SPEAKER_02: Y'all don't even understand like the uh surrealness of this moment for me.
SPEAKER_02: It's been so long, it's been so great for some family reunions for some folks.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I'm so glad to be with you.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, now I realize there's many of you who are like, I don't know who you are, bro.
SPEAKER_02: So, all right.
SPEAKER_02: So, my name's Armand Sheffi.
SPEAKER_02: Uh as Erica said, uh actually, when I was ordained as a part of this community, they called me Pastor Fury.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know that was that was when uh the Avengers had just released.
SPEAKER_02: Nick Fury, that's that's kind of so I'm not angry, all right.
SPEAKER_02: Just just so just so we're clear.
SPEAKER_02: And uh I spent years as a part of this community and uh was a spiritual growth pastor and been loving doing ministry.
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you guys, then 2018 came and I had what I call my second conversion.
SPEAKER_02: Um, have you ever had one of those moments where you've you've you know read a passage of scripture for so long that you you feel like you understand it, and then suddenly the Lord like gets his highlighter out and like highlights something and it hits you in a different way, or maybe there was a truth that you've always known that now becomes way more profound to you.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I had one of those moments happen to me in 2018 when I had unplugged from everything and I went on vacation with my family in Canada.
SPEAKER_02: We went to Niagara Falls.
SPEAKER_02: I was excited but then disappointed from the Canada side of Niagara Falls.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just being honest, you guys.
SPEAKER_02: It was like Minne Vegas, and I was expecting like this sweet, quiet retreat.
SPEAKER_02: But I was blessed by the Lord the few days after that part when we got to camp alongside Lake Erie, and it was in that time where it was so peaceful and quiet.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, life is busy.
SPEAKER_02: Y'all know, y'all know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Life can be very full, and in the busyness, it's sometimes really hard to stop long enough to truly hear from the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And in that time, there was there was a conversation that God had started with me years prior that He reinitiated through His Word, and it was about the poor and the marginalized and the vulnerable of our world.
SPEAKER_02: And as we had it back on uh this this this car ride, 10-hour car ride, the whole time.
SPEAKER_02: And I, you guys, I fall asleep while driving, but I was so encapsulated by God's word just reverberating through my brain in my heart.
SPEAKER_02: I was awake and driving that whole 10 hours just ruminating on what I recognized he was now speaking to me.
SPEAKER_02: He was there wasn't a lightning bolt, there wasn't like some audible voice from the Lord, but there was this unmistakable sense that he was calling me to stop and pay attention to what he'd been speaking to me.
SPEAKER_02: Somewhere along that road, the Lord had convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was now being sent out to explore a call to the least of these and to explore ministry in a different way, a way that was undefined.
SPEAKER_02: And now, even like eight years later, I'm still struggling to get a full grasp of and make full sense of.
SPEAKER_02: But over the weeks and months that followed, I kept coming back to God's word.
SPEAKER_02: And as I read, I started noticing this thread that seemed to run through the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_02: It was a thread that always felt true, but I never really paid close enough attention to it from end to end.
SPEAKER_02: And as I tracked this thread of God's grace and mercy towards the forgotten, towards the poor, I saw it again and again and again.
SPEAKER_02: It was the widows, the orphans, the vulnerable, the foreigners, the hungry, the prisoners, the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: Over and over again.
SPEAKER_02: Why do the law, the prophets, the psalms, Jesus Himself, and the apostles all keep coming back to and pointing to these same people?
SPEAKER_02: The more I read, the more I became convinced that this wasn't a side theme in Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: But this was something that God was revealing, a slice of his heart that he was revealing to me.
SPEAKER_02: And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
SPEAKER_02: And today I just want to spend some time.
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, bringing the bag probably makes you nervous because I'm moving in, so it might be a minute.
SPEAKER_02: It might be a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna still get to lunch, but it might be close.
SPEAKER_02: All right, so today I want to show you what God showed me as we explore this one simple question.
SPEAKER_02: What was God's heart?
SPEAKER_02: What has God's heart always been in regard to the people that the rest of the world often forgets?
