You perhaps could tell that that psalm selection that we sung was from Psalm 139, if you read it or if you noticed the words. And that was where I had initially planned for us to be today. But it being a day when we can and are taking the privilege of celebrating the Lord's table, as I decided we would do that since our first Sunday next Sunday would not be one where we were all here. The Lord directed me to a New Testament passage today, so we will hold Psalm 139 for a subsequent time together as we continue our survey in the Psalms to the end thereof. And in the meantime today, we will consider Luke chapter four, a gospel reading about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So Luke chapter four, please. Now, as you turn there, let me remind you that the chapter begins with Jesus's temptation by the devil in the wilderness. And we note, and we always should, that with each and every successive temptation, the Lord Jesus met the enemy's assault with the same means that is available to the weakest and newest convert and all believers, and that is the Word of God. While Jesus certainly had the ability and power to simply at the beginning say, Be gone, Satan, and he would have had to leave. He did not do that. And in a weakened condition from his 40 days of fasting and being in a wilderness all alone, separated from his companions and from any earthly help, the Lord Jesus relied on the Bible. And so can you. And that is the purpose of that. Now after that temptation, we're told that he came in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. And we will begin reading then in verse 16 of Luke 4 and read down through verse 32 as we consider the gospel of Christ. Luke chapter 4 verse 16, And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him 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 preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it again to the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day Is this scripture fulfilled in your ears? And all bear him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is this not Joseph's son? And he said to them, You will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself. Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elijah sent, except unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill upon which their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way. And he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on Sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power. This is the word of the Lord, and he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. May we pray in heaven. God, our Father, we come now and ask for help from the blessed Holy Spirit that he would come and indict the truth to us, that he would illuminate our hearts and minds, that he would lift up and glorify Jesus Christ. Lord, help this your servant to be able to be used today so that the saints would be edified and sinners would be converted and Christ would be honored. Lord, we pray that you would do your mysterious and wonderful work in our midst today, and we'll thank you for whatever you do, for it will be right. And we praise you for that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. The Gospel of Christ. No doubt you probably know, and if you don't, you may have had your eyes fall upon a marginal cross-reference that would show you that the section here of the preaching of Jesus Christ in the synagogue comes from the prophet Isaiah, of course, as it says, particularly Isaiah 61, verses 1 and 2. Now, we will go there in a few moments, so you might want to go ahead and find your place there and have a finger or a marker there to easily get to it. First thing we need to note, though, is that Jesus comes and he comes to teach and preach. I want you to notice how many times in the passage that he quotes that the word preach occurs three times. In verse 18, preach the gospel. And then again, preach deliverance. And in verse 19, preach the acceptable year of the Lord. We jump over to the very end of this chapter, verse 43, and Jesus said to his followers, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for therefore I am sent. It makes us know again, dear ones, the necessity of preaching. And I don't hit that simply because I am one, but because of the necessity that is laid upon us who preach the gospel and those who hear the preaching of the gospel to be willing and ready in this day to stand forthright on the fact that God has decreed, as Paul says, through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. He hasn't changed his method. And so when we hear of churches, and I use that term quite loosely, I would put that in quotation marks, fellowships, gatherings that say things like, come to us for down-to-earth speaking. I don't know what exactly that means, but the very fact that they don't use the word preaching and use instead the words down-to-earth makes me nervous. Preaching of the word is what God has ordained to save souls. And not only that, but to strengthen the saints. See, that's another aspect of what has happened in our culture that we must combat. And that is that some might be willing to agree because the Bible says that, well, yes, I understand that through the preaching of the gospel, God saves people. But then after they're saved, don't they just need some good round-robin talks and teachings and fellowships? No. God is ordained through preaching to strengthen and edify the saints. He has given to the church, according to Ephesians 4, pastors and teachers, or most probably, That word could be hyphenated as a single office, pastor-teachers, for what? For