The Liberating Spirit of Christ — Joshua Daniel

Isaiah 61 and the Spirit Sent to the Meek

Now friends, as we turn to the Word of God, Isaiah chapter 61. Here the Bible specifically tells us, to whom the Lord is particularly sent. He was sent for sinners, and you know when sin is not defined, like today, when the Ten Commandments are set aside, you see.

Moral Decline and the Loss of Truth

You know folks, you don't understand the Scripture, I came to seek and to save that which is lost. An individual, a nation, which turns away from the Lord Jesus, and the truth of God's Word. You see, the kingdoms, the history of the kingdoms of this world, show very clearly how moral decline always preceded the collapse of those empires.

You see, that's a fact of history. Now if we want to repeat that same mistake in America, or anywhere else in the world, well, it's a case of bullheadedness. We can be asinine and stubborn. But here the Bible tells us, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.

The Call to Meekness and Humility

So, here is a qualification, which does not easily fit us. When was I meek? You know, I was never brilliant, but I was foolish and proud. If you ask me, what have you to be proud of? Foolishness, I suppose.

You know, it was just not in me to be meek. I don't know whether that is in you. And what are the things which you regard as your greatest qualifications? You know, folks, when I see that the Spirit of God is particularly upon our Lord for this purpose, to preach, to bring good tidings, great tidings to the meek.

Now, do we fit in here? So, are we to say, no, this is not for me. Can't apply to me. Jesus definitely brings no good news to me. Sure, when sin comes in, there comes in a degree of hardness. We become somewhat hard, intractable.

You know, when suddenly you find that your gas pedal, the accelerator, sticks and will not budge, and you cannot control the speed of your car. Oh, you know, there is disaster, and sometimes that happens when your car cannot be controlled, or rather the speed of the car can't be controlled with oncoming traffic, and so on.

You see, there are certain sticking points in our nature, and one of those strong sticking points is pride. You might well ask yourself, why am I so proud? Is there any real cause, and can I justly be proud?

You will find that the greatest people are the humblest people, and they are ready to listen and ready to learn. Now, that is a quality that true meekness endows you with. You see, it is all mightiness we talk of, the biggest, the greatest, the most powerful.

You see, that's what we glory in. But the Lord Jesus Christ said, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. Well, my dear friends, even if there's nothing that I need to learn, I need to learn that.

I feel the humbler I get, the stronger I am. The more broken in spirit I get, the greater the power of God flows into me. So I need that broken spirit. I need that meekness of heart. You know, my dear friends, we're all, we used to have in our prep school a weekly ranking system, and the principal of the school used to read out our ranks before the whole assembly.

Oh, boy. And that puts you into great competition, you know. You want to stand first. Not always did I manage, but on a few occasions, let us say. But that kind of says, well, I need to top the class.

So this weekly ranking system made our school such a premier institution that when the inspection time came around, they said, oh, the whole school needs to be promoted a grade higher. You see? Because the quality of your students is such, you're a grade higher.

The whole school was promoted, was given a double promotion at the end of the year. Well, that was the weekly ranking which did it for us. But let me tell you, my friends, there is no such ranking in life.

We often rank ourselves, and of course we rank ourselves very favorably, don't we? Yes, the other fellow is wrong. The other fellow has failed. The other fellow has messed it up. I am fine. I'm great.

Brokenness and the Nearness of God

Now here the Bible tells us that Jesus brings good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. Well, we, I don't know what you are brokenhearted about. But if you want the Lord Jesus Christ to minister to you, you had better find a brokenheart, that is, a humble heart.

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken spirit, says the Bible. The Lord is nigh unto them. What? To have the all-powerful God just at hand, close by. What assurance that gives me. You know, my dear friends, I don't know how many of you lost a dad early.

Learning Dependence Through Personal Loss

You know, I lost my dad when I was 35. When I was just getting a little wisdom, slowly. And I was beginning to say, hey, I had better learn. And oh, let me learn. And I began to value the message of my father.

After having heard some of the greatest preachers in the world, I said to myself, hey, none of these men have the depth of daddy. They don't have that clarity of a walk with God. They're great expositors.

They're great Bible students, yes. But they don't have that practical walk with God. So I began to value my father at last. I was so foolish, you know. I always make a point of telling people that. And when he was suddenly taken away, here I was, saddled with a big responsibility.