SPEAKER_02: Our bottom line, the main thing that we're gonna be looking at over and over again today, is that God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning, I want us to follow God along this river of his grace throughout scripture and track this truth.
SPEAKER_02: Now, that doesn't mean that we're hey surprised, it's a guest preacher, so we're gonna do things a little bit different.
SPEAKER_02: We're not picking one passage and just hanging out in the one passage, but we're gonna step back and see this thread of what God has been saying and calling his people to throughout all of history.
SPEAKER_02: So, yes, we're gonna switch it up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're gonna start with the passage that really God used to grip my heart.
SPEAKER_02: And I thought that might be the most appropriate place to lean in.
SPEAKER_02: It's in Isaiah 61, looking at verses one through three.
SPEAKER_02: It says, The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
SPEAKER_02: 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 favor and the day of vengeance of 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 joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
SPEAKER_02: They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
SPEAKER_02: First point that we're gonna dive in on here today is God's anointing has always had an appointment.
SPEAKER_02: Or an assignment.
SPEAKER_02: Mess up the first point.
SPEAKER_02: God's I mean, he did have an appointment, right?
SPEAKER_02: God's anointing has always had an assignment.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I need to give you a little bit of context on what's going on here in this passage in Isaiah, because if we don't really understand who he's talking to, we're really not gonna grasp the radical nature of this statement that he's making.
SPEAKER_02: So Isaiah, he's talking to a people that are in exile, right?
SPEAKER_02: This isn't just like, oh yeah, I feel disconnected from the Lord right now.
SPEAKER_02: No, this was a nation that was ripped up from their roots and brought to a foreign land and scattered, forgotten, that were they were separated, they their neighbors wouldn't even remember them now.
SPEAKER_02: And you gotta imagine what that does to a person's sense of identity.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe even imagining, am I even forgotten by God Himself?
SPEAKER_02: And it's into that exam, that same exact darkness that Isaiah is speaking.
SPEAKER_02: And and God speaks through the prophet and says, The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Now let that that sink in for a second.
SPEAKER_02: Anointed.
SPEAKER_02: That's not like some simple word.
SPEAKER_02: It's not something to just gloss past, right?
SPEAKER_02: Throughout the Bible, being anointed wasn't just a nice spiritual metaphor, but it was a way that you would set apart kings, priests, prophets for a specific God-given mission.
SPEAKER_02: Anointing was oil poured out, marking someone as sent.
SPEAKER_02: So when Isaiah declares the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, keep in mind, he is speaking as the mouth of God, and God is not just saying, Yeah, you know, I kind of have this like passing interest in the poor.
SPEAKER_02: No, he is he's definitely saying that exact reaching out to the forgotten is what the anointing is for.
SPEAKER_02: That is the assignment that the anointing has.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a side project attached to the mission, it is the mission.
SPEAKER_02: God's anointing has always had an assignment.
SPEAKER_02: Not to the powerful, not to the comfortable, not to the people who already have a seat at the table, but the poor, the vulnerable, those without power status, the people that everyone else in the world is inclined to just walk by without a second glance.
SPEAKER_02: And look at what follows, not just the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, also the captives, the prisoners, the brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_02: Anybody here brokenhearted?
SPEAKER_02: People bound, people shut in.
SPEAKER_02: If you're watching online right now because you couldn't be here, this is for you.
SPEAKER_02: People whose stories should have been over, and to each of them, God doesn't send a lecture, he doesn't send a bunch of lists of things that they need to do before.
SPEAKER_02: He sends good news, he sends beauty for ashes, he sends joy for mourning.
SPEAKER_02: A people, he says, that were lost, that were exiles, right?
SPEAKER_02: They're going to be oaks of righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: Y'all know what an oak tree is, strong, baby, and it's got roots.
SPEAKER_02: Talk about an unmovable tree.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying, I am planting, talking to these people in exile, I am planting a people like oaks of righteousness, no longer scattered.
SPEAKER_02: And why?
SPEAKER_02: For the display of his splendor.