the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ. But our best example and our clearest reference point is Jesus himself. Out of all his ministry of healings and miracles and ministries and feedings, and casting out of devils and all the wonderful, glorious things that He did for others, showing compassion and associating with sinners and being willing to sit down at the table and share a meal with those who were the off-scouring of society. And we could go on and on and on. But Jesus Himself says, the main thing I came to do in this three and a half year ministry is preach. I have come to preach. So let's never lose sight of the importance, the necessity God has so ordained it to be that, the foolishness of preaching, as he puts it again through Paul. So Jesus comes to preach. Notice also, Jesus, I'll put it in a very homespun way, was used to going to church. He was. It says in verse 16, that he came to Nazareth where he'd been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue, or we would transliterate the church, on the Lord's Day. and stood up to read. Know that Jesus had a habit of going to church. We say, well, of course, he's the son of God. He's come to reveal God to men. Of course, he would go to church. But let's consider in terms of his humanity. And know that Jesus didn't do what he did simply because it was a custom or simply because he was Messiah in the flesh and felt like he had to go to church. Jesus went to the gathering of the saints because he desired to be there. And he is in that, then, our great blueprint and example. Do you desire to come to church? A couple of Lord's days back, we considered that from Psalm 122, didn't we? I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Are you? Are you glad? I believe you are. You wouldn't be here this morning. Well, let's face it, there are many who show up today in the churches of worship and places of worship who are not glad to be there. They feel like they need to be there or they've gone for other more base and carnal reasons for friendship and advancement and maybe just a diversion from their mundane lives or whatever. Jesus was used to going to church. Not only that, but he was used to participating in the service. Now, you need to know that historically before Jesus' day and for a long time afterward, as long as the synagogue stood, there was the custom that they would have seven readers of scripture on the Sabbath day. Now, two of those would be, first of all, a Levite and then a scribe. And the other five would be men of the congregation who sort of took in turn their opportunity to read the text. Now, there was two readings. as we would say, in which category, of course, technically Jesus fit as he came to read today. Although we know he certainly wasn't a layman. But he fit in that category of the five that would read. And there was a mandated reading from the book of the law, and they didn't have a choice about that. And then there was the opportunity to read where they selected. Now, I don't want to blow your concept here if you have thought or maybe even heard some preacher say that that happened to be the reading of the day, providentially that was where they were supposed to read and it just happened to be, of course, in God's providence that Jesus read it. That's not exactly the case. In fact, that doesn't bother me. It more confirms to me Christ's identity when he selected a passage that would most definitely point to himself, a very clear messianic text. And he did that. So he read, no doubt before this, whatever the reading was out of the law that day. And then the reading of the prophets was up to him, as it was to all the other readers to select. And he picks one that we can't do any better with, obviously, as we would consider something to point to the gospel of Christ. And so he opens the scroll and reads the text. Now, let's go now at this point to where we find the text in our Bibles, Isaiah 61. And in Isaiah 61, we will note that, of course, in Luke's account, we don't have the entire section given to us. In fact, and we'll talk about this more in a moment, we find that as Luke, inspired by the Spirit, gives us what Christ read, he abruptly stops in the middle of what we have as verse 2. Now, we'll deal with that in a moment. Just keep that in mind. Let's read verses 1 through 3 together of Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. As I said, one of the things that jumps out to us as we go back to Luke's account of this reading is that Luke abruptly stops his quotation of the text in the 19th verse here what would be in the middle of verse 2 of Isaiah 61. Not only that, but if you look at verse 18, you'll notice that Christ actually inserts a phrase that we do not find in the Isaiah text. Recovery of sight to the blind. Now that's not in the Isaiah text. So why does Jesus put it in there? Well, the number one reason is the best reason. He's the author of Scripture. So he can put it in there if he feels like it, right? And it is the truth. But there's a second reason. And the second reason is that in the context of Jesus' ministry, one of the repeated miracles that He's going to perform, physical miracles, is what? Giving sight to blind eyes. Now this reminds us, and it should have been a lesson for the people who heard Him, that when Jesus gives sight to a blind man as in the same way when he casts out a devil of someone, when he feeds a multitude with just a few loaves and fishes, when he walks upon the water, when he raises someone from the dead and so forth, that in all those he is preaching to them of himself. And that all those physical ministries and miracles have a spiritual connotation