Sermon Transcript
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prisons to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
When I first moved to this area like 5 years ago now, our young professionals introduced me to a concept named named imposter syndrome. Have you heard of this? Imposter syndrome is when you feel like you don’t measure up to the other people in the room and you feel like honestly you shouldn’t be there. You are an imposter. Everyone on your team is better at their jobs than you, and it’s only a matter of time until they find out that you are an imposter and they terminate you, right?
So one, you are filled with anxiety because you feel like you don’t measure up. And 2, you probably work really hard to prove yourself. And 3, you might fake it a little bit. You’re in a team meeting, they’re talking about something you’ve never heard of, so you just smile and nod along to what everyone else is saying, and you hope that you’re not forced to contribute too much. But then somebody asks you what you think, and instead of admitting your ignorance, you say something like— you try to cover your ignorance and you say like, oh, I really like what Melinda said earlier.
Uh, she had a great point. Um, how did you word that again, Melinda? So you’re redirecting the focus away from you over to Melinda. You affirm her in the process, so she’s more than happy to go along with your deflection because she’s getting a compliment. But on the inside you feel small.
You feel unworthy to be in the room. You believe that you cannot reveal your shortcomings, and if you do, you will face consequences, so you hide. You feel some shame and you try extra hard to make up for it somewhere else. Do you ever feel like this? Do you feel the need to strive struggle in order to measure up?
Do you feel pressure to maintain certain appearance in certain groups? Are you worried about failing somehow? I’m in this PhD program which I started about 2 years ago, and I probably have at least 2 years to go. Keep praying for me. But from the minute I began, like, the weight of imposter syndrome— so I was glad I knew that term— hit me, the question of, do I belong here, started replaying in my mind.
They even told us in one of our intro orientation classes, and they meant this as a compliment, but it really kind of added pressure. They said, everyone in this room, you had to do a lot of things right for a long time in order to be sitting here today. Which is true, right? They looked at our college transcripts, our master’s level transcripts. We had to have a certain GRE score.
We needed letter of recommendation from former professors. Every student in that room must have performed really well for a really long time in order to be there, which is a compliment, right, until you realize I’m not surrounded by average students. These— everybody here is a high performer, uh, so do I really belong? And then on top of that, like, I hadn’t been in an academic setting for 10 years, so— or over 10 years— so do I even really remember how to study? And then I actually started being in class with these other students, and I heard their contributions to our discussions, and I thought I thought like, wow, these are, these are really bright people.
Am I good enough? Do I fit in here? So how did I respond to that? What did I do next? Um, it’s maybe what you would have done.
I, I worked as hard as I possibly could. I produced the best academic papers I’ve ever written. I thought, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m good enough or not, but I’m gonna give it all I got and I can’t do better than that, so we’ll just see if it’s good enough. Now, why am I doing that?
It’s honestly because I’m trying to prove myself and prove to others that I belong in this program. I’m trying to earn my worth.
I wish I could say that PhD programs are the only place in this world where that kind of pressure exists, right? But it’s not. That kind of pressure exists in almost every setting today. It’s actually difficult to find a place where that kind of pressure doesn’t exist, right? We post something on social media and as soon as we post it, we want affirmation.
There’s pressure there. Was my post worthy? Did I do Did I post something good enough to get you to respond to it? Or did I post a picture of myself doing something cool enough that others will also think it’s cool, right? It’s pressure to perform.
It’s pressure to be cool, pressure to be worthy. Those of us with kids, this is really twisted, right? But like the performance of our kids can determine if we feel like we measure up, like their performance determines our worth. Did they get the grade or are they the problem child? Are other parents judging me for the way that my kid is behaving?
Do people approve of the college that my kid attends? Do they approve of the job that my kid started, right? It’s all pressure to perform, we want to measure up. We already talked about the workplace imposter syndrome, but it also manifests itself maybe in jealousy in the workplace, right? Your coworker gets promoted instead of you and you are crushed.
You might be embarrassed to tell anyone that essentially you failed.
Pressure to perform is everywhere. If you are a single adult and you don’t have a date to bring with you, you may dread attending events like high school reunions weddings, even family Thanksgiving dinner, you know, you walk into the event and you are immediately aware that everyone else is aware that you didn’t bring a date. You are there alone, and it’s pressure.
You feel like you don’t measure up. Probably no one ever said this to you, but you feel like maybe having a relationship would make you worse It doesn’t, by the way. As soon as you are in a relationship, you feel unworthy in all kinds of other ways. So, even the best relationships, even the best marriages, even the best— not even like spouse romantic relationship, we could be talking about parent-child dynamics, even the best of those, right? There can be times when you receive a criticism from someone that you love, someone you are in a relationship with, and you can feel like, wow, it’s never enough, is it?
