If you want to start a church it will set you back $198.00.
That is the price of The Church Planting Guide, published by StartCHURCH. “This easy-to-follow guide will take you week-by-week for 20 weeks through the process of starting your Church on a solid foundation.”
- Week 1 is dedicated to naming the church, logo development, inviting Board Members, defining the spousal role, creating a vision, and writing a Mission Statement.
- By Week 3 you will finalize the Church Board, draft & file the Articles of Incorporation, obtain your Federal Employee ID number, and create your Corporate Records notebook.
- By Week 8 you have started fundraising in what they describe as “an atmosphere of generosity.”
- Week 11 is rest, ‘cause you’re going to be exhausted from all the paperwork.
- Week 18 you start writing your first sermon, develop a children’s ministry, and choose your worship team.
In our text, we will see Jesus StartKINGDOM.
Even if one existed, the Lord would not have had the funds to purchase a guide book. It isn’t an exaggeration to say He had zero material resources. He had nothing the Jews would recognize as important & necessary to start their Kingdom on Earth.
What and Who Jesus did have is identified as the anointing of God the Holy Spirit.
We – the Church – don’t make an appearance in this chapter. That is to be expected. We are a mystery revealed in the NT.
We can glean a few things about anointing because the NT says that we, too, have God’s anointing:
- The apostle John said to us, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things” (First John 2:20).
- The apostle Paul wrote,“Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God” (Second Corinthians 1:21).
I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1You Are Anointed To Be Like First Coming Jesus, and #2 You’ll Be Anointed To Be Like Second Coming Jesus.
What is the anointing?
Apologist & author Don Stewart breaks it down Scripturally as well as anyone. I’ll cut right to his conclusions:
- It is God who anoints the believer with His Holy Spirit. We do not anoint ourselves. Thus, it is entirely a work of God.
- This anointing of the Holy Spirit remains forever with the believer. It never leaves those who receive it.
- The purpose of this anointing of the Holy Spirit is that the believer might be taught of God. He anoints us to teach us His truths so that we can please Him by doing the work of the ministry.
- We find that the Holy Spirit anoints the believer in spiritual discernment and the understanding of the Word of God. In fact, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be the Teacher of those who believed in Him.
Some see the anointing of the Spirit as another way of saying the believer has already received the Holy Spirit while others think it is for a special ministry that the Spirit of God has in the life of each believer. It is both.
I’ve been talking a lot about Jesus. Where is He in this chapter? I’ll let Him tell you, by way of the Gospel of Luke.
Luk 4:16 So [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.
Luk 4:17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
Luk 4:18 “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE HAS ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR; HE HAS SENT ME TO HEAL THE BROKENHEARTED, TO PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO THE CAPTIVES AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET AT LIBERTY THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED;
Luk 4:19 TO PROCLAIM THE ACCEPTABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”
Luk 4:20 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
Jesus was reading Isaiah 61. He abruptly stopped in the middle of verse two. Perhaps the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him because this was odd. Why stop mid-verse?
These words were troublesome for the Jewish scholars. How could the same person “proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,” And “the day of vengeance of our God?” Isn’t that contradictory?
As tension built in the Synagogue, “He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21).
If Scripture was being “fulfilled,” it meant that the words Isaiah wrote 700yrs earlier were about Him. Jesus of Nazareth was claiming to be the Servant in Isaiah. No wonder that the Jews “were filled with wrath,” and attempted to throw Jesus off a cliff.
Isa 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me…
Our analysis of anointing was accurate and informative, but it seems a little sterile for something so intimate as a Person indwelling us.
Dr. Michael Svigel reminds us, “A lot of modern biblical commentaries and systematic theologies do nothing for my love of the Word of God, or the God of the Word. Their intricate analyses and critical exegesis function like a complex machine that spins gold into straw.”
I do not want that to be true of our discussion of God the Holy Spirit. It will be if we are not humble to realize we are not immune from reducing Him to straw.
It has been my armchair observation over these past 40 years of pastoring that dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s anointing is too easily ignored in favor of, well, just about anything else! We had a good laugh at StartCHURCH. It isn’t sarcasm from The Babylon Bee. It is a methodology being promoted as biblical.
The Bible is a supernatural book, and the Holy Spirit is a supernatural Person. One commentator, using the word “filled” in place of anointed, said, “We are not filled with an influence; we are not filled with a sensation; we are not filled with a set of ideas and truth; we are not filled with a blessing, but we are filled with a Person… and its very essence is the indwelling life of Jesus Christ Himself.”
Jesus could not have accomplished His mission on Earth without the anointing of God the Holy Spirit. What does that say about us? “God does His work by the operation of the Spirit. We should not attempt to do ours by the power of trained and devoted intellect.”
Isa 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
Isa 61:2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD…
This is a gracious offer by ‘First Coming’ Jesus to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth promised to the nation of Israel. It was “the acceptable year,” it was exactly the right time.
The things He would do after anointed (some listed here) would prove He was their Messiah.
Isa 61:2 … And the day of vengeance of our God…
Geno was teaching about the power of punctuation in the Bible. The comma between “the acceptable year of the LORD, And the day of vengeance of our God…” has so far spanned twenty centuries. On one side is the Lord’s First Coming; on the other, His Second Coming – after the Church Age & after the Great Tribulation.
You do know that Jesus is returning, don’t you?
The delay was a result of the nation of Israel officially rejecting the King’s offer to establish the Kingdom.
