The Prophet Proclaims the Peace He Brings.

 

Sermon for Epiphany 1, January 9, 2022

The grace of God the Father, and the peace of His Son, our Savior, be yours forever.  Amen.

Isaiah 61:1-3  The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the afflicted.  He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for those who are bound, ²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance for our God, to comfort all who mourn, ³to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a cloak of praise instead of a faint spirit, so that they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his beauty. (EHV)

The Prophet Proclaims the Peace He Brings.

Dear fellow redeemed,

            After returning to His hometown, Jesus read from this prophecy of Isaiah, and the people “All spoke well of him and were impressed by the words of grace that came from his mouth.” (Luke 4:22)  Yet, when Jesus explained that it was being fulfilled in their hearing, the mood changed.  By the time He finished speaking, the people were so angry, they drove the Preacher out of the town and tried to throw Him off a cliff. 

This prophecy, or as Luke called it, “the words of grace,” is almost all Gospel, a message of peace and joy from God to all the hurting people of the world.  Yet, Jesus’ hometown folks didn’t want to hear it.  They refused to listen because, they thought it preposterous that the carpenter’s son could claim to be the Promised Savior.  Today, I urge you to hear The Prophet Proclaim the Peace He Brings.

The people of Nazareth recognized that Isaiah was speaking about the promised Savior.  The nation had been waiting for centuries for the Messiah to appear, but they didn’t think He could be someone so ordinary.  They assumed that, surely, the Messiah would come with great splendor and a show of force.  Therefore, the people assumed Jesus must be lying and falsely taking God’s place.

However, Jesus didn’t come into this world on His own agenda.  There are many ways we could show this, but Isaiah foreshadowed Jesus saying, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.”  God the Father sent Jesus with the full blessing and assistance of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the Father’s mission.  The anointing of the Spirit took place at Jesus’ Baptism where Luke reports, “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.  While he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love.  I am well pleased with you.’” (Luke 3:21-22) 

That day in Nazareth, Jesus read, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the afflicted.  He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  One would think that the people would’ve been ecstatic to hear what Jesus had to say, but that wasn’t the case once they understood He was claiming to be the Messiah.  Because they didn’t believe Him, the people of Nazareth rejected God’s Gospel.  It sounds preposterous that anyone would reject such Good News.  Naturally, we are not surprised that people might reject God’s Law, because no one likes the Law’s condemnation, but to our surprise, God’s Gospel is also offensive to the unbeliever.

So, does the Gospel offend you?  It sounds far-fetched doesn’t it?  We come to church to hear God’s Word.  Many of us read our Bibles regularly.  How could the Gospel be an offense to us? 

Well, I certainly hope it’s not.  Yet, do you and I ever take a moment off from trusting God’s Gospel as some trouble takes our confidence away?  Do we ever find ourselves putting a little confidence in our own works as we compare ourselves to the unbelievers and sinners of the world?  Do you ever get the idea that it’s ok to take a day off from following Jesus and His Word?  Perhaps more convicting yet, do you, or I, ever go into hiding when we could proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior to someone who desperately needs to hear that truth?

We maybe aren’t so much different than the people of Nazareth.  We may have become so familiar with Jesus that we let our daily affairs push Jesus into the background, almost forgotten in our struggle to make a living and or to deal with everyday stresses.  It’s easy to get an attitude of “Talk to me about Jesus next week when I have more time, or next year, or someday.”  Pretty soon, because we just don’t want to deal with Him, today, we’ve pushed Jesus out of our lives, if even for just a little while.  My friends, that is sin that none of us can claim to have avoided perfectly, so we need to repent.  Then in repentance, we need to hear The Prophet Proclaim the Peace He Brings.

By God’s grace, Jesus came into this world for people just like you and me.  He came “To preach good news to the afflicted.…to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  The poor and broken hearted are the same people Jesus spoke of in His Sermon on the Mount when He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, because they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:3-4)  Jesus blesses us by announcing that He is the solution for the problem of human sin.  Jesus came to rescue us from the dark dungeons that sin bound us in.  How is this so?

Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.  I did not come to destroy them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)  Jesus fulfilled all of God’s Law by obeying it perfectly for you and me.  Not one little detail escaped Jesus’ attention.  In all His thirty some years, Jesus never once took a moment off from obeying God.  He didn’t have a cheat day when disobedience wouldn’t count.  He didn’t need that kind of nonsense.  He simply lived His life with obedience to the Father, and He did it so that people like you and me could be credited with perfect righteousness.

