Accepted In Isaiah 61

Jesus once read Isaiah 61 out loud in His hometown and then stopped mid verse, closed the scroll, and said the words were fulfilled. That one moment raises a huge question: why announce “the acceptable year of the Lord” but pause before “the day of vengeance”? We dig into that turning point and what it reveals about mercy, judgment, and where we are in God’s timeline right now.

We walk through Isaiah 61 and 62 with Pastor Carl, tracing the Messiah’s mission to bring good news to the poor in spirit, heal the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to captives. The conversation gets practical fast: sin is not just a bad habit, it is bondage, and God’s grace is not permission to stay stuck. The promise is forgiveness and freedom, comfort for mourners, and joy that replaces heaviness. Along the way we connect the “year of favor” to the Sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee, a vivid picture of release, restoration, and returning to our true Owner.

We also zoom out to the bigger story of Israel, the Gentiles, and the church, and why our place in God’s family is mercy from start to finish. We talk about what it means to be planted as “trees of righteousness,” why God gets the glory for real change, and how hope in God’s promises keeps us steady when the world feels loud and chaotic.

If this message helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs comfort, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What line from Isaiah 61 hits you the hardest right now?

What makes a Calvary Chapel a Calvary Chapel. Join Pastor Carl as he goes through one of the Calvary Chapel Distinctives on The Mountain Cross Minute.

The 20th anniversary of Facing the Giants, Monday September 14 - 6:30PM at the Smoky Mountain Cinema in Waynesville.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:05

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

And the Messiah will accept them. And all that they can do is just rejoice in the Lord as a result. There's no reason for God to love me, to accept me, to change me, but he has. And so what can I do but to praise him for it? This is written to Israel, but it's applicable to us today. Because between these two comings, he's been focusing on this thing called the church.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Today, Pastor Carl explains that when the Messiah accepts you, the only right response is to rejoice in the Lord. God does not need to love you, accept you, or change you. And yet, he has done exactly that. His love is completely undeserved. All you can do is praise him for the mercy and grace he has poured out on you. Though this was written to Israel, it speaks directly to you today. God is building his church, and that includes you. Your place in his family is a gift of pure mercy and grace. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

