If you have your Bible, please turn to Isaiah, chapter 61. We continue moving through the Prophet Isaiah in my series on the Holy Spirit, and we’re looking at passages in the second part of Isaiah, chapters 40-66. These 27 chapters are the New Covenant in prophecy, the most majestic prophetic, literary section in the Bible. In this section, the life of Jesus our Lord is prophesied most clearly.

If you recall from last month, chapter 59 excoriated the people of Judah for their hopeless bondage to sin, or iniquity. I connected this passage to the suffering of Christ on the cross, when the weight of all humanity’s sin was thrust upon His soul. Jesus cried out from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me.” While He hung on the cross, 2 Corinthians 5:21 declares that God “made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” So Isaiah’s condemnation of the human race for our iniquity was taken by Jesus on our behalf. He alone bore the punishment that was our due. Christ forever satisfied God’s justice while expiating or eradicating the penalty of sin from our souls.

When Jesus had finished suffering for our sins, He spoke his penultimate phrase, “It is finished.” He spoke this from the conclusion of Psalm 22: The debt of humanity’s sin was paid in full. Isaiah 59 concludes with the triumphant promise, in vv.20-21: “A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” declares the Lord. “As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the Lord, “from now and forever.”

Jesus then cried out from the agony of His triumph over sin and death forever, quoting Psalm 31:5: “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.” Isaiah 60 picks up thematically right where Isaiah 59 ends with a prophetic description of the Resurrection of our Lord: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

The next passage in Isaiah, chapter 61, goes backward in time to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. This is paradoxical, but prophetic revelation comes from the Spirit for whom all time is one. So Isaiah’s composition has no clear chronology. By describing His coming, ch. 61 gave God’s answer to the dilemma described in Isaiah 59 of our hopeless bondage to sin. The Messiah, God in human form, comes to us to save us. Reading from v.1:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; ² To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, ³ to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Isaiah writes as though he is the one whom the Spirit of the Lord has come upon. Even though Jesus is the primary fulfillment of this prophetic passage, there is a sense where Isaiah is indeed the subject of this passage – and, vicariously, so are we! When the Holy Spirit comes upon someone, He anoints or imparts a divine unction upon them to become a vessel of God’s grace to needy people. Isaiah was a willing mouthpiece of “good news to the afflicted.”

In chapter 6, Isaiah described an extraordinary vision where God called him to be the greatest writing prophet and seer in Israel’s history. It came in 739 BC, the year King Uzziah died. He saw God seated on his throne, surrounded by mighty seraphim – six-winged creatures flying above the LORD whose voices shook the foundations of God’s throne! They cried out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory!”

Isaiah was overwhelmed by the awesome holiness of God. He cried out: “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” A seraph flew to him with a burning coal from the altar of God and touched his lips, saying, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

In Isaiah’s calling we hear the central dilemma and divine solution for the human race. This is a proto-gospel, a vision revealing God’s redemptive purpose for the human race over 700 years before the coming of Jesus. We are all people of unclean lips, hopelessly bound in sin. But in a single act God removes Isaiah’s iniquity, just as Jesus removed ours through His death on the cross. Isaiah continued:

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” God’s call to Isaiah is the same for you and me. Wherever we are, be it in prison in Monroe or a continent away, God sovereignly directs and sends us into a world of hurting people, to people who repeatedly speak and act in unclean ways, offering a message of redemption. God said, “who will go for Us?” Jews interpret this as the plural of majesty, where God as King speaks for His entire kingdom as Us. Christians see a reference to the Triune God who is speaking to Isaiah. Both are true. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit spoke on behalf of their entire kingdom to Isaiah, and to all of us. God is ALL IN with people receiving and responding to His call to act on His behalf, and bring His kingdom to a hurting world.

The rest of Isaiah 6 is a bleak forecast of Isaiah’s ministry of proclamation, just as it was for Jesus and His Jewish people in his generation. The people of Judah repudiated Isaiah’s call to repentance, just as they did with Jesus. The result in both cases was military conquest and devastation – by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and finally by the Romans in the first century. But the very devastation Jerusalem endured declared that salvation had come to the world in a Person, Jesus, and not through the Temple.

So it is with us today. We are the prophetic voice of Jesus in the world. Revelation 19:10 says, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” We are all heirs of Isaiah’s calling and response, “Here am I. Send me!” We may have today the greatest privilege of any generation in world history: to be the people who usher in the Return of Jesus our King. But if we are, we must prepare to endure, suffer and even die for a broken world that could easily descend into chaos before He comes. God calls all of us to enter into Christ’s suffering for a lost world – to make His sufferings ours, so that we can be faithful messengers of His salvation.

