Pastor Allan Kircher
Shell Point Baptist Church
21 October 2012
"To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."-Isaiah 42:7.
I. Looking at the first verses/chapter/we will consider who it is that sends Jesus Christ/accomplish/liberation of the sons of men
• because much/depend upon/liberator's credentials
• the authority by which he is warranted
• and the power by which he is backed
Sing for joy as we see the Infinite God himself commissioned the Lord Jesus to be the deliverer of men; and he did this, first, in his capacity as Creator.
Behold the great author of/Redeemer's commission: Isaiah 42:5
• He, then, who spared not his own Son
• but sent Him forth on the embassies of love
• is Jehovah
• the all-sustaining One who bears up the pillars of the universe
• And impels the earth in its majestic circuit.
He who gave its luster to every precious stone from the mine
• the life to every blade of grass
• the fruit to every tree
• the motion to every beast and winged fowl
• All this may be said to come out of earth/ but not so…
• But is from God: the same God who cuts/bars/iron asunder
• So the slaves/Satan might escape/bondage/their sins.
Jesus, the Son of God, comes armed with the power of the Creator himself.
• So Rejoice today you that are lost
• the power which spoke all things out of nothing
• can make you new
Even though there’s nothing/good within you to aid the godlike work.
______________________________________________
Rejoice, you that are marred and broken
• Like vessels spoiled upon the potter's wheel
• your great Creator puts his hand a second time to your soul,
• He resolves to form you for himself that you may praise Him.
• He who made you in secret is able/his mysterious working
• to create in you a new heart
• and infuse into you a right spirit.
Is there not hope for the dark chaos of your fallen nature?
• Is anything too hard for the Lord?
• Is there any restraint of his power?
The Lord says, "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former will not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create ___________________________________________
God also describes Himself as the life giver here in our text.
• Sent forth/Lord Jesus as His Elect One to restore our fallen nature.
• V. 5, "He gives breath to His people, and life to those who walk on it!"
• The Lord creates all life
• he puts breath into the nostrils of men and beasts
• he gives also mental life
• Life/thinks, imagines, doubts, fears, understands, desires.
This Eternal One, who has life in himself, has girded Jesus with his own power
• It is by the word of Jesus that the dead will rise
• "for the hour is coming,
• And all us in the graves will hear His voice
• And we will come forth.
• no case of human corruption is beyond the Redeemer's skill
Even those who rot, like Lazarus will come forth when he calls them, the bonds of death and hell will be loosed.
Thus says the Lord of life: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word, and believes on him that sent me, has everlasting life, and will not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."
The vision of Ezekiel's valley has become a fact since Jesus has appeared;
• It’s no marvel that it should be so
• The Eternal and Ever-living God has sent him.
• He can breathe the Holy Spirit into the dead soul
• Thousands of dead/dried Israelites/to life.
• When your heart palpitates with penitence
• He gives it the softness required to comfort
• And your heart leaps with desires after God.
He can give eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.
The great obstacle in his way is spiritual death
• The eternal one can remove that!
• Salvation for man is not difficult!
Rejoice, for among the graves of our sins, and into the very charnel-house of our corruption, the Quickener has descended, and is quickening whomsoever he will.
_______________________________________________Reading further in the same verse, you will perceive that the ever blessed sender of the Lord Jesus is omnipotent, for is it not added, "I will take hold of your hand"?
• God will give to the Mediator all his power.
• Christ is the power of God.
• Omnipotence dwells in him who was slain
• but now lives,
• And he is able to save/vilest that comes to God by him.
Here is the comfort we have when the Christian faith is threatened.
• Under all/disappointments/Christian church/undergone
• Emmanuel/God with us/is still our strength.
• Our strength!
• The Lord could have formed/habitable globe/one second of time
• Or converted/whole world/Christ on the day of Pentecost.
• But He uses you and I for His glory
As we read the promise, "I will hold your hand, and will keep you," we see the certainty that the Savior with all sufficiency of divine strength will accomplish the work of human salvation. __________________________________________
II. We will now advance a little further, the Lord helping us.
• Having contemplated/One who sent Jesus to the work of man's emancipation
• Let us now consider the SENT ONE HIMSELF.
