Declare The Acceptable Year Of The Lord

Declare The Acceptable Year of the Lord

By

Bishop Melvin L. Maughmer, Jr.

DEFINITION: - Acceptable means pleasing, desirable, favorable, and welcome.

Declare is to say something in an emphatic manner, to acknowledge possession of something.

OPENING: - There is a show on Television I watch called “To Catch a Smuggler” the premise of the show is to catch people that are bringing illegal substances into the country and when they pull someone coming through customs they will say to the person “Do you declare that what is ever in this bag is your property and you take ownership and responsibility of it”.

If you have ever been out of the country, you understand the customs authority. Every time my wife and I go on a cruise upon our return we must go through customs, like everybody else, and they always ask do you have anything to declare. They want to know do we have anything that we want to take possession of and be responsible for before moving forward. They want to know is there something that you didn’t have before but now you have and you must emphatically acknowledge possession of what it is before you are able to go any further, before you can enter into the country, before you can go home, before you can carry on in life you must declare.

Today I want to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. WATCH THIS: - Something that I didn’t have before that I am claiming possession of now and empathically saying it is mine before I move forward in this year.

Declare the Acceptable Year of the Lord!

PRAYER: -

SCRIPTURES:- Isaiah 61:1-8 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath 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. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them. For I the Lord love judgment, I hate robbery for burnt offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them”.

During my time in prayer and studying this scripture kept ringing down in my spirit and especially the phrase the acceptable year of the Lord. As I began to pray and meditate upon this, God began to open my understanding to the acceptable year of the Lord. He began to show me that the acceptable year of the Lord is not a literal year perse’, but rather a space of time that is characterized by God’s grace, favor, redemption, healing, and deliverance, it is a pleasing, desirable, favorable, and welcomed space of time.

The acceptable year of the Lord literally refers to God’s restoration of His people. In our text it refers to the restoration of the Children of Israel from Babylonian captivity and how Isaiah was prophesying that God was going to restore all that they had suffered from being under the Babylonian oppression.

When we read our text of Isaiah 61we see a condition that was created because of Babylonian oppression there was broken heartedness, captivity, incarceration, mourning, grief, despair, community and social ruin, shame and disgrace, robbery and wrongdoing.

No doubt the people felt hopeless, helpless, discouraged, frustrated and lost all feelings of joy. As a matter of fact, in Psalm 137:1-4 says “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land”. How can you sing the praises of God when you have been afflicted, oppressed, depressed, hurt, broken, emasculated, and just done wrong. Their joy had been sapped out of them, they were in captivity in a strange land, discouraged, oppressed, afflicted they felt hopeless.