SPEAKER_02: For the display, God is showing off, and he wants to do it through the forgotten, through the poor, through the vulnerable.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, uh growing up, I uh how wait, raise your hand if you're a middle child.
SPEAKER_02: Come on, yeah, yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_02: I know some of y'all are struggling because you normally don't get attention, but this is your moment.
SPEAKER_02: I am you.
SPEAKER_02: We are middle children.
SPEAKER_02: And often, if you know, you can feel forgotten, you can feel lost in the shuffle.
SPEAKER_02: And I had that same situation with my older brother.
SPEAKER_02: Man, he was he was always getting into trouble if he's watching.
SPEAKER_02: I love you, bro.
SPEAKER_02: And my younger brother, I mean, I think he followed him, but I was in the middle trying to hold things down, trying to keep things together, but often I got lost.
SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, there was one place where I I guess I found a way to make my presence known.
SPEAKER_02: It was in the classroom.
SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't that I was just like a brilliant student, but I would get through my homework fast.
SPEAKER_02: And we're talking like fourth grade, okay?
SPEAKER_02: And I would I would be done, I'd be slamming my pencil down to demonstrate that I was finished with the task.
SPEAKER_02: But uh the problem happened was I would start just like making conversations.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody else is still working, not everybody, but like most of the kids are still working.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, hey, so what are you doing after?
SPEAKER_02: And if you're a teacher, and I've I've been a teacher for a decade, so that's frustrating, right?
SPEAKER_02: But this teacher, she took uh uh, I don't know, I don't want to call it unforgivable, but an approach I will never forget because I'm literally here 40 years later talking about it.
SPEAKER_02: She decided that one way to keep me quiet in the rest of the classroom, you know, focused was to put me in a refrigerator box in the side of the classroom.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: But only when I was done with my homework.
SPEAKER_02: So I got to spend the rest of the classroom in the middle of the class doing my thing.
SPEAKER_02: But when I was finished early, I knew where I was going.
SPEAKER_02: And that happened for about a week straight.
SPEAKER_02: I got comfortable in there, you guys.
SPEAKER_02: I started like new kids on the block were a thing, then I had like little stickers up.
SPEAKER_02: I was making myself at home in my little corner, tucked away, until one day my grandmother.
SPEAKER_02: Y'all know where this is going.
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother, my sweet grandma Vanola Davis, this woman raised three kids on the south side of Chicago, working two jobs, and she was the epitome to me of who Jesus was.
SPEAKER_02: She was my Bible before I really started reading.
SPEAKER_02: And she walked in there the end of that week, trying to bring me lunch, and she saw me in the refrigerator box.
SPEAKER_02: And all I actually heard was her saying, Get my grandson out of that box right now.
SPEAKER_02: She wasn't worried about nothing else.
SPEAKER_02: And you guys, I don't know what the rest of that conversation was out in the hallway, but I know after that moment, I never felt forgotten in that classroom again.
SPEAKER_02: Because someone who had been close enough to Jesus, right, who had received that assignment, knew I'm gonna fight for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: They're not gonna be lost on my watch.
SPEAKER_02: And I was, yeah, forgotten in a very slight way, like those in Isaiah 61, the captives, the prisoners, people shut in, people whose situation had gone on long enough that they'd stop expecting anyone to even come.
SPEAKER_02: Many people feel that way today, in a very real way.
SPEAKER_02: People who don't know where their next meal is gonna come from, that don't know how they're gonna make rent this month.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't just like an ancient image coming out of the prophets.
SPEAKER_02: God's anointing has always had an assignment.
SPEAKER_02: So the question is will we, like my grandmother, receive the assignment and stand in the gap for others today?
SPEAKER_02: Because God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: And here's the thing that changed everything for me, you guys.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just Isaiah 61.
SPEAKER_02: The more I kept reading, the more I kept going back to God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Somebody say, God's word.
SPEAKER_02: The more I kept going back to God's word, I would see this theme over and over again.
SPEAKER_02: Let's quickly look at the next one.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna we're gonna take we're gonna take you back before we go forward, okay?
