, he says, "If they ask 00:11:42.860 |
The reason why he says that was because there was a Roman law that said if a Roman soldier, 00:11:47.860 |
as he's walking down and he just gets tired, and he could just ask any Jew, he could just 00:11:53.020 |
ask anybody, even if you're a young mother with small children, if he just got tired, 00:11:57.780 |
by law, they had to drop what they were doing and carry at least a mile, by law. 00:12:04.380 |
And that's why he was saying, he's talking specifically to people in that culture, that 00:12:14.060 |
And in fact, if you happen to be very religious and you were going to the temple, they set 00:12:21.140 |
So even as you go to worship your God, the Romans made sure that every time you went 00:12:27.540 |
to the temple, there was a reminder that our God is much more superior than yours. 00:12:32.540 |
And made them bow down to that in order to get to the temple. 00:12:36.660 |
That's the oppression that they were living under. 00:12:40.580 |
We could spend the whole Sunday just talking about the oppression that they were under. 00:12:44.900 |
And for 700 years, every time they felt some sort of injustice, every time they went to 00:12:51.100 |
the temple, every time a young mother or young man who had to carry all the equipment of 00:12:56.820 |
the soldiers for a mile, they probably reminded each other, Messiah is coming. 00:13:03.660 |
One day he's going to come and he's going to do everything that he had promised. 00:13:07.980 |
And so it was that, that Jesus came and he read this. 00:13:17.900 |
So you could understand the excitement that they were in. 00:13:20.700 |
And for three years, everything he did was to prove that that's who he was. 00:13:27.700 |
See there was this longing in the Israelites that I cannot exaggerate. 00:13:33.300 |
The amount of time, energy, tears that went into waiting for the Messiah. 00:13:39.340 |
You know, if you read the Psalms, you probably remember at some point in the Psalm, you'll 00:13:49.940 |
If you don't, if you go back and read the Psalms, you'll see "selah" just scattered 00:13:55.300 |
The theologians don't know exactly what that term means, right? 00:13:59.060 |
There's no exact Hebrew interpretation of that. 00:14:02.260 |
And so some have said that maybe it's a musical thing, like the intermission or maybe a crescendo, 00:14:08.380 |
Maybe when you get there, you're supposed to read it louder, right? 00:14:12.940 |
I think the common interpretation of "selah" is to kind of take a breather, take a break, 00:14:18.700 |
To read that and kind of pause a second and then to read it. 00:14:22.540 |
I think that what makes most sense is that it's kind of like a sighing. 00:14:28.300 |
It is a break, but it's not simply a break because it's a long Psalm and you need to 00:14:34.380 |
But I believe "selah" basically is a deep sighing. 00:14:37.340 |
Like when something, when you're thinking something deeply or emotionally, you're affected, 00:14:48.540 |
You know, if you ever study through the book of Psalms, two-thirds of it is a groanings 00:14:59.100 |
Two-thirds of the Psalm is in some way is an expression of their pain. 00:15:05.860 |
So all throughout the book of Psalms is a "selah," a groaning. 00:15:12.820 |
And I believe that's exactly what it is, the equivalent in the New Testament is this 00:15:16.220 |
groaning that the Bible says that the Holy Spirit that's been deposited in us groans 00:15:20.460 |
on our behalf with words that you and I cannot recognize. 00:15:30.420 |
Before we became Christian, the Holy Spirit is groaning to bring us to Christ. 00:15:36.300 |
So in His groaning, justification is the deliverance of the penalty of sin. 00:15:43.940 |
Sanctification is the deliverance from the power of sin. 00:15:47.700 |
And glorification is the deliverance from the presence of sin. 00:15:52.940 |
And so this groaning inside of us, the Holy Spirit, is sighing on our behalf in prayer 00:16:03.300 |
And in our sanctification, in our wrestling with our flesh, in our constant desire to 00:16:08.440 |
be right and then wrestling with our flesh, taking us other places, sighing. 00:16:34.380 |
When will we be delivered from the presence of this sin? 00:16:38.060 |
So I believe that Selah all throughout the book of Psalms is a deep sighing. 00:16:58.700 |
So this groaning God has placed in their heart so that when the Messiah comes, that the celebration 00:17:09.380 |
This text that we're looking at in Psalm chapter 60, 1 to 3, gives us five things that 00:17:15.980 |
First thing He says, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed 00:17:22.020 |
And the point of this is to separate Him from any other king, any other prophet. 00:17:26.900 |
Because typically when anointing happens, it would be the previous king or the prophet 00:17:30.900 |
or one of the priests would come and lay hands and anoint Him. 00:17:34.020 |