So let us now return to Isaiah 61 and enter vicariously into this majestic declaration over God’s anointed Son, Jesus, and all of us who are joined to Him by faith. I said Isaiah 61 has its primary fulfillment in the life of Jesus. Jesus’ first act after His 40-days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness was to return to His hometown of Nazareth “in the power of the Spirit”. There, He preached His first message, found in Luke 4:14-27. Jesus found this passage in Isaiah 61 and read it to the synagogue congregation.

“¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, ¹⁹ To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” ²⁰ And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. ²¹ And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus’ first public statement after being baptized, filled with the Holy Spirit and tested in the wilderness, was to read Isaiah 61:1-2. He declared that He had fulfilled the Scripture they just heard. He was, and is, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

There’s a lovely prophetic connection between Isaiah’s call into prophethood and Jesus’. Six chapters into his prophecy, Isaiah recounts his call in one of the greatest visions of God in scripture. Six chapters from the end of Isaiah, Messiah prophetically declares His call to become the last and greatest prophet under the old, Mosaic covenant. Isaiah was taken up into heaven in a vision to hear his call; but Jesus literally came down from heaven through the Virgin Birth to fulfil His call. In a trance Isaiah hears in heaven, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” But the Son of God literally answered the Father’s call both in heaven and on earth. Jesus answered more profoundly and perfectly than Isaiah ever could.

Jesus says as God incarnate: “Here I AM! Send Me!” Jesus, the I AM of eternity, now declares “I AM on earth as the Apostle, the Sent One from heaven, and the Finisher of their faith”. Unlike Isaiah, He is the answer to humanity’s dilemma in his vision. For Jesus alone can say to the Father, “I AM a man of clean lips, though I dwell among a people of unclean lips. I am God’s burning coal from the altar, Who touches the lips of My elect with my gospel to take away their iniquity and forgive their sin.” As Isaiah 57:15-19 says prophetically of Jesus:

¹⁵ For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also [on Earth] with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite…. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners. [Now, in v.19, in place of unclean lips, Jesus the Holy One is] ¹⁹ Creating the praise of the lips. Peace, peace to him who is far and to him who is near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.” The Apostle Paul quotes this last verse 19, in reference to Jesus; so the prophetic application is sure.

The first thing Messiah declares about Himself in Isaiah 61:1 is “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me.” The title Messiah, or Christ in the New Testament Greek, means “Anointed One” and specifically means anointed by God’s Spirit for a position of leadership. The mark of a divinely-ordained leader among the Israelites was being anointed by God – and the Hebrew Bible identifies four kinds of Spirit-anointed leaders: prophet, priest, warrior and king.

Jesus fulfilled all four Spirit-anointed roles during and after His first coming. He was first and foremost, the last true prophet under the Old Covenant. In Deuteronomy 18:18-19, Moses foretold, “The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. ¹⁸ I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹ It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.” God told Moses He would raise up a prophet like him among the Israelites. Like Moses, He would put His words in this prophet’s mouth; and just like Moses, Jesus inaugurated a new covenant that was promised over 800 years after Moses in Jeremiah 31:31.

Jesus became our High Priest when He offered up His blood at a heavenly altar before His resurrection. He was also the perfect Spirit-warrior against God’s arch enemy, Satan. He was the only prophet ever to cast out demons; and then, by offering His life, He stripped the demons of most of their power.

Finally, with His resurrection He assumed responsibility for the universe. As He told His disciples before His ascension into heaven, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus now has all authority over God’s kingdom and will one day reclaim the earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Let’s compare Isaiah 61:1-2 with Luke 4:18-19. The first thing the Spirit anoints Jesus to do is “to bring good news to the afflicted.” The word euangelion in the Greek, translated as “the gospel” simply means “good news.” What is poignant here is that Messiah’s primary ministry is not to the leaders of Israel, but her poor and afflicted. The poor are those most disadvantaged in any society. Psalm 138:5-6 declares, “They will sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is exalted, yet He regards the lowly, but the haughty He knows from afar.” Our God shows partiality to no one, but He bestows favor to the humble and lowly. That’s why God appointed for Jesus to be born in a cattle stall and lain in a manger.

Following that, Messiah declares, “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.” Think of where you are and where you’ve been. How many times in your past were you brokenhearted by family breakups and discord, by childhood disappointments and failed relationships, by lost dreams and plans gone wrong? Your sin took you captive, and when you turned to crime, the law made you captives. Now here you are in prison; but Messiah says prophetically in Isaiah 61 that He came to earth for men like you – to proclaim liberty from your captivity to sin and rebellion, and freedom to prisoners like you!

The theme of captivity and deliverance is one of the most important in the Bible; for it was a repeated experience in Israel’s history that was like a living allegory of humanity’s own history of being taken captive by Satan and sin.

Katie Souza wrote, in my judgment, the best treatment of captivity in the Bible as it relates to the incarcerated in her first book The Captivity Series: The Key to Your Expected End. I strongly encourage you to read and study what she wrote; it will set you free within!