And a lot of people who had been transformed, and I had to feed them. I had to take the place of my father all of a sudden. Now that gave me quite a bit of brokenness, let me tell you. Where was I to turn?

You see, my father's religion was not just bookish, not just borrowed. He did not plagiarize anybody. That is, you know, somebody's writing, you take it and you begin to talk as though it is your own.

But daddy had original material because he learned at the feet of Jesus, you see. And here I was, a little spiritual pygmy. And I had to fit into his shoes. That cut me to size. Where was I to go for any help?

The bills had to be paid. And, of course, it has always been our principle never to ask anybody or appeal for funds. There were always my rich relatives who would have come forward to help us. But that was no-no.

That was the very last thing to do. Never to show that the life of faith had failed to any of my relatives. So, friends, that brought to me a humble heart, a broken spirit. I knew that I did not know.

I knew that I could not do it. I knew how inadequate and frail I was. And, therefore, my eyes got fixed upon Jesus. Some of you may not have passed through some of these experiences and so you feel quite equal to anything I presume.

But let me tell you that the Lord Jesus is particularly sent to those who are of a broken spirit. You know, this illusion which pleasure and property gives us today. You know, Australia is a country given much to games.

Self-Sufficiency and the School of Hard Knocks

And over in Switzerland, where they have a very high level of living, you know, and you may not be made very welcome in Switzerland because there, though Switzerland's chief industry now is tourism perhaps, yet they're always suspicious, I found, of strangers.

I never had any problem myself, but normally, being a small, enclosed country, self-sufficient country, maintaining their freedom and treasuring their freedom through history, Switzerland has cultivated that kind of mind.

But the people there will tell you, I've got a boat, I've got all that I need. Why do I need God? Why do I need God? I've got everything. But of course, you know, some years ago, when I got out of the car before a main station in Zurich, I found that my friend, my host, was not locking the car.

He said, in Switzerland, we never lock the car. Things have changed a great deal now, but that was how it was. Just leave the car and walk away. You see, my folks, and so that feeling of self-sufficiency, it, by the hard knocks, the school of hard knocks, some people don't learn in any other school.

They learn only in the school of hard knocks. And I want to tell you, my dear friends, that's not the very best way to learn, because the final knock may come before you have learned a thing. He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.

So I don't believe that anybody here has any business to complain or to grumble. All you have to do to have everything fixed is to be of a broken heart, broken spirit. And that's all God is asking. Your supply, your need, whatever it may be, will be met.

Just fulfill this one condition, and we are not ready to do that. And why should we be here or call ourselves Christians? You know, some of us are just playing games with God. That's all. We're plainly playing games with God.

If somebody tells you, when you apply for a passport or something, hey, you need to supply three pictures or photographs, passport size, with this particular angle. You know, I don't know exactly what that angle really is, but you may not look your very best at that angle.

But they don't care about that. They want you at a particular angle. Anyway, if you want the passport, you'd better get that photograph with that angle, straight. And you don't hoo and ha about it. You don't dither about it.

You say, boy, I need that passport. And here are all the photographs you need. And God gives us one condition, and we're not ready to meet that condition. What a sick state. We need to humble ourselves in the sight of God.

Revival as Repentance and Cleansing

You know, this nation has received so much, has received so much. As a matter of fact, some of you who know Webster, Webster's Dictionary, Webster says he is very clear in his understanding that there can be no other way except Christian freedom, which can give a country this kind of liberty which it has.

Now, but those freedoms are being frittered away. People are proving themselves to be unworthy of such freedom. You see? Cheating in every field, cheating in the Medicare, money being embezzled, stolen at the highest levels.

Shocking! A total misuse of freedom. How are we to fix this? Some of you may have never heard of the word revival. By revival, you mean jumping up and down, I guess. No, no, no, no. It's not jumping up and down that makes revival.

A revival is a cleansing, a deep cleansing, a repentance towards God, a getting right with your neighbor, restoring the money that you owe to the IRS. That is repentance. That is revival. I don't see that.

Going to the offended spouse and saying sorry, humbling oneself. That is revival. Not just a mere talk or an emotional high. My dear people, Jesus is sent to us to fix our problem. And we are not willing to fulfill the one condition that he requires.