But He says when the Messiah comes, He will be directly anointed by God Himself. 00:17:41.420 |
So if you remember, before Jesus reads this text in the synagogue in Luke chapter 4, remember 00:17:52.300 |
Remember at baptism, heaven opens up and Jesus gets anointed and God the Father says, "This 00:18:00.980 |
And so He was anointed and separated and then He goes up and gets tested. 00:18:04.500 |
And then right after that beginning of the ceremony, beginning of the text here, He reads 00:18:12.820 |
To be anointed by God means that He was unlike any other king, any other priest. 00:18:18.940 |
That He was going to represent all the authority. 00:18:22.940 |
Not somebody who was going to come and disappear. 00:18:25.980 |
Not like Moses, though he was a great leader, came and he had his own faults. 00:18:31.460 |
Where he was disqualified to even enter into the promised land. 00:18:35.040 |
Not like David who was a man after God's own heart who did great in the beginning, but 00:18:39.540 |
at the tail end of it, he commits adultery and then he even becomes a murderer. 00:18:43.660 |
And as a result of that, he's not allowed to build a temple and his kingdom gets split. 00:18:47.900 |
Solomon comes in, wisest man, builds a temple, but he chases after the world with all the 00:18:55.660 |
And every king that came after them, majority of them, led the nation astray. 00:19:02.700 |
And the very few kings who were right with God started off well and then they kind of 00:19:12.900 |
If you were to name one of maybe like four kings that was good in Israel's history, Hezekiah 00:19:21.660 |
But remember Hezekiah in chapter 39, that at the end of his life, he started to align 00:19:26.980 |
himself with the Babylonians because he forgot who God is. 00:19:30.500 |
See, when he says, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed 00:19:34.860 |
me," he's saying he's going to be different than any other king. 00:19:38.620 |
God himself is going to be working through this man, this Messiah. 00:19:42.780 |
Number two, he said he's going to bring good news to the afflicted. 00:19:47.180 |
Some of your translations, they says poor, but that is a poor translation of that word. 00:19:52.940 |
Because when you say poor, you also have been afflicted and hurt and damaged. 00:19:57.300 |
So you could be financially poor, yes, but this word carries a much more significant 00:20:03.900 |
He's talking about people who have been afflicted. 00:20:07.460 |
Living under oppression, but more specifically, more broadly, people who have been affected 00:20:15.140 |
And that word, euangelion, the good news, right? 00:20:18.540 |
And you already know in the New Testament, the word gospel is euangelion, which literally 00:20:25.100 |
That this one who has been anointed by God is going to come and he's going to be spreading 00:20:34.740 |
Every single one of us has been afflicted by your own sins and the sins of others. 00:20:47.100 |
Some of us may be more aware of it than other people because we live in a fallen world. 00:20:52.300 |
And because we live in a fallen world, your parents were fallen, your grandparents were 00:20:57.540 |
fallen, your school teachers were fallen, and you were fallen. 00:21:03.100 |
As a result of that, there are things that we have said and done that hurt other people. 00:21:08.660 |
And as a result of that, there's things that people have said and done that hurt us. 00:21:13.900 |
So every human being that has been born in this life has been afflicted in one way or 00:21:24.940 |
And then he goes on in number three, he says, "He sent me to bind up, to literally wrap 00:21:32.660 |
Psalm 34, 18, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." 00:21:40.740 |
It's much easier to build community with young people. 00:21:48.300 |
You have this idealism, "We're going to build a community. 00:21:54.740 |
We're going to open up Sunday schools and build schools." 00:21:57.740 |
And by the time you get to a certain age, it's like, "Yeah, right. 00:22:05.260 |
You sure you want our kids to be friends with those people? 00:22:08.620 |
It's much harder to build community with older people because we've experienced more of this 00:22:13.740 |
world of being disappointed, relationships not working out, leaders disappointing us. 00:22:22.260 |
And so there's years and years of this kind of got piled up, and so it's naturally easier 00:22:31.060 |
We don't have the same kind of idealism when we were younger. 00:22:34.380 |
That's what happens when you live in a fallen world. 00:22:38.740 |
You know, when I was a young youth pastor, I heard a statistic that one in four girls 00:22:45.500 |
experience some sort of molestation when they're young. 00:22:50.900 |
When I first heard that, I couldn't believe it. 00:22:52.500 |
It's like, "Oh, maybe in some other communities, maybe in other parts of the world." 00:22:58.500 |
