Isaiah 61:1-3 Anointed One
June 7, 2015 D. Marion Clark
Introduction
Jesus and his disciples are nearing Emmaus. He has taken the two disciples through the Scriptures, demonstrating how he has fulfilled them in regard to being the Messiah even as he was being crucified. He has bruised the head of Satan, redeemed Israel from bondage, atoned for their sins, delivered them as their King, and opened the way to God as their Priest. This morning, we look at the very word “Messiah.” What does it mean? How did it become associated with the one whom Israel had placed her hope?
If you peruse your English Bibles, you will not find the word in the Old Testament and only twice in the New Testament. Nevertheless, it appears numerous times. In the New Testament, every time you come across the name “Christ,” you have read the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah.” In the Old Testament, every time you see the word “anointed,” you are reading “messiah” or a form of the word.
With that in mind, let us read our text.
Text
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 prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 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.
Verse 1 is literally “The LORD ‘masah’ me,” thus making him “messiah,” the anointed. It is this passage that brings to a pinnacle the expectation and hope of the Messiah – the Anointed One – who will redeem Israel. When and where did “anointed” get so wrapped up in the hoped-for deliverer that it became his identifying title?
The word first appears in Genesis 31:13. God speaks of an act by Jacob, whereby he anointed a pillar of stone. What Jacob had done was to pour oil on the stone, and he did so as a means of consecrating the stone. It was the stone on which he had rested his head when he had his dream of the ladder climbing into heaven. Jacob was setting the stone apart as a holy object.
We do not come across the term again until in Exodus. The people have passed through the Red Sea and come to Mt. Sinai. God has delivered the Ten Commandments and is now giving instruction to Moses about matters related to the priesthood and tabernacle. Aaron and his sons are to be anointed with oil, thereby consecrating them for holy service to the Lord. Items of the tabernacle are to be anointed for the same purpose. Anything and anyone who are consecrated to God – i.e. set apart – are anointed with oil. Consecration – set apart – is the operating concept, and specifically it is the consecration of a priest or object used in the tabernacle of God.
Later, anointing takes an added aspect. The change is seen at the end of Hannah’s prayer, which she made in response to having a son.
The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces;
against them he will thunder in heaven.
The LORD will judge the ends of the earth;
he will give strength to his king
and exalt the horn of his anointed (1 Samuel 2:10).
The odd part about this prayer is that it was made before Israel had a king. Hannah is looking to the day in which a king will sit on the throne of Israel, and he will be God’s “anointed,” his messiah.
The king would be anointed with oil, as was the priest, but the primary concept of anointing a king is that of God choosing that individual to serve as king. The anointed one is the chosen one. God chose Saul to be the first king, and he chose David to be the second king. He chooses the lineage of David to be on the throne, and even many of the kings of the northern kingdom are chosen by him.
In summary, a messiah – an anointed one – is one who is consecrated, as is a priest, for holy service. He is one chosen, as is a king, by God to serve God’s purposes. There are two Old Testament texts that lead God’s people to equate a messiah/anointed one with the Messiah, the Anointed One. The first is Psalm 2. Here are the opening verses:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
This Anointed, as the Psalm goes on to say, will be called the Lord’s Son and all of the nations will be subjected to him. The Jews, especially after the exile, looked to that psalm as prophesying the Messiah to come, who would not only deliver them from bondage to other nations, but make those same nations subjected to them.
Then comes our passage in Isaiah that eloquently presents the Messiah, who under the power of the Holy Spirit will deliver his people from their woes and establish them in righteousness. Although this is the only text in which “anointed” is used for the Messiah (the only other use of the word is in reference to Cyrus who is anointed to set God’s people free from exile), the hope of the Messiah is expressed throughout much of Isaiah. For the Messiah is the Servant of the Lord. Isaiah 42:1 quotes God as saying,
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
The Messiah is the one who is chosen by God and anointed by the Holy Spirit. He is consecrated for holy service and chosen to serve God as the Servant-King of God’s people. He will deliver; he will rule. Indeed, his rule will stretch beyond Israel to all the nations. Yes! A conquering king who will establish the kingdom of God in righteousness. That is whom the Jews waited for, longed for.
And so (to come back to our walk on the Emmaus Road), Jesus says to his two disciples, “That is the Messiah who did come, whom, as you say, you hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel.” Jesus Christ was the true Servant-King. As he said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Yes, he redeemed Israel by giving his life as the ransom price.
Jesus is the chosen one and the one anointed by the Holy Spirit. Look at his baptism.
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10-11).