Isa 61:2 … To comfort all who mourn,
Isa 61:3 To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”
The mourning, the ashes, the heaviness – those are conditions in the Time of Jacob’s Trouble (aka, the Great Tribulation). The Time of Jacob’s Trouble is necessary in order that spiritually blinded Jews will recognize their Messiah, Jesus. It’s awful, but not as awful as eternal separation from God in conscious torment.
These are beautiful descriptions of conditions in the future Millennial Kingdom. After all the centuries from the Garden of Eden until the Second Coming, “the Lord’s will” will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
There are five things listed here that Jesus did in His First Coming. We shouldn’t try to do them so much as to realize we are doing them led by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
It is normal and orthodox to point out that God the Holy Spirit is a Person. I want to remind us that He is a very complex person. We will never fully enjoy His indwelling if we only make lists of the things He can do, and then put them into what we feel is the logical, rational order of how He does them.
Being filled with the Word of God is not the same as being filled with the Spirit of God. The person who proves that to us is Jesus. Could there be any human more filled with the Word of God than Jesus Christ? If we had any doubt, we see Him wielding it in His desert temptings by Satan.
Nevertheless, Jesus was not ready to embark on His ministry until the Spirit’s anointing.
This is off-topic, but we need to acknowledge Jesus did no healings, no exorcisms, no raisings from the dead for His first 30 years on Earth. Sure it would have temporarily benefited many people. But in the long run, Jesus came to be the Savior of the world. And His heavenly Father had a plan for that. Part of that plan was for people to look upon Jesus’ life and understand the vital part that the Holy Spirit played. He was anointed and Bam! For 3 ½ years He did so much that it could never be compiled in books.
The remaining verses of chapter sixty-one transport us to life on the Millennial Earth. It is after the Second Coming. Though not told here, the Church will return with Jesus, having been resurrected & raptured 7yrs earlier.
Isa 61:4 And they shall rebuild the old ruins, They shall raise up the former desolations, And they shall repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations.
Isa 61:5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, And the sons of the foreigner Shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
Before we go on, I should explain who these “strangers” and “foreigners” are. At His Second Coming, Jews who survive the 7yrs will all be saved by looking upon Jesus and repenting. There will also be multitudes of saved Gentiles who have endured til the end. These and their children born during the thousand years are the Gentile “strangers” and “foreigners.”
These Gentiles will serve the Jews. Not as slaves or anything weird like that. It will be a blessing.
Isa 61:6 But you shall be named the priests of the LORD, They shall call you the servants of our God. You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, And in their glory you shall boast.
- Just as the descendants of Aaron performed priestly service for all the people of Israel, so in the future all the people of Israel will perform priestly service for the nations.
- Just as the priests used to live from all that the people of Israel brought them, tithes and sacrifices, so Israel as a whole will live from all that the nations will bring them.
Isa 61:7 Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs.
We are privileged to be alive in the time that God has reestablished the nation of Israel, after centuries of dispersion. It is obviously a first step to fulfilling the promises of a double portion and everlasting joy.
Isa 61:8 “For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery for burnt offering; I will direct their work in truth, And will make with them an everlasting covenant.
God will reverse the injustices forced upon Israel through the centuries. His love of “justice” will be on display.
Twice a day, everyday, morning & evening, two lambs were to be sacrificed in the Temple. The nations who troubled Israel, dispossessing them, robbed them of their burnt offering. The last burnt offering would have been sometime in 70AD when the Romans destroyed the Temple.
Isa 61:9 Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles, And their offspring among the people. All who see them shall acknowledge them, That they are the posterity whom the LORD has blessed.”
This verse describes how the Gentile nations will look upon Israel with admiration and awe. Stop and contemplate that while thinking about the antisemitism currently sweeping the globe.
Future Israel chimes in:
Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
I am in love with this verse. It has become my go-to for explaining salvation. It’s also great for funerals.
Heaven has a dress code. The Bible presents humans as dressed in filthy rags. We need a robe, the “robe of righteousness,” to get into Heaven. When we believe God, Jesus takes upon Himself our filthy garments and freely gives us the robe of righteousness.
Isa 61:11 For as the earth brings forth its bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.
If you were asked to describe conditions in the future Kingdom… Righteousness & praise springing up as the fruit of the nations would do it.
Tony Stark gave Peter Parker an Amazing Spider-Man suit. Most of its power, however, was locked-up. Only as Peter matured would he earn more of its abilities. He had to deserve the suit.
Don’t think of the anointing of God as if it is locked-up, waiting for you to do something to earn it or deserve it. If you believe that, you will end up in one of two camps:
- There are those who are not interested in a full experience of the suit. They immediately subordinate the anointing of God the Holy Spirit to their own wisdom of walking in obedience to God’s Word. They equate the word of God and the Spirit of God as one in the same. Maybe not in their doctrine, but in their practice for sure.They gleefully limit God the Holy Spirit, talking about the cessation of the Holy Spirit’s power and manifestations.
- On the other end, there are those who are convinced that the suit does require hacking. They seek experience after experience because they believe it is the way to unlock the Holy Spirit. Their experiences get weirder and weirder, farther and farther from genuine.
You already have His anointing to live the Christian life. You can receive particular ‘anointing’ for specific tasks.
How should we then live? Be hospitable!
As a Person who indwells us, we are encouraged to show hospitality to the Holy Spirit by holding three things in our minds:
- Yield to Him.
- Don’t grieve Him.
- Don’t quench Him.