and context. And so when he inserts in here, and by the way, some folks make a whole lot of the fact that this is in the Septuagint version, the phrase recovery of sight for the blind, in Isaiah, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and they say, well, therefore, that's what Jesus read from. No, Jesus wouldn't have been reading from the Septuagint. He would have been reading from the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures. He puts this in because it is the truth of what he has come to do. Now, we'll see that more in a moment. The point here is, though, that Jesus is certainly free to add to as he reveals himself in his word as he sees fit. Now the canon of scripture is now closed and God has committed himself to adding no more to his written revelation and we understand that. But in the process of it, as we have it revealed here, we're still on the continuum of revealed scripture. And so Isaiah got what he got and Luke gets a little bit more, right? And that's the way we need to understand it. But the importance of the fact that sight for the blind is a spiritual lesson we will reference again very briefly. to get to the heart of it. First of all, we note then the preaching of the Gospel of Christ in verse 18. Note first of all the authority by which Jesus preaches. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Jesus himself said, I do not come in my own name, nor do I speak from my own authority, but as the Father gives to me, so I speak and do. I'm paraphrasing, but there are several statements like that, particularly in John's Gospel. Most of you know where he says that. Basically, what Jesus is saying is, I have come on my own authority in this ministry. I've come on the authority of the Father. And so the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Adonai, here is the Spirit of God the Father. That is the authority by which he preaches the Gospel. Now, how do we preach and or share the Gospel? If you're not a preacher of the Gospel, you're still a proclaimer of the Gospel with your lips and with your life as a saint, right? So how do we do that? Well, he told us that in Matthew 28 verse 19, didn't he? All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me. Therefore you go and what? Make disciples of all nations. So it is a delegated authority. Christ receives his authority from the Father to preach the gospel. He in turn gives that authority to his people to preach and live out the gospel and share it. And so the authority for the preaching of the gospel is from God the Father himself. But notice also the anointing that is necessary. to preach the gospel. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel. Now, let me give a little disclaimer here. And we know this, for example, from Paul's writings in Galatians. Someone can share the gospel without it being done in the power of the Spirit. And God can still use that, can't he? He's not bound and hampered by the human instrument being anointed and empowered by the Spirit or else His words are void. No. God says, My word shall prosper. It will prosper in the thing I send unto it. It shall not return unto me void. Right? And Paul comes along and says, Those who preach Christ out of envy don't really care because they still preach Christ. That's the bottom line. So we've got to understand. that God is not limited by the human instrument in the success of the gospel. But as a preacher of the gospel, I can tell you, and as you who are saints who are to share the gospel, you should feel the same way. You don't ever want to give it out without the anointing of the Spirit, do you? Because in that way only can you be assured that you are in the frame that you need to be in to be a conduit for the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to someone else. You want to be anointed. You don't have to be. But you ought to certainly be seeking that. Now what is that all about? Well, in 1 John chapter 2, John tells us what that's about. And it's not so much something that he says you've got to do some particular special works or apply yourself in certain ways in order to get. He says in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 27 the following, But the anointing which you have received of him abides in you. How about that? And you need not that any man teach you. That is, teach you about the truths of Christ. The anointing of the Spirit does that. But as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, even as it has taught you, you shall abide in Him. Back over to verse 20, same thing as address, but they're called unction rather than anointing. But you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things. Don't let that word scare you. It just means anointing. Unction. It's a good old word. We ought to use it more. You know, you probably heard about the pastor who comes to take a new church. And every Sunday when he goes out, there's this saintly widow there that says, Pastor, that was a good message, but you need unction. And she did that about three or four times. And finally, he said, well, sister, you're saying that to me every week. What is unction? She said, I don't know what it is, but I know one thing for sure. You ain't got it. And see, some people don't have it. We need to plead for the unction when we preach, Speak, live out the gospel. Because it is through the anointing of God, that he says abideth in us, that the gospel goes forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. The anointing and the unction is that which you have in a soul of a saint that is totally surrendered as best they can, as much as they can this side of heaven, to the will