We'll be in the book of Isaiah, chapter 61 and 62. So turn to chapter 61 of Isaiah as we get started. Chapter 61 starts out with the words of the Messiah himself and the reason why he's here. Verse 1 of chapter 61 says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. This is a man that has a purpose. This is a man that has been given the Holy Spirit of God, anointed for service, to do a work for God. And that work is to preach the good tidings to the poor, the good news to the poor, the poor in spirit. Jesus talked about blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You want to be with God in heaven? You need to have a poor spirit. What's your poor spirit? The spirit that recognizes no matter what I do, no matter what I try to do to please God, to enter into his favor, in and of myself, I can't do it. You know, when I look at myself, I really realize I I I'm so far from the righteous requirement of God, which is perfection. Anyone close to perfection in the room? Our entrance into the kingdom of heaven begins with our with our humility, recognizing our fallness, recognizing our need for help, our need for a savior. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted ever since the fall, ever since Adam and Eve broke the word of God and partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which they weren't supposed to. Death entered into the picture. And our world has been turned upside down. Has anybody noticed this is a crazy world that we live in? And has anybody had a broken heart? A broken heart because you lost a loved one, because the things you keep trying to do you just can't do. And just looking at our nation and seeing all the riots, doesn't that break your heart? The Lord has come to heal the brokenhearted, to make the wrong things right. Now and forever. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Bound by what? The chains of sin. Sin is so deceitful. We think it's all it's all exciting, it's all new, it's all fulfilling, but it leads to death and brokenness. And the Lord has come not just to forgive us our sins, because we tend to think, oh, God will forgive me for this, so it doesn't matter how much I do, I'll just keep doing it. That's not the deal. The deal is he's come to forgive us and to free us from it because we're slaves to it. Do you understand? You're slaves to your sin. You're stuck in your sin. That's all that we know how to do because we've been born into sin, because of Adam and Eve. We're born into sin, we're destined for hell, and all that we can do is sin. And because we're so deceived by it, we think it's cool. But the truth is we're stuck in it. We're slaves to it. If we try not to do it, we can't not do it. That's all we can do. But the Messiah has come in order to free us from those chains, so that we can turn from darkness and live in the light, so that we can have purpose, so we could experience the love and relationship with the Lord that He intended with us for us from the beginning, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of God's favor. Another way to put it, this is the Sabbath year. Every seven years they were to leave their fields fallow so that it could regenerate. Every seven years they were to um reset debts, they were to give freedom to slaves, and especially during the year of Jubilee, every 50 years. That's after seven, seven years is 49. The next one is 50. The year of Jubilee, if you had land that you had leased for 49 years, you have to give that land back to its original owner that God had given him. And and in the year of Jubilee, we're freed and now given back to our original owner, who is the Lord Himself. We're no longer under the influence of the enemy. We're now free in him. It's the acceptable year of the Lord. This is the purpose that the Messiah is reading. Does this sound familiar to you? When Jesus came and he began his ministry, he was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. And John said, What am I baptizing you for? You need to be baptizing me. And he says, For all righteousness to be fulfilled, it's the right thing. He said, Okay, I'll do it. And then he ducks him under and he comes out, and the Father from heaven says, Listen to my son, in whom I'm well pleased. You know, and and and then the Holy Spirit comes upon him and anoints him with power just like a dove. And what's the next thing that happens? He's driven into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days by the devil. That's a great way to start your ministry, right? But the Lord was victorious over the devil in the wilderness, in his flesh, in the power of the Spirit. Just he came to earth to live a life just like us. We can do the same things he does because he lived as we did in the power of the Holy Spirit. You know what? He sent the power of the Holy Spirit to us to live the same kind of lives. Anyway, after the wilderness experience, he began teaching in synagogues and he came to his hometown of Nazareth. And as was the uh the tradition, he would come and you know, certain rabbis would be asked to come and read the scroll of the day. And that particular day that he came to Nazareth, guess what the scroll was? Isaiah 61. And he opened the scroll, and he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recover sight of the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And then in verse 20, he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. Now he was supposed to read the whole thing, but he stopped right there and he sat down. And the people are like, Whoa, what is that about? The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. In other words, this is me. Isaiah spoke of me hundreds of years ago, and here I am proclaiming who I am. I am the Messiah that's come to set the captives free. So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious, gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, because I am sure he went on to explain some more about what this was about and what the heart of God was. And people were like, Wow, this is this is amazing. And and they weren't really sure what was going on. They were trying to grab a hold of it. They know this was special, they know this was gracious, and then they started scratching their heads and they said, Is this not Joseph's son? Just isn't this Jesus Joseph's son? And that was a nice way of putting it because there were rumors going around that Jesus was illegitimate. Because you know Joseph was not God's father. I mean, was not Jesus' father. God, in fact, was Jesus' father. Mary uh gave birth to Jesus, you know, which the Holy Spirit caused her to be pregnant, and