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna go back now, still in the book of Isaiah, but just a few chapters ahead or about uh before that in Isaiah 58, and we're gonna see this very clearly that the worship God wants moves towards those many move from.
SPEAKER_02: The worship God wants moves towards those many move from.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 58.
SPEAKER_02: He just got through explaining to or like describing the the religious ceremonies that everybody was doing, and and essentially saying, You're missing it, you're missing it in all your worship.
SPEAKER_02: And then he gives them very clear instructions.
SPEAKER_02: And I apologize for trying to move quickly because we're trying to cover like the whole Bible today.
SPEAKER_02: So I say, Isaiah 58 and verse 6, he says, Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
SPEAKER_02: Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter?
SPEAKER_02: When you see them naked to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
SPEAKER_02: Y'all, God's people had been fasting, they were worshiping, they were doing the church things, right?
SPEAKER_02: And it's not that there's anything wrong with those, but it's incomplete if it's missing the heart of God and the very clear things that he calls us to.
SPEAKER_02: He says you fasted and it changed nothing about how you treated people.
SPEAKER_02: People are still being taken advantage of, people in need are still being ignored, and you just go about your religious activity as normal.
SPEAKER_02: God says, actually, what fasting, what worship, what that looks like is loosing change, sharing your food with the hungry, clothing the naked, not just hands lifted in praise, but hands lifted out to help those that need that help.
SPEAKER_02: We see it every week in this.
SPEAKER_02: This is a giving us an example of that weekly rhythm.
SPEAKER_02: This is when they're going to worship, right?
SPEAKER_02: The fact is that God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: So we've seen it now twice.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen it twice in Isaiah, once in that promise for the anointed one that has been sent, and one in what real worship really looks like from week to week.
SPEAKER_02: This goes back even further than Isaiah, you guys.
SPEAKER_02: It was already written into the land itself generations before Isaiah ever spoke a word.
SPEAKER_02: So now we're gonna see that God commanded provision instead of waiting for our compassion.
SPEAKER_02: God commanded provision instead of waiting for our compassion.
SPEAKER_02: Looking at Leviticus 19, this is part of the the laws that that the Lord gave his people because it's like y'all are wow, y'all need help.
SPEAKER_02: Let me make it real clear, real structure on how to do life.
SPEAKER_02: So they had a lot of them.
SPEAKER_02: But listen to this Leviticus 19, verses 9 through 10.
SPEAKER_02: He says, When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
SPEAKER_02: Do we know what we're talking about here?
SPEAKER_02: So this was an agricultural society, right?
SPEAKER_02: So there was fields of corn or wheat or whatever the harvest was that they needed to go and get, right?
SPEAKER_02: This is how people made their livelihood.
SPEAKER_02: This is how people were fed.
SPEAKER_02: And it says, When you reap the harvest, so you like, you know, you you reap what you sow, right?
SPEAKER_02: You plant, you plant a seed and it's gonna grow, and you get to reap it, right?
SPEAKER_02: When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field.
SPEAKER_02: So, like if this were the field, he's saying, Don't go all the way to the edge to gather the the grain or the the corn or whatever it was that you planted there.
SPEAKER_02: Leave that, right?
SPEAKER_02: Don't go all the way, or the gleanings of your harvest.
SPEAKER_02: So when they're grabbing the things, look, stuff falls, right?
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: So those are the gleanings.
SPEAKER_02: Like, don't go back and get it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm getting ahead of the text.
SPEAKER_02: Hold on.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: Do not go over your vineyard a second time.
SPEAKER_02: See, I wouldn't lie.
SPEAKER_02: Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen, leave them for the poor and the foreigner.
SPEAKER_02: I am the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_02: He tries to make it pretty clear.
SPEAKER_02: Like, these aren't just like recommendations of things that would make for a wonderful place.
SPEAKER_02: I am the Lord your God, he says.
SPEAKER_02: When he says that, he's like, yo, just so we're clear, commandment.
SPEAKER_02: You're mine, they're mine, this is all mine.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you did the work, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You you planted, right?
SPEAKER_02: You reap what you sow.
SPEAKER_02: But the Lord's like, yes, and I've left some of what you've sown for those who did not have that opportunity.