of God. They are spirit filled. They are energized by the power of God. And therefore, when they speak the truth of God, it is as if Christ stood there himself and spoke it. And that's the way it's always supposed to be. And so Jesus comes and says, God, the Father, has anointed me to preach the gospel. And we know that all who were present at his physical baptism got a visual display of that spiritual truth, didn't they? As the Holy Spirit descended as a dove and rested upon him. to empower him for his earthly ministry. Now, I know this is simple, this is Theology 101 in some respects, but let's not forget, folks, that if Jesus, in his earthly frame, we're not talking about his divinity now, but in his earthly frame, needed the anointing of the Spirit to preach the Gospel, how much more do we? Right? And how much more must we seek it, plead for it, surrender to it, so that our sharing of the gospel is effectual unto God's glory. So there's the authority and anointing. And then notice the audience. Who is to receive this preaching? Back to verse 18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. The text in Isaiah has it in our English versions, the meek. Blessed are the meek. For they shall inherit the earth. And Christ also said, Blessed are the poor, but not just poor, poor in what? In spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, the libertarians and the social gospelizers would quickly say, this text shows us that Jesus came to help people who are in poverty. And that's his primary mission, and therefore we should do the same. Well, I remember Jesus saying, the poor you have with you always, but you don't have me always. Now, he didn't mean by that, don't help them if you can. But this is not a social gospel text. He's not even talking about physical poverty. He's talking about spiritual poverty. And you see, it's only a person who has been made aware by a sovereign work of the Spirit. They've been brought to the end of themselves in their sinful state and made to realize that whatever they have in this life and even whatever they might have claimed in religion is worthless, that they are destitute. They are the prime target of the gospel. Because they realize they have nothing on which they can claim God's forgiveness and blessing. They're poor in spirit. Poverty of spirit is absolutely necessary for you to receive the gospel truth unto salvation. You cannot do it in your pride. Remember Jesus saying, you know these Pharisees over here? They think they are spiritually millionaires. And I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repent. And by another metaphor, he said, it's not the healthy, spiritually they think, that need a physician, but what? It's the sick. I came for the sick folks! For those who look at their heart and look at themselves and say, I am spiritually bankrupt! And if Christ does not do for me what I need, I am undone! That person is the one who hears the gospel about God's design. So he came to preach the gospel to the poor. in spirit. And that poverty of spirit, as we really know, crosses all racial, ethnic, geographical, denominational, and economic boundaries, doesn't it? It does. And while the Bible says not many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called, there are some rich that are and have been called, right? I think about a man like Truett Cathy, the president of the Chick-fil-A restaurant. who had already begun to amass a great fortune when the Lord saved him. There's one who realized his poverty of spirit and although his bank account was huge in the physical sense, he realized he was spiritually bankrupt and needed Christ. And that, of course, by gracious operation of the Spirit only is the way that it will come to us. So the preaching of the gospel then is under God's authority and He has transmitted that to us. And we preach it to the poor in spirit. Which basically means we preach it to everyone. Because we know all men are absolutely bankrupt spiritually. And I'll just run through the list that Jesus gives us here for the sake of time, but I would encourage you to spend more time pondering these on your own and meditating on their wonderful truths. First of all, he says, he has sent me, verse 18, to heal the brokenhearted. Isaiah 53, by his stripes we are what? Healed! Now, let me put something in here that may sound a little bit more charismatic than anything else, but it's not. There is physical healing in the atonement of Christ, folks. There is physical healing in the atonement. See, our charismatic brethren only get it wrong when they carry that and say, therefore, everybody's supposed to be made well. No. No. But I can say this. If anyone is healed of a physical malady, don't you think that the only way that happens, really and truly, from the proper heavenly perspective, is by the atonement of Christ? Of course! He uses medicines, he uses doctors, sometimes he does it directly, but he would not even do it directly were it not for the fact that, as Paul says, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not counting their trespasses against him. It doesn't mean everybody gets saved, nor does it mean everybody gets physically healed. But I stand on this truth, and the Bible bears it out, nobody gets healed except through the atonement of Christ, from physical maladies. But of course, that's not Jesus' main focus. I just felt I needed to speak to it because there was a lot of confusion about that. He's talking about spiritual healing, to heal the brokenhearted. And notice, as it's quoted in another place in the Gospels, it's said to bind up the brokenhearted. And there the phrase has to do with literally