she was she gave birth as a virgin. But the rumors went around that it was some Roman soldiers. So Jesus had this stigma about him even growing up that he was illegitimate, and now he's saying he's the Messiah. And the people are going, I don't know how this fits. How can a holy God bring a Messiah in this way? And you know, when we get back into Luke, we'll talk more about that. But going back to our study in Isaiah, did you notice where he stopped? He stopped about halfway through verse 2. What was the rest of it that he didn't read? And the day of vengeance of our God. He's come to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God. The Messiah was to come and to pour out his wrath on an unbelieving world and set up his kingdom. And most students of the word then were recognizing that when this Messiah comes, he's going to free us from the oppression of the Romans. He's going to set up his kingdom and it's going to be glorious. And when Jesus arrived the first time, he said, Here I am, and this is my job, up to the acceptable year of the Lord. Jesus' first coming was all about paying the price of the sin of the world. His second coming is all about the wrath and the setting up of the kingdom. And I'm not going to build a whole theology around this, but did you notice that the acceptable year of the Lord? How long is a year? 365 days. Did you notice the day of vengeance of our God? It's one day. And I said again, I'm not making a theology out of this because we know the day of the Lord represents a period of time, not just one day. But you can see again his mercy and his grace is so much greater than his wrath. The day of vengeance compared to the year of acceptance. Just chew on that for a while. But the Lord is coming again for the day of vengeance. And during that day of vengeance, he's coming also to comfort all those who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. I don't know about you, but I have found in my life I can have a thick head that I just don't get it. And we get warnings and warnings and warnings, and nothing happens. You know, that you shouldn't do that because this is gonna happen. And I do that and it doesn't happen. Nobody else does that. Come on. But then something happens, and you go, Oh, I should have listened, right? Okay, so when God pours out his wrath, the purpose behind it is to bring people to repentance, and those that do, he will console, he will comfort, he will turn our feelings of just I've really messed up now. And God, you're coming to get me. I'm so sorry, would you forgive me? And he does, and he turns it around and he fills us with joy. This is speaking directly to Israel at the end of the tribulation when God's wrath would be poured out and God would miraculously turn Israel around and present her as his chosen people to be used in a powerful way in the new coming kingdom, and they will turn to their Messiah, whom they had rejected, and the Messiah will accept them, and all that they can do is just rejoice in the Lord as a result. There's no reason for God to love me, to accept me, to change me, but he has. This is not the kingdom that's coming, this is the kingdom that's now, that's in the hearts of people, and and you could be changed. And the Lord is ready in the spirit to bring comfort to those who mourn. If you're mourning your sin, he's ready to comfort you or to change you, to console those who mourn in Zion, to heal the broken hearts. The same thing that he's done in the first time, he's doing in the second time, and he's continuing it in our lives, but he will more specifically be focusing on Israel in the end. And why? That they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. It's not that, oh, Israel's all that. It's about, oh, God is all that. And can we say this as Christians? God has taken me and He's planted me and He's caused me to grow into this mighty tree of righteousness. Not anything that I could do. This is the work of the Lord, and He needs the glory. This is Old Testament stuff. Not bad, huh? Verse 4. And they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. It took a long time to make this mess. And as we look at the timeline of this, there's a whole lot more mess to come. But the Lord has given us the same ministry of reconciliation, of rebuilding the ruins. And if we hear the call, the Lord in his mercy will relent from bringing judgment and help in rebuilding what was lost. We've destroyed our foundations in this country. There's time for us to rebuild them in the Lord, if we will turn to him and ask him to work. He wants to use us. And then strangers shall stand and feed your flocks. The sons of the foreigners shall be your plowmen and your vine dressers. We got a picture of that a cup a chapter or two ago as well. That the Gentiles would come and they would bring um the lost tribes of Israel back to Israel from all over. And we've seen that through the years. That uh, you know, there they're there Gentile groups that help pay to put Jewish people on planes and bring them back to Israel to give them a new life in their new land, a renewed land, right? And in this time, um, after the tribulation and after God's wrath has been poured out, and as he sets up his kingdom in a time of peace and prosperity, the Gentiles come and they participate. They serve Israel, they serve the Lord with gladness because of what God has done with Israel, they see the goodness of God and they can partake of it as well. But again, that wasn't just then, right? It's been for the last 2,000 years, this thing called the church again. The gospel went out, and and and and certain Jewish believers, certain Jewish folks that came to realize that Jesus was the Messiah came to faith in the Lord, and and the church was built on Jewish believers. But they went out and they realized this gospel is for the whole world, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And the gospel went out to the whole world, and today the the the church is comprised primarily of Gentiles. Gentiles, because of God's love for Israel, the world, the the Gentile world had the ability to come in and be a part. And now we serve as brothers and sisters in Christ. And many of us, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And there again, there are many ministries that are there to come alongside and to encourage Israel, to proclaim the gospel to Israel. Paul talks about God using the Gentile world to make Israel jealous so that they would turn and find salvation in the Lord. The Lord's working all these things together. Verse six says, But you shall be named the priests of the