SPEAKER_02: And if you know the story of Ruth, we're not gonna tell it because I do not have time.
SPEAKER_02: But if you know, if you know the story of Ruth by the same book, I recommend you go read it.
SPEAKER_02: It's uh doozy.
SPEAKER_02: She is a widow, she is uh a foreigner who's got nothing.
SPEAKER_02: She's she's got no husband, she's just surviving off of what that very law.
SPEAKER_02: That whole book of Ruth is because of that law, because of the gleaning laws, she's able to provide for herself, right?
SPEAKER_02: Before Boaz was even to be stirred for compassion, there was the commandment that called him to leave that.
SPEAKER_02: You know, um, there's been years where I've just felt compelled to give, right?
SPEAKER_02: But how many of y'all know?
SPEAKER_02: Like, sometimes the money just ain't moneying.
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: And like I would go through, you know, weeks and months.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, man, I just don't have it this month.
SPEAKER_02: I I don't know how I'm gonna come up with this month.
SPEAKER_02: But then you guys, as I continued in God's word, somebody said God's word, he reminded me that it's all his.
SPEAKER_02: It's all his.
SPEAKER_02: And so then I I pre-decided.
SPEAKER_02: I predecided that wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02: If this is all his, y'all that tithe know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02: If this is all his, maybe I should decide in advance that I just want to be benefit or uh generous, I just want to be obedient to God's call.
SPEAKER_02: So let me just earmark.
SPEAKER_02: And we went to our bank and opened up a free checking account, and it doesn't do anything except take a percentage out every paycheck, each and every paycheck, and it sits there, and I've just called the benevolence, and I haven't decided every week or month who this is going to, but here's what happens I've decided that this isn't going to me, this is going to someone in need, and you know what's the craziest thing?
SPEAKER_02: Like, God keeps sending people in need, and man, I've got this money.
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, here you go.
SPEAKER_02: Because God commanded provision.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, we're not we're not rich by well, we're rich rich by global means.
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
SPEAKER_02: But I my my wife and I, we do not make a whole lot of money.
SPEAKER_02: And we still struggle to.
SPEAKER_02: To make ends meet.
SPEAKER_02: But I've been so blessed to know that more times than not, I don't have to turn people away who are in way worse situations than I am.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying this to like celebrate me or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that God had to slap me around and teach me, you guys.
SPEAKER_02: I've been gone for seven years.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that's been going on for seven years.
SPEAKER_02: It was crazy because it was almost like God had plans for providing for those in need through his people.
SPEAKER_02: But the question is, do we do we have plans, like actual plans, for being used by him in that way?
SPEAKER_02: What does leaving the edges look like for you?
SPEAKER_02: What is making margin for those in need look like for you?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is doing like I did with a bank account.
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
SPEAKER_02: Whatever your percentage might be that you feel led to.
SPEAKER_02: And I would recommend you going to God, letting Him lead this, and not you just make some arbitrary number.
SPEAKER_02: We're not, we're not out here just trying to like make things up on our own.
SPEAKER_02: We're being called to be spirit-led people, right?
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: So go speak to the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's you deciding in advance where you might scale back if somebody had a serious need that came to your way.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's you, if you're a business owner, are there services that you can provide somebody that might help them get a leg up, get out of a situation that maybe they're in?
SPEAKER_02: Let's find ways to align our lives with the heart of God.
SPEAKER_02: Because even in the harvest, even in the fields, generations before Isaiah, God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: So we've seen multiple footprints along this river here.
SPEAKER_02: And now we're gonna come to what I think is probably the most powerful one of them all.
SPEAKER_02: And then here's the bottom or the main point for this one.
SPEAKER_02: God scheduled remembering the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't just leave it to chance, he scheduled it.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm gonna warn you guys this one may be the most complex to understand because math.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: So I don't like math.
SPEAKER_02: Leviticus 25, starting in uh verse eight, says, Count off seven Sabbath years, seven times seven years, so that the seven Sabbath years amount to a period of 49 years.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds like a tongue twister, right?