No matter what I do, I’m always going to fall short of this other person’s expectations. You feel like, I’m on a treadmill, I’m never going to win your full approval. So even relationally, we can feel pressure to perform. It’s everywhere, it’s all the time, it’s the air we breathe, and it’s exhausting. So, wouldn’t it be nice if there was somewhere without that pressure to perform, without the burden of measuring up, where you could be honest about your shortcomings and you didn’t lose any respect or approval for talking about your shortcomings?
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Well, it’s supposed to be the church. It’s supposed to be church. The relief from the treadmill of life is supposed to be church. But unfortunately, oftentimes church becomes just another place where we feel like we need to measure up, strive for approval, perform, and wonder, worry if we really belong hide parts of us that don’t really seem to fit. It can be yet another pressure cooker, right, where we feel judged, discredited, shamed, unworthy, outcast, right?
Sometimes church can feel like the hardest place to find favor, and instead church becomes just another weight that is placed on us and we need to carry. Today we’re looking at a text from the book of Isaiah. We’re continuing our series in Isaiah, but this text from Isaiah that we’re looking at today is also one that Jesus read early in his ministry. It’s kind of the text Jesus chose for his first sermon, so to speak, in the book of Luke. So it is inextricably tied to Jesus’ understanding of his own ministry.
And as we look at this text today, which is, it’s all about favor, it’s all about freedom, it’s all about loosening the pressure to perform, we will see who grants favor, why favor isn’t granted, and then how favor is achieved. So who grants favor, why favor isn’t granted, and then how favor is achieved. So first, who grants favor? It’s a bit debatable and actually has been debated who this figure is in Isaiah 61 who has been anointed by God to proclaim freedom, bind up the brokenhearted, release the captives. Who does those things?
The language, it’s certainly messianic in its overtones, right? Someone who arrives and basically proclaims salvation, right? So it’s Messiah. People are hurting and struggling, but now all of that is gonna get reversed. But maybe does Isaiah believe he is the one who will proclaim freedom, or is it someone else?
Because Isaiah does use first-person language. He says the Spirit, he writes, the Spirit of the Lord is on me. The Lord has anointed me. So maybe Isaiah is talking about himself being this messianic figure. However, right before these verses 1 through 3, right at the very end of the previous chapter, and then right after these verses, it is the Lord himself speaking.
Verse 8, for instance, says, for I the Lord love justice. So, so the I the first person who is speaking in this passage who shows up to proclaim freedom sometimes appears to be God himself.
Like, how would God physically show up? That is kind of surprising, perplexing. So, honestly, even from the beginning when Isaiah penned these words, it remained a bit mysterious. Who this someone was who would eventually show up and proclaim a new day had dawned, a day of favor, a day of freedom. And Scripture leaves that as a question mark until 700-something years later when Jesus begins his ministry.
And then Jesus in Luke chapter 4, he opens the scroll of Isaiah and he reads reads, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus closes the scroll, sits down, and says, today this scripture has been fulfilled. Jesus says, I’m the guy. Says, I’m the messianic figure who proclaims freedom.
I am here. The day is now. So we might— if we were sitting there, we might want to ask Jesus, because maybe it’s been a mystery for the last 700 years, like, Jesus, does that mean that you’re God himself? Because it kind of sounded like God might be this messianic figure. Uh, we’re going to talk about that more next week, divinity of Christ in Isaiah.
But Jesus says, I have come to begin something new. The weight is about to drop from your shoulders. The oppressiveness of the world is coming to an end. I am here to liberate you. So, that’s who grants favor, Jesus.
Jesus is normally the last point of the message, Today, he’s the first point. Jesus is who grants favor. Now, secondly, why favor isn’t granted. Favor isn’t granted because people earned it.
No one earned this favor that is being declared.
And look at who receives the favor: the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the bound, those who mourn, the faint. It’s the outcasts. They haven’t earned anything. It’s the lowly, one might say the unworthy. People in Isaiah’s day, and still honestly people in our world today, look at people in many of those positions, not all of them, but they would look at those people and conclude, God must be rejecting you.
When we’re in one of those positions, we think, God must be rejecting me. I must have done something wrong, right? If I had been measuring up, I would be in a better place, right? These are not the people to whom we grant favor.
Captives, they receive the opposite of our favor. They are in that position precisely because they have lost favor, right? We grant favor to the worthy. We grant favor to those who have been good enough, right enough, long enough, right? They are the ones who get favor.
And that’s why we work so hard, right? That’s why we work hard at our job or to overcome imposter syndrome or to earn praise even from those who we are in relationships with, right? We do that because we want favor and we believe the only way to get favor is to be worthy.