Why? Why? Are we so big-headed or bull-headed? It is sad. You know, I want to fulfill that condition. I want to be of a broken spirit. If I have to ask anybody's pardon, yes, I will. I will do it in public.

Proclaiming Liberty to a Captive Civilization

It does not hurt me to humble myself, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. In this day and generation that we have a world which is at such sixes and sevens, a confused civilization, a dying civilization worthy of not even a decent burial, an immoral civilization which does not even want to acknowledge what is at the root of the problem, a civilization that exalts immorality.

My dear friends, an irresponsible sex, such a civilization does not deserve to spread its deadly tentacles further. And here God says, to proclaim liberty to the captives. Are we doing that? Do we hold the prospect of liberty?

You know, I find many Christians are like a bunch of escaped convicts. You know, a bunch of escaped convicts, they have to lay low, you know. They can't be out looking people, the cops in the eye. You and I should be able to look any man in the eye.

What have we to hide? What have we to fear? You know, fear him, you saints, and ye will then have nothing else to fear. How true that is. When you fear God and fear his word, you have fear of nothing.

Freedom for Those Bound by Affliction

To proclaim liberty to the captives. Oh, I see, many captives. You know, friends, many people used to come for prayer, for this, that, and the other, all kinds of diseases. And now they come for AIDS.

Pray for me. I have AIDS. Shall I tell them? Okay, if you had a headache, I would. But AIDS is something which Jesus can't tackle. So all I can do is just pat you on your back and send you on your way.

Now, the Lord is healing these full-blown AIDS patients. He is doing it. And it is amazing that the number of these AIDS patients, are we going to, as they just grow in leaps and bounds, are we going to proclaim liberty to such captives?

Or are we going to draw a little circle and say, this is where God can work. Only within this little perimeter. No. Proclaim liberty to the captives. Let them be captives of anything. My dear friends, that is the spirit of Christ.

And when you say you follow Jesus, you should be imbued with that spirit. And nothing less. You know, with all our education, and we have glorified our education and our lifestyle too much. Our lifestyle is just a little kind of empty dream.

The Spirit of Christ in Christian Conduct

It does not produce anything except more fighting, more arguments, more divorces, more instability in families and in character. What kind of stuff is that? Big educated people, what are they making? High bracket.

They're in the top bracket. Earnings. What is their inward quality of life? Nothing. Zero. A husband and a wife who can't even pray with each other and love each other and not be rude to each other. You know, being rude has become the American way of life today.

You know, my dear friends, there are some people in the world who resent it. In England, they resent it. And it is shocking to find that some Englishmen will look an American in the face and say, you an American?

I have nothing to do with Americans. Why? They resent the rudeness. You know, we feel being brash and brunt and grunt all the time is the way to live. No, it isn't. We can be very pleasant. We can be very gracious.

We can say please. We can say thank you. We can be very generous. I have found the English to be very cold and distant till you really speak to them. When I could not carry some of my heavy cases, oh, they would just pick them up and say, where are you going, to the station?

OK, I'm going that way. Pick it up and walk up the hill to the station. Now, you know, we are a very busy people, and we feel we have the right to be rude. Why? We are very busy. We have no time. Now, let's crack out of that kind of mentality.

A Christian is a very gracious person, a very loving person. He walks a second mile with you. Let us apply the spirit of Christ to our conduct. Then we will be able to declare true freedom and bring true freedom to those around us.

Today, the world seems to have imprisoned itself and thrown the keys away. Whose prisoner are you? Tell yourself, I am my own prisoner, and I have chosen to throw the keys away. We wouldn't dare do it in an actual situation but we do it with eternity in view, which is so shocking.

A Final Call to Freedom and Salvation

Eternity is one breath away from you. The next breath, if you do not take, you're in eternity. Let us pray. Loving Father, at a time when this world is crying for this freedom, crying for someone to free them, to break their chains, here is the spirit of our Savior teaching us, this is my spirit which breaks the chains, declares freedom to the captives.

O my Father, are we not going to enjoy this freedom ourselves and bring it to those around us? Or are we going to be captives of ourselves and sink and die that way? Save us, Lord, save us. Then we can save others.

Hear our prayer. We beseech you. In Jesus' holy name. Amen.

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