God has been pleased to set apart his well-beloved Son to be the Savior of sinners.
• I tried to show just now that God has girded our Lord with his omnipotence
• This should to lead every sinner to feel that Christ can save him, for what can’t Omnipotence do?
I pray we never talk of impossibilities/difficulties with the almighty before us.
O sinner, I beseech you to accept what God has wisely chosen.
• Let God's choice be your willing choice.
• At this hour, constrained by the grace of God, say,
• If God has chosen the Lord Jesus to be a propitiation for sin
• my heart accepts him as the atonement for my sin
• Feeling that he alone can save me.
We are also told in the first verse that the Lord Jesus is anointed to this work. "I have put my Spirit upon him."
• He can illuminate, persuade, and control the spirits of men.
Now, if Jesus Christ has the fullness of the Holy Spirit resting upon him, is it not supposable that any sinner will be so desperately enslaved that he cannot set him free.
• I am about to speak of blind eyes to be opened
• But in the light/Holy Spirit what eye need remain blind?
Men have taught doctrines which have emancipated the minds of their fellow man from the slavery of superstition
But the Holy Ghost's teachings deliver minds from bondage of every kind, and make men free before the living God.
• Trembling sinner, accept Christ as your Savior;
• God appoints him; God anoints him.
• Aren’t these sufficient reasons/accept Him in your soul?
Furthermore, the Redeemer is spoken of as being gentle and lowly of heart, this should commend Him to every lowly and contrite spirit.
We need a Savior who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and Jesus is such.
In the records of Christ’s life, He must have been tempted to repel a villainous soul, but He always had an anxious Spirit.
• When feeble faith could only touch the hem of his garment, virtue flowed from him.
• When the leper said, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean,"
• It was but poor faith, but that faith saved him.
• Though you cannot yet believe as you would
• Say, "Lord, I believe and he will not reject you.
You who are in your own esteem--utterly worthless
• fit to be thrown away
• unfit to live and unfit to die
• Jesus Christ, the gentle One, will give you mercy,
• if you seek him, and in giving
• He will not rebuke you.
O wandering child, Jesus will introduce you to his Father
• He will take off your rags of sin
• cloth you with glorious robes of righteousness.
• Only come to him, He cannot reject you!
• "How can I come?" says one.
A prayer will bring you; your anxious desire will be a chariot to Him.
• If your soul is truly willing to have Christ
• Christ has made you willing, and has already begun to set you free.
• May these thoughts concerning the great Emancipator cheer you on to confidence in him.
_________________________________________
One more point in this direction. The Christ who has come to save the sons of men is persevering to the last degree.
• Men are unwilling to be saved;
• they do not desire to be brought out of their prison
But Jesus Christ will not cease to teach
• nor cease to seek, nor cease to save
• till every one of His elect/redeemed from the ruin of the fall
I tell you, soul, if Christ wills to save you, he will save you.
• I rejected Him for many years as He chased me.
• He will track your footsteps, wander where you may go.
• If you should escape time after time
• from the arrows of conviction
• and plunge again and again into sin
• He will seek you out and find you yet.
• Don’t delay, yield to his power!
I pray that he may stretch out his sovereign arm at this moment, and rescue you from yourself.
• If your heart is adamant, or is a weathered millstone
• He can dissolve it with a touch.
• O that the rock-breaking hammer would come down upon you now!
• He is mighty to save; may he prove his mightiness in you!
III. It is time that we expound the text itself, and review the work itself.
According to the text, the Messiah's work of grace is divided into three parts
The first is, to open the blind eyes.
• Here/notable work which brings much glory to our Lord.
• Man's understanding is perverted from/knowledge of God
• from a true sense of sin
• from a realization of divine justice
• From a right estimate of salvation.
The understanding, which is the eye of the soul, is darkened.