SPEAKER_02: Seven Sabbath years, the seven.
SPEAKER_02: So do the math with me for a second on what's being described here.
SPEAKER_02: So every seven years, Israel had a sabbatical year.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: People wouldn't be doing their normal harvesting.
SPEAKER_02: There would be like if you owed me money, I would be required to forgive that debt.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's every seven years, it's the sabbatical year.
SPEAKER_02: It was a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_02: And then it says, so that the seven, I'm sorry, count off seven Sabbath years.
SPEAKER_02: So we got seven years, Sabbath year.
SPEAKER_02: Count off seven of those.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: That's 49 years.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, they did the math for us.
SPEAKER_02: So the seven Sabbath years amount to a period of 49 years.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Now something even more monumental happened on that landmark.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 9 says, then a trumpet sounded everywhere.
SPEAKER_02: On the tenth day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement, sound the trumpet throughout your land.
SPEAKER_02: I'm rusty, I'm rusty.
SPEAKER_02: The Day of Atonement, you guys, was the most special day of the calendar for Jews, and even today, still celebrated as Yom Kippur.
SPEAKER_02: And it was a day the high priest would go and perform religious rituals.
SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna get into those right now, but there was their way of gaining forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: He would go according to the way that God commanded and instructed to provide forgiveness for the people.
SPEAKER_02: It's a big deal.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 10, it says, Consecrate.
SPEAKER_02: So we're we're we talking about they're sounding the trumpet everywhere on that day, Day of Atonement, sounding the trumpet throughout your land.
SPEAKER_02: Consecrate the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.
SPEAKER_02: It shall be a jubilee for you.
SPEAKER_02: Each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
SPEAKER_02: On the day of atonement in the 50th year, a trumpet sounded across the land.
SPEAKER_01: And when the trumpet sounded, everything changed at once.
SPEAKER_02: In that moment, death cancel.
SPEAKER_02: Land returned to the family that it originally owned.
SPEAKER_02: Are you catching that visual?
SPEAKER_02: People who had sold themselves into service just to survive are now set free.
SPEAKER_02: And they're sent home.
SPEAKER_02: Think about what that actually meant for someone who was living in that system.
SPEAKER_02: Let's say hardship had hit your family and a bad harvest or an illness had come, and whatever it was, and over time you've gone into so much debt that maybe you even had to sell yourself as a servant to the people that you owed it to.
SPEAKER_02: And now, in this moment, that life sentence is canceled.
SPEAKER_02: But in this, in this system, the power would stay with the powerful.
SPEAKER_02: Before this Jubilee, the poor would remain poor.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: The gap would only widen with every generation.
SPEAKER_02: You guys know something about what I'm talking about, even before you read this.
SPEAKER_02: But God knew this and he built a self-destruct mechanism into the whole system.
SPEAKER_01: Not a suggestion that people ought to be generous eventually.
SPEAKER_02: But it would be a trumpet, a set date, a guaranteed reset that would deepen or that wouldn't depend on if your creditor really felt generous or was feeling compassionate.
SPEAKER_02: It was scheduled into their calendar.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, I've got a friend that many of you here might know.
SPEAKER_02: His name's Chewie.
SPEAKER_02: I think we got a pic a picture of uh me and Chewie there.
SPEAKER_02: Chewie, he had a really rough life for the first half of it for sure.
SPEAKER_02: Um, he grew up in a broken home around a lot of gang activity, and as you know, that often leads to those same people going into that same life.
SPEAKER_02: And Chewie made many a bad choice, ended up even becoming a leader of that same gang, and went away, did multiple prison stents, and then his last time, he ended up coming to the doors of Torch, which is the old one half of this community.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna go into the history.
SPEAKER_02: He he he showed up and he experienced Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus radically transformed his life, and then he's he's been spending every day since then trying to stand in the gap for those same people that were like him, that were were lost, that were forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: But here's part of the problem that is just a natural reality for Chewy.
SPEAKER_02: With that record, imagine how employment has been for him.
SPEAKER_02: Whole industries closed to him.