There is one short portion of this text that Jesus didn’t read to the people of Nazareth that day.  It’s a section of Law.  In addition to preaching Gospel, Jesus was sent to proclaim “the day of vengeance for our God.”  Does that sound a little frightening?  Certainly, God taking vengeance for our sins is nothing to be taken lightly.  However, we should note that the prophecy speaks of a year of God’s favor and a day of vengeance.  Notice the contrast.  God wants us to know Him as the God of mercy, but that happens in only one way, for The Prophet Proclaims the Peace He Brings.

There is one “day of vengeance” that makes it possible for all of us to experience God’s mercy and be free of His vengeance.  It’s the day God took out His vengeance for all of our sins on His own Son: the day Jesus suffered the cruel taunts and final rejection of unbelieving people who should have been faithful followers; the day when even those who did believe in Him ran away and hid themselves; the day when Jesus suffered blow after blow from the Roman soldiers’ hardened fists and the wounding of their whips and beating sticks; the day when Jesus was nailed to a cross on a hill outside of Jerusalem as the full, final insult to the Son of God for all of mankind’s sin, the day when even God the Father turned away from His Son to punish our rejection. 

The “day of vengeance” also comes with a warning.  Those who reject the Son face one final day of reckoning.  Judgment day will come upon those who refuse the salvation Jesus won.  God’s final day of vengeance will become, for them, an eternity of suffering in hell, not because the debt for their sins went unpaid, but because they rejected Jesus’ payment for their debt. 

My friends, God took out all of His vengeance for your sins and mine on that Golgotha hill. Jesus died there on that cross of shame because we so often push Him away.  Christ’s sacrifice is what makes the rest of the prophecy be true.  “The year of the Lord’s favor,” refers to the Year of Jubilee that God established among the Israelites.  It was a year set aside for the release of any Israelite who had been forced into slavery, a year when the ancestral lands of a family that had been forced to sell because of poverty or poor decisions were returned to them.  The Year of Jubilee foreshadowed the work Jesus would do to return us to God’s good favor.  It was accomplished as Jesus declared from the cross, “It is finished!” 

Because Jesus accomplished everything needed to return us to God, those who mourn for their sins are comforted by the Good News that all sins have been forgiven for Jesus’ sake.  Those who mourn in Zion are those who lament their sins that caused Jesus to suffer so.  They are consoled by the truth that God raised Jesus from the dead to declare to the world that His victory over the old evil foe is accomplished, and life everlasting is granted to those who trust in Jesus alone for their salvation. 

The Lord God promises that Jesus completed His work on behalf of the human race “To give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a cloak of praise instead of a faint spirit, so that they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his beauty.”  Jesus’ redeeming work for you and me gives us those promises to enjoy in an everlasting celebration.  Believers are crowned with the beauty of Jesus’ perfect righteousness as the waters of Baptism pour over our heads.  The beautiful dress is Jesus’ righteousness covering our shame so we are prepared for His eternal wedding celebration.  We don’t earn those white robes.  They are given to us purely out of God’s grace and mercy, so that He is glorified in the grace He gives.

The label “oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his beauty,” is applied to everyone who despairs of his own works and trusts in Jesus for forgiveness and salvation.  We are now God’s orchard for He has planted us to do His work.  God lives and moves among the trees of His believers.  He tends and cultivates us to produce fruit of righteousness in the world. 

Jesus said that believers are the branches grafted into Him as the vine.  If we cut ourselves off from Him, we are dead, but attached to Jesus we live and enjoy the everlasting life He gives.  Grafted into Jesus, we produce good fruit, and our lives of fruitful production never end for we will be with Him forever in heaven, and our lives as “a planting of the LORD,” are important, because it is through our lives of faithful fruit production that God expands His garden to include more and more forgiven sinners.  It is through our lives as Christian believers that Jesus continues to Proclaim the Peace He Brings.

My friends, in the Jubilee year of Old Testament Israel, everything was to be returned to the original owners.  Family lands were returned to the families that had lost them, freedom was restored to any Israelites who had been forced into slavery.  It foreshadowed this same Jubilee peace Jesus gives to you and me.  In the Garden of Eden, the devil tricked our fore parents out of their homeland of peace and joy.  Jesus restored that paradise to all of us, for He took on human flesh “To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  A home in God’s Paradise is ours once again, and our slavery to sin, death, and the devil is no more.  That is the peace Jesus won for you and me and for the whole world.  So today, and every day, hear and rejoice as The Prophet Proclaims the Peace He Brings.  Amen.

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  Amen.