Lord, and shall be called the servants of God. You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory you shall boast. You will be set up, Israel, as priests of God. You will be set up to serve God, perfect holy servants to the Lord, because of the work that the Lord has done. And again, because God has done this work in Israel, the the Gentiles that remain through the through the tribulation period come to faith and they recognize the goodness of God. Paul talks about I I don't glory in myself. He says, I glory in you, because I preached the gospel that God gave me in the and the spirit by which he gave me to speak. It went forth and you were changed. You came to faith in the Lord, and and I glory in that. Not because it's about me, about Paul, but it's because the Lord used me, the persecutor of the church. And the same sort of thing happens here. Israel will be glorying in the Gentiles because it's really a praise to the Lord for the work that he's done in the mysterious way that he does it. And again, this is a picture of what he's doing with the church in this in-between time, right? It's God's grace that causes us to be priests of the Lord. We're a royal priesthood, and we're servants to our God, bond servants, willing servants. We've laid our lives down that the Lord could pick it up and use it. Instead of your shame, you shall have double honor, and instead of confusion, they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore, their land shall possess double, everlasting joy shall be theirs. Because Israel finally comes to the faith in Jesus, the Gentiles that are there at that time come to faith as well, and they all they all experience the joy of the Lord together. No longer is Israel put down. I mean, the spirit of anti-Semitism in this world is strong and it's getting stronger. People have been hating Jews and saying jokes about Jews for as long as God put his hand on the Jews. But there will come a time where the world rejoices in the Jewish nation because of the work that God has done in it. And because God could do that with the Jewish people, he can do it with me. Amen. Amen. Everlasting joy shall be theirs, the Gentiles. And we experience it here and now, even though we live as Christians in this world that's all messed up and our and our families are all messed up and our and our countries all messed up. When we turn to the Lord and we keep seeking the Lord and we're connected with the Lord daily, he gives us this peace that goes beyond comprehension. He gives us this joy that could be our strength to make it through these times of trial and tribulation. If we find ourselves just looking at the trial, the situation that we're in, and we just get overwhelmed, we lose that joy, don't we? We need to keep our eyes on Jesus and the big picture of what he's doing. Verse 8 Now the Lord speaks for I, the Lord love justice, I hate robbery. For burnt offering, I will direct their work in truth and will make with them an everlasting covenant. He's talking about the Gentiles now. He loves justice and hates robbery for burnt offering. The Israelites, many in the leadership, especially at the temple, the money changers, would make money off of the burnt offerings. They would sell sheep to people at exorbitant rates. And not only Jews came to sacrifice, but Gentiles would come too that wanted to serve the true and living God. And in the Old Testament, there are ways in the law for them to come and to do that. But a lot of is a lot of Isaiah again was talking about how Israel would take advantage of their situation as being the city where God met with man. And so they were they were drunk with their power. They took advantage of people, they stepped on people in order to elevate their own position. They had no heart of serving the Lord whatsoever, even though they were put in that position. Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles and their offspring among the people. All who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the prosperity of whom the Lord has blessed. These become the children of God, the Gentiles that have found faith in Jesus Christ. Now or in the millennial reign, we are called children of God. Now, you know, today you hear a lot of the phrase, we're all children of God, implying that everyone is a child of God. And that is not what the Bible teaches. Now, what the Bible does teach is we're all created in the image of God. And because every person is created in the image of God, every person should be given dignity for honoring God. But that doesn't mean they necessarily know God and are children of God. Do you understand? Because they're stuck in sin. But when we realized we were stuck in sin, and when we accepted the light that the Lord shined into our lives and we repented and it turned to him and accepted his gift of eternal life, that changed us. And the Bible talks about us being adopted into his family that we could be called sons and daughters of God.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Thanks for listening to today's lesson from the book of Isaiah here on Come On Up. You're hearing from Pastor Carl at the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina. Now, the book of Isaiah ends with a section that prophesies a new heaven and a new earth, which will come to replace the world that we currently know as it passes away. All of the promises and prophecies that God has made through the prophet Isaiah will come to their ultimate conclusion in this new kingdom. Death and evil will be no more, and goodness and justice will flow like a river. When we look at the world around us right now, it seems like chaos has already won. We can see live images of war, inequality, and sadness in just a few clicks, and it can seem like things will never get better. But Isaiah reminds us to look past the chaos that is right in front of us and fix our eyes on God's promises. That's how we can stay afloat when everything around us feels like it's collapsing. Well, if you want to join a group of believers who are looking together towards the new kingdom, we'd love to invite you to join us here at the Mountain Cross. We meet on Sundays at 10 a.m. at the Smoky Mountain Cinema. For more information, you can visit us online at themountaincross.com. There you will also find our How to Know God page, where you will learn more about how you can belong to the Kingdom of God. Thanks for joining us today. Come on up to the mountain with us again next time as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come on Up is sponsored by The Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.