something that's broken and you wrap some cords around it or something to hold the pieces together. That's true too. But here is the complete truth. He doesn't just pull the pieces back together. He heals the fractures of the heart. so that it's no longer in pieces. The broken heart over sin is healed. Remember it said in the Isaiah text, it went on to say, He came to comfort all those who mourn. To heal the brokenhearted, next to preach deliverance to the captives, Colossians 1.13, He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, John 9, 25. You remember the account of the blind man, blind from birth? And Jesus begins his dealing with that man by turning his disciples, as they observe this fellow, and says, what do you think? Who sinned here? This man or his parents? He was born blind. Or rather, the disciples asked Jesus that. They said, what is it, Lord? Who sinned here? Somebody did for him to have such a terrible malady. And Jesus said, you've got it all wrong. It's so that the works of God might be manifested in him. And then, of course, he heals him. Well, as you remember, And what happens later, he gets in a boatload of trouble with the religious leaders. And they really begin to give him the third degree about this man who gave him sight. Of course, with the purpose of persecuting him and persecuting Jesus also. And they begin to quiz him back and forth. And I love the sarcasm that's found in that narrative, by the way. At one point he says, why do you keep asking the same question? Do you want to be his disciples too? Boom! Boy, the bomb goes off then. You're his disciple. We're Abraham's disciples. But in John 9, 25, he says that fundamental statement about spiritual truth, about the recovery of spiritual sight, that led John Newton to include that line in his legendary hymn, Amazing Grace. The blind fellow says, there's a lot of things about this Jesus I don't know, but one thing I know, I was blind, and now I see. Right? Recovery of sight to the blind. Jesus opens blind eyes so that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ will shine unto them and through them unto new life. And He does that. He recovers the sight. And then lastly, at the end of verse 18, to set at liberty them that are bruised. And the figure there is of chains and shackles, handcuffs and ankle cuffs. put on so tight that after a while there is bruising of the skin that takes place and ultimately erosion of the skin if they stay there. They're bruised by the shackles of sin and the hold of Satan and Christ comes and liberates them. Two verses that you know probably both of them well from John chapter 8 verse 32. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And verse 36, if the Son therefore shall make you free You shall be free indeed, truly free, as opposed to the lost man who, because he can engage in his sin, thinks he is free. I heard a very astute comment recently on the radio, and it actually wasn't by a Christian voice. It was by someone who was just taking sort of a general sociological compass to American culture. I'm not a Christian now. And he said, you know, modern man thinks he's really truly free and liberated because he can sit on the internet and punch up anything he wants, including pornography. He thinks he's free. He's not free. Now this fellow didn't draw any biblical conclusions from that. But think about that statement. The sinner thinks he is free because I can go do this, I can see that, I can involve myself in that, and I don't have to go to the church house. Nobody's making me be a Christian. Nobody's making me a scribe to that doctrine. I'm a free man. No. If the Son sets you free, you're free indeed. He who is a sinner is a slave. A sinner? You're slaves to that one whom you obey constantly. And so Christ comes and grants liberty. So the preaching of the gospel, the power of it, and finally the purpose of it. Now, I want to deal with verse 19 here. And again, it's not my purpose to blow out of the water anything you may have heard or been told by someone you have great confidence in. I would not throw down for this that I'm about to tell you, but I believe it or I wouldn't preach it to you. In verse 19, it says, Jesus said to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And then verse 20 says, and he closed the book and he gave it to the minister and sat down. And then everyone looked upon him and he said in verse 21, he began to say, this day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears. Now the conclusion that is many times made from this, and you no doubt have heard it, is that Jesus stopped reading on purpose in the middle of what we would understand to be Isaiah 61, 2. He left out the phrase, and the day of vengeance of our God, this reasoning goes along the track of saying, because it wasn't time for God's vengeance. It was simply time for the free offer of the gospel. And the second part of that phrase, those who hold this view would say, will not come to pass until he comes again in judgment upon a wicked world, in his second advent. Now that is plausible. I will give it that. Except when you consider the entire context. And the reason we read all the way down through verse 32 was to make this point. I don't believe Jesus stopped reading before the day of vengeance of our God. And I'll tell you why in just a moment. Well, I'll tell you how we fit it. Here's the why. The why is because of what happens beginning in verse 24 down through verse 29. You see, I think what Jesus gave in those two examples, one of the widow of Seraphath, the second one of Naaman the Syrian, were illustrations from the Old Testament to illustrate the point