Katie’s life story was one of rebellion toward God and captivity to drugs, sin and crime. Then she was taken captive by the law and sentenced to prison for over 12 years. Finally, after turning to the Lord, Katie Souza experienced liberty from sin and darkness within prison as a child of God, and then freedom from prison itself. She was released on appeal seven years earlier than her sentence, on exactly the day that the Lord had told her spirit ten months earlier!

Today, she has a worldwide ministry visiting prisons and teaching on healing. In the past ten years, Katie Souza Ministries has donated over 380,000 books to inmates in prison. Her most recent book Healing the Wounded Soul brings insights she has learned about spiritual sources of sickness and how to release divine healing. You can check out The Captivity Series and Healing the Wounded Soul from our library.

Souza learned from studying the Bible during her five years in prison that rebellion, captivity, repentance toward God and deliverance from captivity were continuing themes in Israel’s history. This, in turn, shines a spotlight on the rest of humanity; for “All scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

Every experience of captivity and deliverance revealed a different aspect of national sin into which Israel fell, and from which God delivered them. Katie realized that their failings paralleled her own; and she begin to see how Israel’s history was a paradigm of human failures and captivity from which only Jesus can set us free. This is the mission Jesus took on when He read Isaiah 61 as His prophetic mission statement.

When we examine Isaiah 61 and its parallel passage in Luke 4, we find one small difference in phrasing between the two texts. Isaiah 61 says “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted”, while in Luke 4 He proclaims “recovery of sight to the blind.” This reflects a textual difference between the Hebrew Masoretic text and an ancient Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, which includes “recovery of sight to the blind.” Luke omitted the phrase “to heal those broken at heart,” which was in both texts. Jesus, of course, both bound up the brokenhearted and opened blind eyes.

Luke was a Greek physician, so he had a particular interest in Jesus’ healing ministry. Many scriptures in Isaiah refer to spiritual and physical blindness, and several where God opens the eyes of the blind; and giving sight to the blind was one of the astounding miracles Jesus did that set Him apart from all other prophets.

After promising freedom to prisoners, Isaiah 61:2-3 continues: “To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, ³ To grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”

When Jesus read from Isaiah 61, he stopped right after he read, “to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” He then said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He did not read the next phrase “… and the day of vengeance of our God.” Why? Jesus’ first coming was not to take vengeance against the wicked, but to offer Himself a ransom for many. Yet in His calling in Isaiah 61 there is a portent of His Second Coming, when Christ will return as a conquering king. Psalm 110, a messianic psalm that Jesus quoted concerning Himself, concludes this way:

The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside; therefore He will lift up His head.

Before Jesus returns, according to Revelation 19, the redeemed will be caught up into heaven where we will enjoy the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Immediately thereafter, Jesus will return from heaven. He will bring His mighty host of angels and all the saints with Him riding on white horses – symbolic of royalty and purity. The Bible says, “From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

This will fulfill “the day of vengeance of our God.” But until then, the people of the earth are still living in the year of the Lord’s favor. Notice the contrast between “the favorable year” and the day of vengeance in v. 2. It recalls the promise in Psalm 30: “His anger is but for a moment; His favor is for a lifetime.” For those of you who have pledged your faith in Christ and have dedicated your life to Him as a child of God, you have family rights to claim God’s favor throughout your life.

We enter into God’s favorable year when we respond to the Good News, the gospel of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection for our redemption. The right response is to believe that His death paid for your sins. Then turn to God with your whole heart in humble and earnest petition for Jesus to come into your life and change you from within. This is the gospel that saves you and will bring the Holy Spirit into your innermost being, your spirit, which is the human heart.

When the Holy Spirit comes into your heart, He takes out your old sinful nature that made you dead to God, and regenerates your spirit with the nature of Christ. He then seals Himself within as “the Holy Spirit of promise.” An ancient seal both identified the sender by the seal, and forbad the opening of that sealed document by anyone other than the intended recipient. So the Holy Spirit identifies you as a child of God to all the angels and demons in the spiritual realm, and declares to Satan and his wicked host, “Hands off God’s kid!”

Isaiah concludes this amazing prophecy about our Lord, the Messiah, the Anointed One, this way. Jesus will: “comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”

This is God’s promise to you who have joined your life to Jesus Christ. So long as you stay true to Him, Jesus will be there to comfort you when you mourn, bringing you a garland of victory rather than the ashes of defeat. He’ll give you the oil of gladness and a mantle of praise over a spirit of fainting and heaviness. God will firmly plant you as “oaks of righteousness” that He may be glorified from your life.

All of this is yours when you declare Jesus to be Lord and Savior in your life, and set the course of your life as a Christ-follower, now and forevermore.

Let us pray.