The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus anointing him. God the Father speaks to him, alluding to both Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42. “You are my beloved Son,” harks back to Psalm 2:7: “The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son.’” “With you I am well pleased,” alludes to Isaiah 42:1: “my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”
Jesus certainly understood the significance of his baptism. In one of his first acts of ministry following his sojourn in the wilderness, he comes to his hometown of Nazareth and attends the Sabbath worship in the synagogue. Follow the story.
And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:16-21).
Jesus reads our very text and essentially states that he is the Anointed prophesied by Isaiah. Later, his cousin John the Baptist will have doubts about him because Jesus is not fulfilling the expectations of the Messiah as assumed by the Jews, including John. Jesus answers in this way:
And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:4-5).
Again, Jesus has in mind Isaiah 61, as well as Isaiah 35:5-6. Jesus, whom these two disciples had followed, was fulfilling the prophecies of the Messiah before their very eyes. And at no other time was he more clearly fulfilling those prophecies than when he was on the cross. For there was another Isaiah prophecy about the Servant of the Lord that they and their Jewish kin were overlooking. It was Isaiah 53, the chapter that depicts the Servant (52:13) bearing the sins of his people.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
To recap, Jesus was the Messiah, consecrated to be a holy priest and a holy sacrifice for Israel’s sins. Jesus was the Messiah, chosen to be the King who would redeem his people from bondage and rule over them.
Lessons
And what about us? We also are Israel, we who are Abraham’s children by faith. Jesus is our Messiah, a testimony we proclaim every time we use the title of Christ.
We are the poor who have received the good news of the gospel. We are the brokenhearted whose wounds have been bound with Christ’s healing power. We are the captives who have been set free from the bondage of sin and judgment. We have heard the Lord’s favor pronounced to us.
We are the Gentiles, once in rebellion to the Son, but who now take refuge in him. We are of the nations that were in darkness but have received the Light of the nations. For contrary to what the Jewish people were anticipating at Jesus’ time, he would become the Messiah for all the world, for all who would believe on his name. All nations and all tongues would confess him to be Jesus Christ – Jesus Messiah; for all people are held in bondage to sin and need the deliverance that only he can provide.
And so, when we look back through the scriptures of the Old Testament, we read our story. Our head Adam fell through the wiles of Satan, and we need the Offspring who bruises the head of Satan. We need the same Redeemer who will lead us out of bondage and into the Promised Land of eternal life. We need atonement made for our sins, even a sacrifice whose blood propitiates the judgment meant for us and cleanses us from our sin. We need the Priest-King who wins our battle and opens the way for us into the presence of God. We need the Anointed One, the Messiah.
And we need to be reading the Old Testament with eyes that are looking for our Redeemer and understanding his work. That is one of the reasons for this series – to help you learn how to read the Old Testament. Other than the Psalms and maybe Proverbs, we tend to avoid the Old Testament. There are certain chapters and stories that we pick out, but for the most part we stay away from extensive reading if only because so much of the Old Testament seems incomprehensible and boring. (Anyone up for a Bible study of Leviticus?)
If we look for our Messiah, Jesus Christ, we will have better hope of understanding the scriptures and even enjoying what seem to be the duller parts. Leviticus, for example, will teach us the work of Christ as our Priest and as our Sacrifice. It will teach us the essential dilemma for man – that God is holy and demands that we be holy. We will learn from all of the laws presented through Moses – and in particular the punishments doled out to lawbreakers – how impossible it is to earn favor with God.
Reading through Genesis we will see a story-line – God creates a good world with the intent of peopling it with men and women made in his image who glorify him. Then comes the fall, but instead of destruction mankind is allowed to live, and though now sin infiltrates everything and puts man into bondage, there will now be a story of redemption flowing throwing the scriptures culminating in the arrival of the Messiah.
We see again and again how man fails to live up to God’s holy and righteous standard; how God nevertheless sends word of a Messiah who will deliver; how he sends redeemers in the history of Israel who foreshadow the Redeemer; how he provides priests and kings and prophets who foreshadow the Messiah who is Priest, King, and Prophet.
There is so much more to point to. There is Abraham with whom God made a covenant to make him a blessing to the nations. It is that covenant that Jesus fulfills. There is the scene of Abraham commanded and then prevented from offering his son as a sacrifice, a message that God the Father would make such an offering for us. There is Joshua who leads God’s people into the Promised Land and wins victories for the people. Jesus is but the New Testament form of Joshua. We have not touched on prophecies in the minor prophets, nor the psalms that predict his coming and sufferings.
If we reduce the Old Testament to a collection of laws, strange stories, and obscure sayings, then it will be a bore to read. But interpret it through the lens of the redemption story and through the expectation of the Messiah, then you will be surprised with the insights and delights of seeing Jesus in the pages and understanding more fully your redemption that he has won for you. Your hearts will burn in the same way as those two disciples did as they listened to their unrecognized Master.