But through the years, not only has that been confirmed, I think it's much larger than that 00:23:06.460 |
because majority of the abuse that takes place happens within the home because you feel safe. 00:23:15.340 |
And so the things that are reported is one in four. 00:23:19.420 |
So there are many of those instances that are never reported because it's sticky within 00:23:25.340 |
So can you imagine one in four child, and now it's male or female, has experienced some 00:23:40.580 |
And I remember trying to counsel through that. 00:23:49.260 |
Just praying, like, "Lord, Holy Spirit, just bring transformation." 00:23:56.340 |
What can I possibly say to counsel them, to give them hope? 00:24:01.980 |
And after years of frustration, I came to the conclusion that the only one that could 00:24:14.660 |
So the best that I can do is not to have the right words or the system or the accountability 00:24:20.620 |
or the community, is to bring them to Christ. 00:24:25.860 |
Every single one of us has experienced some sort of brokenness, either directly or indirectly 00:24:35.100 |
Our Messiah is going to come, and He's going to bind up the brokenhearted. 00:24:41.300 |
Every single one of these Jews, one way or another, have been oppressed for 700 plus 00:24:51.200 |
Can you imagine the excitement when Jesus says, "I am the Messiah"? 00:24:56.620 |
Then He says He's going to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners. 00:25:04.660 |
You know, today, when the president leaves office, one of the final things that he does 00:25:10.260 |
is he uses his authority and power to pardon people who may be in jail and uses authority 00:25:17.580 |
Sometimes there's a few, sometimes it can be many dozens of people. 00:25:20.100 |
But in the ancient Near East, the practice was when the king would be anointed, and the 00:25:24.780 |
very first thing that he does is he would release the prisoners. 00:25:28.500 |
Because he may not be in agreement with the previous king. 00:25:30.820 |
Maybe the ones who were supporting him, they were the ones in prison. 00:25:33.700 |
So it was custom that the people who were desperate to come out would be waiting for 00:25:41.540 |
Because that would be the first thing that he does. 00:25:43.180 |
So it is in that spirit, he says, when your king comes, he will deliver all those prisoners 00:25:53.060 |
That the only hope that they had for the next king, the righteous king, to come and deliver 00:25:58.440 |
And then he finally says to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. 00:26:03.300 |
It's clearly, this is in reference to the year of Jubilee that's mentioned in Leviticus 00:26:09.540 |
The year of Jubilee, like in Jewish law, every seven years they were supposed to give the 00:26:17.380 |
And then the seventh year they would do this again. 00:26:19.380 |
But every seven times seven, after 49 years, the 50th year, it was declared to be the year 00:26:26.180 |
Now, I don't have time to go through all of the things that are taught about the year 00:26:30.020 |
of Jubilee, but let me just give you a quick summary of what they were to do at the year 00:26:37.980 |
Now, if you're in finance, or if you just, you know, pay attention to finance, how can 00:26:50.580 |
He's like, next year's year of Jubilee, I can't lend you that. 00:26:57.380 |
All land, it says number two, was returned to the original owners. 00:27:01.540 |
So if you leased land, in the 50th year, you have to give it back. 00:27:16.540 |
Now this sounds good on paper, but how can this possibly work? 00:27:19.780 |
Can you imagine what the economy would have looked like on their 49th year? 00:27:28.380 |
But if you were a poor person, it's like, yeah, I'll take that. 00:27:34.260 |
See, the whole point of the year of Jubilee was to point to what was coming in Christ. 00:27:42.160 |
Just like the cities of refuge, like all the amount of money and time and effort that went 00:27:55.820 |
Like, so much money, time, and effort went into building these cities. 00:28:01.300 |
So that every Jew, when they looked on the cities of refuge, they realized when the Messiah 00:28:05.380 |
comes, he's going to build these cities for us. 00:28:09.020 |
So the whole point of the year of Jubilee is to remind us when the Messiah comes, this 00:28:17.580 |
And so he said when the Messiah comes, all debt will be canceled. 00:28:24.380 |
All the lands, and there's going to be a fresh start in his kingdom. 00:28:35.740 |
I mean, they were waiting for this for so long. 00:28:49.060 |
Who else can tell the storm to stop, and it stops? 00:28:55.740 |
So can you imagine the excitement when Jesus went into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, because 00:29:00.940 |
there's a specific prophecy that says that your Messiah, the King, is going to ride on 00:29:06.460 |
