Good weekend to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
As of this weekend, as I write this, there are still about 100 hostages taken forcefully from southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and still being held in Hamas tunnels in the Gaza region. So many times, in the past year I’ve sat pondering what it must be like to be a hostage, held underground, by people who hate you and want to destroy your country? And then what would it be like to suddenly be rescued, delivered to freedom after so long in captivity?
With that picture in our minds, listen to these words Isaiah wrote 2700 years ago as he was led by the Holy Spirit of God: “The Spirit of the LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners...” (Is. 61:1)
On Thursday of this week, we began this exciting study of this powerful Scripture looking at the first phrase: “The Spirit of the LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news…” Yesterday we looked at the next phrase: “He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted…” (Is. 61:1) If you missed either of those, I urge you to go into our archives and listen to them. Now today let’s take the next phrase: “to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners...”.
You’ll recall this is a prophetic message given by God announcing the life mission of the future Messiah. 700 years later Jesus quoted these words during Shabbat services in the Synagogue of His youthful hometown, Nazareth. (Luke 4:14-30) Jesus was announcing that HE is their long-awaited Messiah and during His ministry years Jesus fulfilled each of these powerful statements.
Now it’s important for us to understand that this particular phrase was one which caused great consternation during the first century since people debated whether Jesus was in fact the Jewish Messiah or not. Because of this phrase and others like it, the Jews expected their Messiah would lead them in a great revolution against the Roman empire, declaring independence for the nation of Israel, free from the domination of any other nation or power forever!
When Jesus Christ refused any efforts by the people to declare Him their king or refused to mobilize any nationalistic movement in rebellion against the Caesar, the Jews were greatly disappointed, and many turned against Jesus.
However, the captivity and darkness God was speaking about, when Isaiah wrote these words and when Jesus, God incarnate, quoted them, have nothing to do with politics or governments or militaries. Rather God is describing here an inescapable captivity and bondage which is far more severe, far more destructive than Hamas tunnels or Nazi death camps.
God is describing captivity to Satan and his evil kingdom of darkness and the power of our sinful human nature which not only holds us in captivity in this lifetime but will hold those captives for all eternity in hell, who refuse to believe Jesus. (Rev. 20:13-15) No human power is capable of defeating Satan and achieving rescue or deliverance from Satan’s captivity! The only superior power to Satan is Jesus and only He can set any captive free and release them from Satan’s dark kingdom! Now pause a few seconds and make sure you understand the horrific gravity of the captivity in Satan’s dark kingdom in which BILLIONS of people are living today, my friends.
Of course, Satan is very sophisticated and deceptive, he is a liar (John 8:44) and as a result MOST of those Billions of his captives either refuse to believe they are in any captivity, or many are enjoying their current sinful captivity and reject they any notion of a future captivity in hell. Even in the days of Jesus most of the people who heard of Jesus rejected His claim to be God and later rejected the reports that He had risen from the dead and ascended back to heaven. Satan’s captivity is blinding according to 2 Corinthians 4:4 which says: “The god [Satan] of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
So if this is an accurate description of the inescapable captivity of people all around the world in every generation in Satan’s kingdom of darkness, how do we apply these words of God in Isaiah 61:1 to we who are followers of Jesus, and ambassadors of Christ, (2 Cor. 5:20) and who are now sent on assignment by Jesus to “to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners...”? The apostle Paul gives us a great answer in his letter to the Roman Christians.
First is the powerful force which can free these prisoners: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved… for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.” (Romans 10:9-13) Let’s be sure we understand a few key words:
* “Saved” means delivered from Satan’s captivity. It means saved from sin bondage and sin condemnation. Only God is powerful enough to accomplish this rescue, this deliverance, this salvation from Satan’s captivity.
*“Jesus is Lord” is a declaration of allegiance. It means this saved person has rejected the authority of Satan and sin in their life and is declaring their allegiance to Jesus Christ as their Savior, their King, their Master.
* “your mouth” is exactly what you think it is… your mouth, the part of your body with which you speak. This helps us understand the importance of declaring our rejection of our captivity, our bondage to sin and Satan, and our submission to the authority of Jesus Christ as our Savior and King.
* “with your heart that you believe” is a clear statement of the supreme importance of BELIEF and TRUST. In the deliverance God promises from Satan’s kingdom, Belief is the confidence one has that the Gospel of Jesus is true. Trust is confidence that the Gospel truth when applied by God to your life will accomplish the deliverance from sin which God has promised.
* “believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead” is a very clear statement that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, from His atonement death, is essential to anyone’s salvation, rescue from Satan’s bondage. A dead man can save no one. Only the resurrected, fully alive, ascended, reigning, supreme Jesus can save from Satan’s bondage! (Hebrews 7:25)
* “justified” is a very powerful legal term meaning God has declared the rescued, repentant sinner forgiven of their sin and cleansed from sin shame and guilt. Justified means ‘just as if I had never sinned’!
Now here’s a powerful verse which declares all this, listen carefully my friends. Colossians 1:13 “God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” That, my friends, is a remarkable, graphic description of the greatest deliverance from the deepest darkness and most inescapable captivity known to all humanity and THIS is the deliverance God was describing to Isaiah, and which was accomplished by Jesus our Savior!
Now listen to one last really important declaration by Paul which explains how this phrase in Isaiah 61 applies to you and me, ambassadors of Jesus, today: “How then can they call on the One [Jesus] they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One [Jesus] of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone proclaiming this good news to them…?” (Rom. 10:14)
There it is my friends. As we’ve been seeing in the last three days, you and I, people who have already experienced this deliverance, this salvation, are the ones entrusted with the great privilege to proclaim our story to those still in bondage! And as we do this, the Holy Spirit will do His great work of opening their hearts and minds to understand and give them the courage to repent and trust Jesus for their deliverance!
Oh my, we need to praise God right now. There are several songs which come to my mind which celebrate what happens in this great rescue when a new name is written down in God’s book of life, but this is one of my favorites by Charity Gayle:
Today’s Scripture: Is. 61:1.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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