• But when the anointed Savior comes
• he removes the scales of our mental frame
• and in the light of God we see light
• and then the sinner is humbled and bowed down
• For he perceives his guilt and the justice of God.
Moreover, the sinner is filled with alarm
• He sees the bleeding Savior bearing Jehovah's wrath
• and he rightly judges that in every case sin must receive recompense of wrath
• for if sin laid on Christ was punished
• How much more must personal sin involve banishment from the presence of the Most High?
The sinner now sees the only way sin can be removed is through the expiatory sufferings of a substitute.
He is led to see that atonement avails for him upon his believing.
And is led to understand what believing is.
__________________________________________
You may think that this is an easy thing for men to see
• Some have heard the doctrine/childhood
• Some have heard/incessantly from the pulpit
But as simple as it seems no man receives it unless it has been given to him from heaven.
• He may want to think he is saved in his mind.
• But he has no evidence of divine intervention.
• He still is the old self in actions and deeds.
• And therefore continues to fool himself.
Many have heard the gospel—and heard the gospel….
but until/HS explains to us what it was to be a sinner, and what it is to believe in Jesus, we don’t know the rudiments of the gospel.
• We were in darkness ourselves
• though the light shone all around us
• even though we thought we were good
• Our eyes were not opened.
But when we truly experienced the power/rushing wind/the breathe of Jesus
• We understood the mystery.
• Our once blind eyes now see clearly ourselves lost
• and see Christ suffering instead of us;
• and we believe in Him, our sins disappeared
• and we are accepted in the Beloved.
My dear friend, if you are seeking rest, I pray the Lord to open your eyes to see the simplicities of the gospel.
One touch of his finger will make you wise unto salvation.
But it needs an opened eye to see even through a glass window; the clear witness of the gospel is dark to blind eyes.
The next work of the Messiah, according to the text, is to free the captives from prison.
This, I think, relates/bondage under which a man sits on his sins.
• Our habits of sin, like iron nets, surround us, and we cannot escape their meshes.
• The man sins, and imagines that he cannot help sinning.
• So he just continues in the depravity of his ways.
How often do/ungodly tell us that they cannot renounce/world?
Cannot break off their sins by righteousness
Cannot believe in Jesus?
Let all men know that the Savior has come on purpose to remove every bond of sin from the captive
• To set him free from every chain of evil.
I have known men strive against the habit of blasphemy
• others against evil passions
• many more against a haughty spirit
• or an angry temper
• or selfishness and worldly passions
And continue/same sins/wondering why?
______________________________________________
When a man believes in Jesus his resolve to become a freeman is to a great extent accomplished at once.
• Some sins die/moment we believe/Jesus
• They trouble us no more
• others hang on to us, and die by slow degrees
• But they never get/mastery over us.
O struggler after mental, moral, spiritual liberty, if you would be free, your only possible freedom is in Christ.
• If you want to shake off evil habits
• or any other mental bondage, I give no remedy to you but this
• To commit yourself to Christ the Liberator.
• Love him, and you will hate sin.
• Trust him, and you will no longer trust yourself.
• Submit yourself to the way of the incarnate God
• and he will break the dragon's head within you
• He will hurl Satan beneath your feet.
• Nothing else can do it.
• Christ must have the glory of your conquest of self.
He can set you free from sin's iron yoke.
He never failed yet, and he never will.
Faith in the Lord Jesus is the end of bondage/the dawn/freedom.
_____________________________________________
The last part of this divine work is
Bringing them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house.
Now I will refer now to those truly emancipated.
• Yet by reason of despondency still sit down/dark dungeon.
• In my pastoral duties I constantly console persons who are free from their sins.
• By divine grace they have mastered them
• But yet they are in sadness.
The door is open, the bars are broken, but with strange obstinacy of despondency they remain in the cell of fear
And in that cell there is no necessity for them to continue for a moment.
They cannot believe that these good things are true to them.
• They’re forgiven!
• They’re made to be children of God!
• They have hope for the eternal blessings of God.
• But as for themselves?