And so Jesus chooses to ride on a donkey to fulfill that prophecy, to make a public declaration, 00:29:12.580 |
If any of you had any doubt who I was, let this confirm. 00:29:18.900 |
But that rejoicing turned into weeping when they realized that Jesus was actually going 00:29:29.260 |
If you read the text that Jesus read in Luke chapter 4, 17 to 21, Jesus reads only a portion 00:29:39.660 |
He only reads up to the middle of the second verse. 00:29:43.300 |
And he says, he reads, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to 00:29:48.580 |
He has sent me to proclaim the release of the captives and recovery of the sight to 00:29:51.460 |
the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord." 00:29:57.380 |
So if you read 61, that stops in the first line. 00:30:02.340 |
The second part where it says, "And the day of vengeance of our God to comfort all who 00:30:07.180 |
And then at the end of it, he says, "So that they will," at the end of verse 3, "So they 00:30:12.980 |
will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified." 00:30:19.880 |
And there's a reason he doesn't read that part, because he doesn't fulfill that then. 00:30:25.780 |
There's a second part of that fulfillment that's going to come at the end. 00:30:30.420 |
But his first coming was to fulfill what he says in Isaiah 42. 00:30:36.900 |
In verse 1 through 4, it says, "Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom 00:30:41.620 |
my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him. 00:30:49.100 |
How many of us think of Jesus' ministry as a ministry of justice? 00:30:57.380 |
We think of it as a ministry of grace, compassion, love, gentleness, perseverance, and yet he 00:31:12.660 |
Did he think that maybe justice isn't what he wants anymore? 00:31:17.380 |
Well, he describes this justice in verse 2 and 3. 00:31:20.180 |
"He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street. 00:31:26.940 |
A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not extinguish. 00:31:36.660 |
He will not be disheartened or crushed until he has established justice in this earth, 00:31:40.420 |
and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law." 00:31:51.140 |
The justice that he is referring to, the justice that he carried out at the cross. 00:31:59.300 |
He absorbed the greatest injustice, the only person who can cry out to his Father, "Why 00:32:10.380 |
There's not a single human being that could be in that position and dare to lift his eyes 00:32:29.180 |
So when he does that, when he brings punishment, we can't open our mouth. 00:32:35.860 |
Only the pure, perfect Jesus can cry out to his Father. 00:32:43.460 |
Because the only person that was deserving of God's love was Jesus himself. 00:32:51.980 |
So the greatest injustice was absorbed by Christ in order that those with sin would 00:33:15.660 |
Because they portrayed upon Christ their dreams, every suffering, that when Messiah's come 00:33:22.860 |
If you had no legs, he's going to come bring us legs. 00:33:31.940 |
But Jesus said he did all of that to show us that he had authority to forgive us of 00:33:56.840 |
The very person and the only person that could truly give them life. 00:34:03.420 |
You know, among the Jews there are four different groups. 00:34:15.460 |
You know, we've been waiting for him and dealing with the Romans and the Pharisees. 00:34:18.900 |
And so they just packed up their bags and they went out to the desert and lived in a 00:34:33.180 |
They've neither rejected Christ nor are they passionately following Christ. 00:34:36.340 |
They're just like, you know, I just don't know. 00:34:41.600 |
So we don't know much about them because they're not in the Bible. 00:34:49.700 |
Sadducees were the people basically given up. 00:35:07.180 |
Sad thing about the Sadducees were they're the ones who were the leading Israel at the 00:35:16.460 |
So when Jesus goes to the temple, it was the Sadducees who were running the temple. 00:35:20.060 |
And that's why the outside, they were selling stuff and people couldn't even worship because 00:35:23.540 |
to them worship was just something that you did. 00:35:31.380 |
So they were salvaging whatever they had on their face. 00:35:33.820 |
So they were by name a Jew, but they didn't believe in any of that stuff. 00:35:40.100 |
If you go to Europe today, where Christianity has been for over a thousand plus years, that's 00:35:49.180 |
The leaders of the churches in Europe are people who've given up hope in Christ. 00:35:59.780 |
But yet they still have the signs up on the churches. 00:36:02.900 |
But if you go in, they don't believe in any of that. 00:36:09.260 |
Maybe we're good citizens and do good stuff and feed the poor and make this place a better 00:36:16.140 |
That's exactly what the Sadducees were doing. 00:36:18.940 |
Because they no longer believed in the miracle of God. 00:36:28.300 |