of Isaiah 61 to be the day of vengeance of our God. Now, let me get ahead of myself. Let me back up. The purpose of the gospel is to proclaim, first of all, verse 19, acceptance with God through Christ. But it's also to proclaim vengeance from God because of Christ. That is, on those who refuse to submit to Him. So acceptance and vengeance are the dual purposes of the gospel. Again, as I said, I would not fight with a brother over this. I'm not about to. But I don't believe that we have to conclude, that we're mandated to conclude, that that's all that Jesus read. We have quite a few examples, especially in the New Testament, where we're given just a portion of what someone read or preached. Remember Acts 2, the sermon that Peter preached there? We're given a pretty good bit of content there. But then it says at the end, And with many other words he exhorted them, Be saved from this untoward generation. You don't have all of Peter's sermon in Acts chapter 2. And I don't think we have all of Jesus' sermon here in Luke chapter 4 either. Not even all its reading of the text. Now another reason I say that is because it was not normally, and in fact would have been greatly frowned upon in the context of synagogue worship, the custom for someone reading a section of scripture to stop in the middle of a verse. As we would understand a verse, of course again remember there were not chapter and verse divisions then. Right? You had the scroll of Isaiah, and it started in what we would call chapter 1, verse 1, went to the very end without a break. No paragraphs, no indentions, nothing. It just rolled right along. So we know that. But still, this is not a complete sentence to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. It continues in the Hebrew, in the Aramaic, in the Septuagint, and the day of vengeance of our God. Now I think that's very, very important to say, folks, because we've got to understand that the preaching of the gospel has as its purpose both to preach acceptance on those who trust Christ and vengeance on those who don't. In this day and age of user-friendliness in the local church, and a pragmatic approach to evangelism, and majoring on the love of God to the expense of the wrath of God, we need to understand that our Lord and Savior would not by any means interrupt, and certainly not water down, the double-edged sword of the gospel. In other words, he would not replace it with a single-sided blade and say, all I'm going to talk to you about, and all there really is in the gospel, is the favor of God and the mercy of God. It's obvious from his illustrations and in the subsequent reaction of his hearers that he said more than that, that they have vengeance of our God. Now, what about the acceptance, though, before we go any further into that? preach the acceptable year of the Lord. We here, we've been taught to think this is something that is normal and accepted, to use the word, and something that should be proclaimed. And that is to tell folks to what? Accept Jesus. Now, there's really no place in the Bible that that's said. You know that, don't you? You say, what about Paul saying, this is faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners? Ah, but what is he saying is worthy of accepting? Jesus himself and his person and glory? Or a phrase, a sentence of the truth of the gospel concerning him? Obviously it is the statement that he says is worthy to be accepted, that Christ came to save sinners. But we don't really find that which is the underpinning of evangelism since at least the turn of the previous century, early 1900s. Really go back a little further than that. Accept Christ. Rather what we find is Acts chapter 10 and verse 35. And this is so, so crucial. I believe. Let's start at verse 34 of Acts 10. Then Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. Now watch it now. But in every nation he that fears him and works righteousness is accepted with Him. I don't read Peter saying he that fears God and works righteousness accepts Jesus. I read him saying they are accepted by Jesus. See folks, the real fundamental truth here is that when you come the way of the cross, and it's only by sovereign grace, we know that, but when you come the way of the cross and you cling to Him, then you are accepted of Him, not vice versa. Now, do I mean that nobody should ever use those words in its heresy? No, I'm not saying that. We just need to be careful that we clarify what we mean. Acceptance of Christ is only a true statement, if it is at all, as the reverse of the fact that Christ has first of all accepted you. on the basis of your coming the way He has prepared in our day. The way of the cross. That's the only way to lead us home, right? And so you come that way and you're accepted of God. Now, back to our text. What about vengeance? Well, verses 23 through 29, as I said, give us that very clearly. 