But Isaiah says God is different and Jesus later says that he is different. Unlike us, God doesn’t look at performance, if we have been good enough, right enough, long enough. He doesn’t look at that in order to determine who receives receives favor. That’s not why God grants favor. Instead, God grants favor on the basis of grace alone.
These people, right, prisoners, captives, faint, weak, puny outcasts, right, they didn’t earn favor, they don’t deserve favor, yet they receive it. With God, it’s always the unworthy who get favor. It’s always the unworthy who get favor. That’s why we call it grace.
If you deserved it, it wouldn’t be grace. I haven’t told this story in a sermon before, although I’ve shared it in smaller settings all over our church, so for some of you it might be a repeat, but there was a time in my life when I did not understand understand. Grace is by definition favor to the unworthy. I thought grace was God would let you into heaven when you die because you had trusted Jesus, but at the same time He may not be very happy about it. Like, you get to the pearly gates and you pull out your Jesus card and God says, ah, you got me, I guess you can come in.
I thought that’s what grace was, but I thought what determined if He liked me right now, if God would grant me favor right now, I thought that was dependent on my performance. If I was a good Christian, He would grant me favor, He would like me. If I was a bad Christian, He would revoke His favor and He would wouldn’t like me. So with this framework, I was constantly nervous over whether I had measured up, right? Wondered when the hammer was going to fall.
Sometimes I would even avoid God for a while, not pray, not go to church, if I had not been obedient. Then one day, I assume this is bad theology, but it’s the way that we feel a lot of times, One day I had a particularly sinful day. I think probably in reality all days are about the same in terms of sinfulness, but we feel like some days are more sinful than others, or we have more shame some days than others. So, it was a day like that. I just, I went off the rails big time.
But instead of avoiding God, I was talking with Him at the end of the day, And I was beating myself up to God. I was saying like, God, I’m the, I’m the worst, I’m the scum of the earth, I don’t even know why you would talk to me. And it’s not like I heard an audible voice or anything like that, but I had this like truth in my head that was pushing back against what I was telling God. And this idea, this truth, this concept was like, Dan, I love you and look at you the same as I did before today happened. And I thought, that can’t be right.
So I argued back in my head. I was like, God, did you see what happened today? Do you remember? Like, let’s go through it. 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., noon, 1:00, 2:00.
Like, today was terrible. Let’s talk about all the terrible things that I did today. But this idea, if that’s what we want to call it, was still there. And it was still like, Dan, I love you and look at you the same as before today happened. And again, I was like, no, no, no, that’s wrong.
It must be wrong. It has to be wrong. And it seemed like I just had this wrestling match inside my head for what seemed like a long time until finally I I was so frustrated, so frustrated that this idea wouldn’t go away. I actually yelled out loud. It had all been in my head to this point, but I yelled.
I said, but I don’t deserve that, God. I don’t deserve for you to love and look at me the same way as before today.
Happened. And as soon as I said that, I realized the fault in my argument. It was like dominoes fell on my head. It literally felt like something dropped in my brain. Again, not an audible voice, okay, but there’s this clarity.
I understood, the clouds lifted. It was, of course you don’t deserve it.
That’s why we call it grace.
Of course, you don’t deserve favor from God. Of course.
That’s why it’s called grace. That’s the reason why God used that word. It’s not about measuring up with God. It’s about undeserved deserved favor. If it was deserved, it wouldn’t be grace.
So, to the poor, to the outcast, to the captive, to the prisoner, to the people who feel rejected by the world, to those who don’t measure up, to the unfavorable, God has not forgotten. In you. You are precisely the type of person who God would favor, not on the basis of your merits, obviously, not on the basis of my merits either, right?
On the basis of grace.
Okay, lastly, how favor is achieved. Favor is not achieved by our merits, right? Got that. So how is favor achieved?
Vengeance. Favor is achieved through vengeance. You weren’t expecting that, were you? It’s weird in this passage. The speaker says he came, verse 2, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.
To comfort all those who mourn. So there is favor, comfort, and vengeance.
Those don’t normally go together, you know. You remember way back when you watched Sesame Street or watched it with your kids, they, they would play that game, which one of these things doesn’t belong? They had that song, one of these things is not like the others.
One of these things does not belong. I don’t know if they had hand motions or not, but can you tell which thing is not like the other by the time I finish this song? And there would be a, like, a basketball, a baseball, and a tomato. Um, and they would go through and they’d say like, well, they’re all round, so are they all the same? And then the kids would say, no, the tomato is different.
So we look at this verse, right? And it says, the year of the Lord’s favor, comfort to those who mourn, and the day of vengeance of our God.
One of these things is not like the other, vengeance seems out of place, seems like it doesn’t belong there, um, but it’s actually critical to comfort. Vengeance is critical to binding up the brokenhearted for at least 2 reasons. Um, reason number one, uh, part of the mourning, part of the sadness in the world is, is weeping over some type of injustice, right? Someone did wrong by someone else and they got away with it. And the victim is weeping.