SPEAKER_02: Before he would even show up, and they would know how Jesus changed him, they would see the record, and the doors would be closed.
SPEAKER_02: He couldn't even get a job at Home Depot.
SPEAKER_02: But then earlier this year, his record was expunged.
SPEAKER_02: As far as the law is now concerned, it's as though it never happened.
SPEAKER_02: Not because he spent another decade proving himself, but because there was a judge who saw more than a collection of his past wrongs, but recognized the fingerprints of God on his changed life.
SPEAKER_02: Chewy's record, it's wiped clean.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, that's Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: That's jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: It's a trumpet sounding, a debt that had followed him for years, just simply gone.
SPEAKER_02: And if an earthly legal system can offer a reset like that, how much more can we trust that God, who guaranteed a reset, is for us, it's for the forgotten, is for those who so many walk past.
SPEAKER_02: God scheduled remembering the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: Even the calendar commanded that across the decades, even when the gap felt permanent, because God has always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: So, what would being a person of the Jubilee look like for you?
SPEAKER_02: Gotta switch sweat rags.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a prop.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't need a bag.
SPEAKER_02: What would it look like for you to be a person of the Jubilee?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe there's people that owe you past debts that you are just like, where's my money?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe God might be calling you to set them free.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe there's even relationships.
SPEAKER_02: Might not always be money, relationships where you've been holding a tally.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna see if they call me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna passively, aggressively sit here and just wait for them to call me.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you need to free some people, you need to set some people free.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's what it looks like for you to be a person of the Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: Now, here's where I really want to lean in for a second, and man, I'm already way over time.
SPEAKER_02: Because, y'all, we can't stop without this next connection.
SPEAKER_02: Because, y'all, this is it.
SPEAKER_02: Can I do it?
SPEAKER_02: All right, all right.
SPEAKER_02: Go back with me for a quick moment to Isaiah 61, the passage where we started with.
SPEAKER_02: Remember what it said to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor?
SPEAKER_02: That phrase, the year of the Lord's favor, it's not just a poetic sweet phrase.
SPEAKER_02: That's Jubilee language.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah is in essence saying there is coming a jubilee for everything, not just the land, not just money, everything that's been broken, everything that's been scattered, lost, and everyone that's been forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: So we've got one footprint in a promise, one footprint in worship, one in the harvest, and one footprint in a 50-year fresh start.
SPEAKER_02: And now we're gonna finally see who is it that steps into this?
SPEAKER_02: Who is the anointed one that Isaiah was pointing to all along?
SPEAKER_02: And here's our point.
SPEAKER_02: God's pattern and promise becomes a person.
SPEAKER_02: Luke 4, 16 through 21.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna skip through, jump right down to 18 just for the sake of time.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna let you know.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus went into uh uh his normal hometown back in Nazareth, and he's in the synagogue, and they hand him a scroll.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and now he starts to read.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 18 the spirit of the Lord is on me.
SPEAKER_02: Wait, we've heard this before.
SPEAKER_02: This is Luke, right?
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
SPEAKER_02: He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
SPEAKER_02: Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
SPEAKER_02: The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.
SPEAKER_02: And he began by saying to them, Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Picture the scene.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus, he's just in his everyday synagogue back in his hometown, and it wasn't a coincidence that he rolled to this pot in the scroll.
SPEAKER_02: He reads it, the anointing, the good news, freedom for the captive, sight for the blind, the year of the Lord's favor.
SPEAKER_02: And then he says, Not someday, today.
SPEAKER_02: Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
SPEAKER_02: Today, in this room, in front of all the people who've watched him grow up, Jesus stood up and said, I am the one this whole book is pointing to.
SPEAKER_02: I am the anointed one, the anointing Isaiah spoke of resting on him, the good news to the poor, the worship Isaiah 58 demanded, the provision built into the harvest, now standing in front of them, the bread of life himself, the anointed one, the trumpet of Jubilee, the year of the Lord's favor.
SPEAKER_02: But did he misread the passage?
SPEAKER_02: It's weird.
SPEAKER_02: Did he?
SPEAKER_02: I feel like he missed something.