23 through 29 say that there's vengeance in the gospel. Now, you might wonder about this, and any time you've read this text, and I've been that way too, you might say, what happened here? Not only on the crowd's part, but on Christ's part. That is, at verse 22, all bear Him witness and wonder. They marvel at the gracious words that came from His mouth. And then Jesus, it's almost like He turns on His very receptive audience, isn't it? Scenes like that from Luke's narrative. Here's everybody enjoying hearing Him and He says, I know what you're going to say, position heel yourself. Let me tell you something. There were a lot of folks hungry and a lot of widows starving in the days of Elijah, but he wasn't sent to anyone except the one in Zarephath, which was Jezebel's hometown, by the way. The hotbed of Baal worship. He wasn't sent to Jerusalem to any widows there. Let me tell you something else. There were a lot of lepers in Israel in the days of Elisha. You know where he was sent? Way over to a pagan, uncircumcised Syrian to minister the truth of the gospel and healing. Why does Jesus do that? See, the only thing that makes sense to me that he would do that is because he did preach also the day of vengeance of our God. And what he's doing here is preaching of discriminating grace. One of the older preachers and writers had this to say, that the Lord Jesus here, that is here in this section, preaches of the Father's discriminating grace is evidenced by the hateful reaction of his hearers. He preached of God's discriminating grace, and they couldn't stand it. But now, why did he? See, it wouldn't make any sense to do that unless he completed the text. So now, why did Luke give it that way? Well, we don't have time to go into all those things except to say that, again, remember, it's not the purpose of Luke here to give us every single word Jesus read or preached. That's not his purpose. His purpose is to give us the whole text and a general view of what Jesus was dealing with, and then to give us the outcome, what happened afterwards. That's his purpose. So it's not that Luke messed up, right? This is Holy Spirit inspired scripture, every whit of it. So Luke did exactly what the Holy Ghost told him to do. Completely, perfectly, without error. But the Holy Spirit's design here is simply to give us a swatch of what Jesus is dealing with. But we've got to know that he preached the day of vengeance. Malachi chapter 4. Ready to close here. Malachi chapter 4, the very end of your Old Testament, as we call it, first section of your Bible. The prophet says, For behold, the day comes that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubbled. And the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings. Now many times this text is taken as an eschatological passage for us today. In other words, it's yet future. It deals only with the second coming of Christ. But that cannot be. I would not deny that it does not have some application to that. But notice verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Now, what is he talking about there? Well, Jesus made it clear. when the disciples said, why do the prophets say, or why do the people say that Elijah must come first and restore all things before Messiah comes on the scene the first time? Remember, that's their question. And he said, Elijah certainly has come and restored all things, but I tell you, they have done to Elijah whatever they will. And it says, then the disciples understood that he spoke of John the Baptist. Folks, this whole text in Malachi is dealing primarily with the advent of Christ the first time. Come and preach the gospel. And again it says that in that day of the Lord of hosts, that the proud and all that do wickedly shall be stubble for his oven. But those that fear his name, he shall arise with healing in his wings. And then in 2 Corinthians 15. 2 Corinthians 2 verses 15 and 16. There is no 2 Corinthians 15. 2 Corinthians 2 verses 15 and 16. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless... I'm sorry, I'm in 3. Let me start over. 2 Corinthians 2 verses 15 and 16. Here we go. For we are unto God a sweet saver of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish." Now notice, this is the acceptance and the vengeance of the gospel that goes out simultaneously. Look at verse 16. To the one we are the saver of death unto death, and to the other the saver of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? Paul says there's one gospel. One acceptable year of the Lord. One favorable proclamation of His grace. But it hits folks differently. It hits sheep. It's a savor of life unto life. And it hits goats. It's a savor of death unto death. And there are fixed, those two categories. Matthew 25 makes that clear. So Jesus preaches not only acceptance by the Lord of those who trust Christ, but vengeance upon those. who don't. And I submit to you that we do not preach, do not share, do not live out a full gospel if we don't give out both. Both are true. You see, Paul reminds us in the Galatian letter that the law was our schoolmaster that drove us with a whip to Christ. Now if that was necessary for you, Why would we think it's not necessary for the other fellow who's yet outside of Christ? Is he in a different situation than all he needs to hear of? Is this as acceptable a year of his origins except Christ, and he loves you, and he gave himself for you, your problems are over, and you'll just bask in the love of God? All that is true. But is that all he's supposed to hear? No. A full gospel. Many churches call themselves that. I'm not sure what they always mean by that. I know what some of them mean. That's not what I'm talking about. A full gospel is to preach it and live it and share it as Christ did, both with acceptance and vengeance. For you see, man must be made aware of the peril that awaits him that he is actually in even now. As Edward says, he hangs by the thinnest of spider webs over the yawning pit of hell, and it is only the mercy of the Lord that holds him there and keeps him from falling headlong into it." Brother Percy Ray in Myrtle, Mississippi paraphrased that and said, you're hanging over hell on a half-rotten corn stalk. Pretty good visual, isn't it? See, they must have known that before they can appreciate that it is the acceptable favorable year of the Lord. May God help us to be faithful, to live it, preach it, share it, as Christ did. Let's bow our heads.