Those who love the victim, they are also weeping. They are crying out for justice to be done. So, part of their comfort involves seeing justice done. The longer that injustice lingers, the, the longer then that the knife kind of twists into the wound. Um, comfort partially comes from the perpetrator being held responsible, right?
And specifically, comfort can come from God siding with the victim and God taking action against the perpetrator. I know that kind of messes with our Western sensibilities that a vengeful God would be a comfort to those who experience injustice. We think here probably in the West, wouldn’t it be better to have a kind of patty-cake God, a squishy love God who is never violent even against injustice? And we think, doesn’t believing in a violent, vengeful God foster more violence and vengeance in us? Like, wouldn’t we feel justified in taking vengeance ourselves if we believe that God’s doing the same thing?
Like, doesn’t it give us permission to be vengeful if God is?
Well, Miroslav Volf Miroslav Volf says no. If you don’t know Miroslav Volf, he’s a professor at Yale University. He comes from war-torn Croatia, so he’s seen violence and cycles of vengeance that we really can’t imagine. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace, he contends that belief in divine vengeance is actually required in order for us as humans to be nonviolent ourselves, for us to be comforted to the extent that we will not be violent or we will not be vengeful, we must believe in a violent and vengeful God. That’s his point.
He says if you disagree with him to imagine— this is what he writes in his book, right? Imagine that you delivering a lecture in a war zone. Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have first been plundered, then burned, leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been violated, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats— if you’re going to give a lecture to people who live there. The topic of your lecture is a Christian attitude toward violence, and your thesis is something like, we should not retaliate because God does not retaliate.
He says, that’s not going to work. No one’s going to listen to you. He says, soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of a thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.
His idea from his own experience is that if you believe that God won’t judge, if you believe God’s a patty-cake God, never never is violent, never vengeful, no judgment— that’s who you believe God is— he says then you will need to be the judge because somebody has to. We cry out for justice, right? We, we know justice needs to be done, right? So if God’s not vengeful, you will be. But he says if you believe that God takes vengeance on your behalf and you can trust him to handle it and yourself can then be nonviolent, never take vengeance.
The comfort to those who mourn because of injustice comes from a God who will take vengeance on their behalf. But That creates a problem, doesn’t it? Because if we’re honest, we’ve all contributed in some way to the injustice or pain in the world. Some— someone somewhere right now is probably mourning because of something that we’ve done. And if God is going to side with them, if God’s going to take up their cause, the people that we hurt, if God’s going to side with them, grant them justice, It means he’s coming after us with vengeance.
Um, divine retribution, if it’s just divine retribution, puts all of us in a bit of a predicament, doesn’t it? Because we’re all guilty. Even the people in this passage, the poor, the captives, the brokenhearted, the bound, they’re not innocent. They’ve contributed to the injustices of the just like we all have, right? So, how could it be comforting or liberating for the poor and the captive and the brokenhearted if God is going to go after them with vengeance for all of their wrongdoings, right?
Vengeance, that doesn’t sound very comforting. Now, this is the grand surprise of Scripture. Vengeance is a comfort because instead of pouring it out on the guilty, God pours out His vengeance on Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ pays for our injustices as He suffers on the cross, right? The day of vengeance of the Lord, verse 2, is the same as the day of God’s favor.
It is the same as the good news which is proclaimed to the poor, right? God takes the vengeance that should come upon us and Jesus voluntarily takes it himself. And since we have experienced that kind of grace, right, where the violence that we deserve was voluntarily taken by another, it’s difficult for us to turn around and then be violent ourselves, right? We have received such lavish grace, how could we treat people any differently? We ought to be the most compassionate people in the world.
We ought to be the most forgiving, the most nonviolent, the least vengeful. If you struggle with either anger toward those who have hurt you, or if you struggle with believing that you could be forgiven yourself, either way, okay, either way, look to the cross.
Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid for your sins.
Jesus’ death would be enough to pay for the sins of those who have hurt you, so you can let them go. You are liberated from both of those captivities. You have freedom.
You can forgive. Your broken heart can be mended. Let’s pray.
Father, thank You that You are the one place in this world where we do not have to measure up, where we can fall short and we can be honest about it and You still receive us. I thank You that even though that came at great cost to Yourself, You still pursued us us, wanted us enough, um, that Jesus would be sacrificed, take the vengeance that we deserve so that we can be reconciled. Lord, may we let go of the hurt that others have caused us and forgive, and may we forgive ourselves. May we believe that we can be forgiven and reunited to you as well, no matter how off the rails we have been in the past or even currently are. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