SPEAKER_02: He said the year of the Lord's favor, and then he stopped.
SPEAKER_02: What happened to the second half of verse 2?
SPEAKER_02: The vengeance of God.
SPEAKER_02: He skipped the vengeance of God, or what if it was an accidental omission?
SPEAKER_02: What if, in stopping right there, Jesus is standing looking at the favor and the vengeance and standing in the gap?
SPEAKER_02: What if Jesus is saying, Today, grace is yours?
SPEAKER_02: Grace, I will take the vengeance on myself, says Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: God's pattern and promise became a person.
SPEAKER_02: And then we're gonna we're gonna jump ahead here because man at that time.
SPEAKER_02: But the question is, did it end in that synagogue 2,000 years ago?
SPEAKER_02: Does it keep going?
SPEAKER_02: Our closing reminder is this God is inviting you to join him.
SPEAKER_02: John 5, 19, Jesus says to a bunch of people who are like, Jesus, why are you out here healing people on the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_02: This is not a day for that.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says to them, in verse 19, John 5, Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself.
SPEAKER_02: He can do only what he sees the Father doing.
SPEAKER_02: Because whatever the Father does, the Son also does.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, he's letting us know that he's just not out here as a subcontractor taking a job description and making it happen.
SPEAKER_02: He's walking hand in hand with the father, very much in the way that even an apprentice would be in watching and doing exactly what he sees the father in heaven doing.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: He's walking in submission to God's mission.
SPEAKER_02: And then he hands that invitation to us.
SPEAKER_02: We won't read all the scriptures, but if you've gotten notes, you see it all throughout Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Everything that he declares to his disciples to do.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, when you guys are having a banquet and you're inviting people, don't go get all the rich folks who are gonna be able to pay you back.
SPEAKER_02: Go find those folks who can't repay you.
SPEAKER_02: Invite the cripples, the beggars, the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Invite them in, right?
SPEAKER_02: Even Paul reminds us, be a cheerful giver, right?
SPEAKER_02: He says, You reap what you sow, but if you reap, or if you sow sparingly, you'll reap sparingly.
SPEAKER_02: But then he says, you know, don't give out of compulsion, but based on what you've already decided to do, we need to make some decisions, y'all.
SPEAKER_02: Not just walking around looking for the compassion to rise up.
SPEAKER_02: The anointing, look, here's the real question.
SPEAKER_02: The real question isn't, are you going to be able to go out of here today and come up with a decision for how to do something?
SPEAKER_02: The real question is, do you belong to Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Are you his?
SPEAKER_02: In the same way that he's only doing what he sees the Father doing.
SPEAKER_02: Let us do what we see Jesus doing.
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother, you guys, she was the sweetest woman.
SPEAKER_02: I've already explained that.
SPEAKER_02: But she, I can't, I lost her 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: And from what I've already explained to you, you can see a piece of where she is in my heart.
SPEAKER_02: And you guys, I can't tell you if it was because of her giving us her favorite putter butter pecan ice cream on hot summer days.
SPEAKER_02: That's the reason why I miss her, or if it was just the way that she would, you know, uh show us uh her her singing her gospel songs on her rocking chair, or if it was the fact that she would take me to get McDonald's each and every day before school.
SPEAKER_02: But I'm actually convinced it was because in our loud and broken home, she found the quiet middle child.
SPEAKER_02: And she would she would rub my back to sleep at night.
SPEAKER_02: You guys, if we belong to Jesus, like I know my grandmother belonged to Jesus, like I know so many of you belong to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Let's follow him into pursuit of the forgotten, of the poor, of the vulnerable, of those that the world looks past, because God is inviting you to join him, because he's always been for the forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, we thank you that you didn't forget us.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you that you always had a plan to pursue us.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you that you, the anointed one, Jesus, have given that same spirit to all of us who have given our lives to you.
SPEAKER_02: Would you now empower us, send us out?
SPEAKER_02: Help us to see you at work, and give us a heart of obedience to join you in that.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' mighty name we pray.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it.
SPEAKER_00: Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel.
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at Bible Leadership.com.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.