• Can such blessings really fall to someone as unworthy as themselves?
I have consoled many but we have only learned our own unskillfulness in the art of consolation.
_________________________________________
You see, these thinkers are rich in inventing self-torture for themselves.
• They are ingenious in escaping comfort.
• Practical in justifying the things of the world.
• Cunning in their own interpretations to meet their own needs.
• But, ah! the blessed Master of our souls
Since Adam fell, He has always mended broken hearts.
• to think that the Christ of God undertakes to lift up
• Lift up all desponding and despairing spirits who come to Him.
• Into hope and joy once more.
• I know who will rejoice to hear this.
_________________________________________
It is the good woman over there that for many years has been in spiritual bondage.
It is the young man over there that has carried a secret burden month after month.
It is the older man over there that longs to find Christ but just hasn’t had the courage to come to Him for so many years.
• Perhaps he thinks his hour of grace has passed.
• Christ is still mighty to save.
Prisoners of hope, your liberator is near at hand.
• Trust him and be free.
• Though it may seem a venturesome belief
• Venture on him.
• He cannot, will not reject you
• He will proclaim a jubilee, and set each bond slave free.
Christ Jesus, Mary's son and Jehovah's son man, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh be blessed forever
His precious blood/panacea for all human illnesses.
____________________________________________
IV. What is the design of god in all this? v. 8
This question is answered in the next verse to the text: "I am the Lord: that is my name! and I will not give my glory to another."
The great end of God in Christ was the manifestation of his own glorious attributes.
• Can you believe God has given His people His power!
• His glorious attributes!
Should the sinner who has been an atrocious offender against laws both human and divine, conceive himself to be an improper subject for the grace of God?
If so, I would take him by the hand and I would put this truth clearly before him.
• Where is mercy most glorified?
• Is it not in passing by the greatest offenses?
• You have great offenses
• There is room in you for mercy to be greatly displaced.
Where is grace glorified?
• Is it not in conquering the most violent passions?
• You’ve had many conquered in you
• Grace may therefore be glorified in you.
• There is elbow-room in you for grace to work.
• There is room in your emptiness for God's fullness.
• There is a clear stage in your sinfulness for God's super abounding grace.
• But you have been a ringleader in the devil's army.
Yes, and how can God strike a more telling blow against the demons of darkness than by capturing you?
• You say you are an enormous sinner.
• How do you think the Lord of love encourage other sinners?
• It is through what He does in you!
• They will hear the rumors of your life change.
• Have you heard that Allan got saved?
Those that hear may make fun of it, joke of it, but in the secrecy of their heart they will think it over. “How is that possible?”
Then they will enquire of the ways of God’s grace.
If I disentombed my history to you on this pulpit, there wouldn’t be a one to come another Sunday.
• I have lived in all manner of sin and iniquity.
• Brought into a collision with/scum of society
• But I came to the temple of the Lord.
• Heard the Word and it engulfed me.
• It is only through the sovereignty of God’s grace that I rejoice now to teach to others the gospel which I once rejected.
"I am a living witness to what grace can do; I can declare to you what God's love has done for me."
I say, then, if I speak to any other who has been a great offender, a drunkard, or what else.
• My master will set you free and enlist you in his army.
• There will be a shout go up and make heaven ring.
• While/Philistines tremble/their Goliath is slain, and a new champion will raise up in victory in your life.
If the Lord saved men because of their merits, there would be no hope for great sinners
• any one of us
But if he saves us for his own glory, he magnifies His grace
• Time flies with us; days are rushing past
• years are hastening away.
How long will it be that Christ will gain your hearts?
How long will you hear of him, and continue to refuse his grace?
How long, you unconverted ones, will you hug your chains and kiss your shackles?
How long will you who live life’s of a false sense of salvation remove the cobwebs of the world’s thoughts and come to Christ.
"Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"
"Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near:
• let the wicked forsake his way
• the unrighteous man his thoughts
• return unto the Lord
• May God’s grace fall upon you, open your heart, for the acceptance of His mercy on you.