And I don't know when he's going to come, but we can't wait. 00:36:35.700 |
Remember when Pontius Pilate presented to the Jews, do you want Jesus, possibly the 00:36:43.660 |
king of the Jews, or do you want Barabbas, the Zealot, who was caught in the middle of 00:36:48.700 |
his insurrection to try to challenge us militarily? 00:36:57.980 |
I prefer to have him militarily striking than this man who fooled us for three years, pretending 00:37:06.140 |
to be our Messiah, and then he can't even get out of your hand. 00:37:11.300 |
He's actually going to just give in like that? 00:37:25.820 |
And they went to battle with the Romans, and they come in, they crush them. 00:37:31.220 |
So AD 70, Israel disappears because of these Zealots. 00:37:37.660 |
The saddest of these groups are the Pharisees, because the Pharisees somehow convinced themselves 00:37:44.780 |
that if they kept the law perfectly, that maybe then the Messiah would come. 00:37:51.500 |
So on top of all the laws that they had, they added more laws. 00:37:54.500 |
We're going to do this, and we're going to do that. 00:37:56.060 |
And they practiced it probably better than most Christians today. 00:38:06.720 |
They gave every little thing that they had, they gave to the temple. 00:38:12.740 |
They prayed and fasted, some of them three times a week, because they believed that if 00:38:19.060 |
they were righteous enough, that somehow God would show favor. 00:38:25.340 |
The whole book of Romans was written to address these people. 00:38:30.180 |
See, the whole purpose of the law was so that you would know why you need the Messiah. 00:38:37.560 |
The whole book of the law was to make sin utterly sinful. 00:38:41.580 |
So at the end of that, you would be surrendered and beating your chest, like the tax collectors, 00:38:49.840 |
That whether you are a religious leader, whether you are a prostitute, when God is revealed, 00:39:05.480 |
But they fooled themselves to think that if they kept the law, and the extra laws that 00:39:11.440 |
they had, that they had a better standing before God. 00:39:15.480 |
And when Jesus came, He rebuked them more than anybody else. 00:39:22.200 |
Instead of humbling them, the law made them proud. 00:39:27.520 |
And every single one of them rejected Christ because they projected on Him what they wanted 00:39:37.160 |
As we prepare for the resurrection, there's a glimpse of this in every single one of us. 00:39:51.060 |
Whatever frustration, whatever pain, whatever situation that we are in, why isn't God answering 00:39:58.220 |
If you would just fix my marriage, if you would just fix my kids, if you would just 00:40:01.600 |
fix my relationship, if you would just fix my circumstance, if you would just fix my 00:40:08.100 |
And yet Jesus says, He who finds his life, He who lives hard, thinking that somehow if 00:40:17.240 |
you do this, that you're going to have a better life, He said, we'll lose it. 00:40:22.240 |
He who loses his life for my sake, He will find it. 00:40:27.360 |
You see, our inclination to live is what's killing us. 00:40:35.120 |
Our inclination to be successful is what kills us. 00:40:40.100 |
Our inclination to be better than our neighbors is what kills us, is what divides us. 00:40:49.960 |
It is until we die and we recognize that life is found in Him and Him alone. 00:41:00.560 |
We could be blind just like the Jews and thinking that we're following Christ when we're really 00:41:08.880 |
following the image that we've created of Him instead of the Christ of the Bible. 00:41:14.640 |
So my prayer is that as we prepare ourselves for the Palm Sunday and for Good Friday and 00:41:20.020 |
resurrection that it would be an opportunity for us to look deeply, not only the Word of 00:41:28.560 |
Even as a pastor, even as I preach the gospel, my desire to be somebody can easily creep 00:41:46.680 |
Before we examine the world, before we examine the church, examine our own hearts. 00:41:57.160 |
Hopefully that will bring revival and refreshment in our hearts as we meet the Lord. 00:42:02.080 |
Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads. 00:42:08.320 |
Father, we come before you needing your grace again and again. 00:42:18.040 |
Lord, I know we have brothers and sisters in this room even now are wrestling in prayer, 00:42:25.040 |
dealing with hurt and pain, disappointment of living in this world. 00:42:31.480 |
Open our eyes, Lord God, that we may see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that 00:42:36.800 |
our hope will be placed in Christ, in Christ alone. 00:42:40.280 |
Lord, help us, Lord God, to see who Christ is, that the groaning in our hearts, Lord 00:42:47.160 |
God, would cause us to be justified, sanctified, ultimately glorified. 00:42:55.160 |
Help us, Lord God, to fix our eyes upon Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.