In this sermon, the speaker begins by discussing the power of the Holy Spirit and how it seems to be lacking in today's world. He then focuses on a verse from Luke's Gospel that states Jesus returned in the power of the Holy Spirit. The speaker emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit and how Jesus spoke about it before his death, promising to send another comforter. The sermon concludes with a call to rely on the Holy Spirit for true freedom and to rise above the challenges of life.

Well, sort of about the Holy Spirit, and sort of about freedom, and sort of about what it is to be made free, all kinds of sort of. It'll all tie together, at least I sure hope it will. But I want to go right back to the beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus. And notice something here that he has to say. By the way, you will be very pleased to hear that tonight I'm not going to be very, very long. Aren't you very glad? We've been on the road since six o'clock, so I'm feeling a bit jaded. Don't know about you. So, the meeting will not go on very long, and if anybody kind of starts to nod, we might just get up and leave you to it. OK? Pay attention. All right, this is Jesus. Verse 14 of chapter 4 of Luke's Gospel. There's a remarkable statement made about him in this 14th verse, that Jesus returned in the power of the Holy Spirit to Can I write from the other side? Make a suggestion, if that's the right word. I'm not sure that's the right word. But there is not very much power around these days, is there? Now that's my assessment. That could be wrong, but as I look around church life, in the most general sort of, in this land, well I say in this land, in the UK, I'm aware there's not much power. And why is there not? Why? Now, you'll notice that Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit. It does not say that he went in the power of the Spirit, but it sure does say that he returned in the power of the Spirit. Where did he go? Into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. I think, and I'm going to kind of fill up all kinds of things for you to think about, for me to think about, I think that perhaps lack of power is because we have not learned in our own lives to live in a place of victory. We can shout about it, we can sing about it, we can read about it, but I have to ask myself, and you must ask yourself, do you on a daily basis live in this power? Is it available to you and me? And the answer is most surely yes, and you will notice that Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit. That's interesting, isn't it? It doesn't say he returned in his own power, it doesn't refer to power as being resident in him, in and of himself. He depended upon another. How little, I think, people seem to grasp the truth of it, that I can only live in power, as can you, as long as we are dependent upon another. And I guess in the course of these next two or three days, that's going to turn out time and time again the great emphasis of the Gospel upon faith. Let me just throw this out as it comes to my mind. Jesus speaking in John's Gospel and chapter 6. A verse, a statement that years ago so struck me that it's one of those things that has never left my mind, keeps coming back again and again and again. This is the work of God. Now notice it. Jesus brings everything down to a singular. There is one thing, one thing, which he defines as being the work of God. This is the work of God. You and I can talk about God doing this, this, this, this, that. These are the works of God. You see an outworking of something and you say, well that's God's work, that's God's work. Wednesday night in our prayer meeting back at home, we prayed for one of our ladies. She has got a thrombosis condition. She's an elderly lady and she was told she could not fly to go to see her daughter who lives in America. And on Wednesday night we prayed and folks just called out on the Lord. Thursday she had a doctor's appointment, went to the hospital to see the specialist and they did some tests and I think they put some dye in to see where the problem was and they said to her, well it's all gone. You're free, you're clear, you can fly. She was absolutely over the moon. That was the work of God. It wasn't the work of prayer. You're careful about this. We got this because we prayed. It's not because we prayed. It's because God did it. Because if we do not take that position, we end up saying that somehow we have made it happen and the glory goes to us. Nothing to do with us. Simply that we touched God's heart or perhaps better still that he touched ours. And he did something. He moved and there was the work of God. But when Jesus spoke about it, he said, this is the work of God that you believe on him whom he has sent. That's it. That's the work of God. Tonight he is exercising all his energy, his power, his will, his purpose to bring me and you to a permanent condition of trusting so that he could say of you and of me, this is my work in your life that you believe. Because believing on him means I have come off all else. I am trusting no one else. I have confidence in no one else. I have been like a baby weaned away from all else and I'm trusting him. When someone comes into a position like that, not by their will, not by their power, not by their might, but by the workings of the spirit of God, God's really got them. That's what he has to do. All the rest of it, the outworking of it, is what it means to be Scottish. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? To be in a place like that. Have you ever noticed that verse in John chapter 6? This is the work. Oh, I thought the work was preaching or evangelising. That's not the work. And Jesus, and I guess you and I would be prepared to listen to him, wouldn't we? This is the work of God that you believe. So I'd like to make an attitude, an atmosphere, inwardly, of utter dependence upon him. Jesus, we are told, came back in the power of the spirit. He was dependent upon the power of another. And news went out to all the surrounding region about him, and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. And so he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. It's always toughest, isn't it, where you've been brought up. Right in the home. That's often the toughest place, don't you think? Who was this company, I mean a comedy, the other day? Oh, I know what it was. I know what it was. I was talking to a lady who became a Christian up in Manchester, or down in Manchester. And she became a Christian in what is called a holiness church. And in that holiness church people would give testimonies about the fact that they had managed to kind of live a day or so without sinning. And this lady said to me, do you know what I would like to have been able to have done, was to have said to those people who gave their testimony, do you mind if I come into your home and ask your husband and wife whether that's true? And I thought, good for you lady, how easy it is to say things about ourselves, but I wonder what a person who's closest to us really thinks. Anyway, he comes into his hometown and as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read. Why did he choose a Sabbath day? Well, he's saying because that was their day when they met. So it was. But do you know what the word Sabbath means? Rest. Okay, that's simply it. It means rest. We talk about our Sundays being a day of rest. The word Sabbath means rest, and he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he'd opened the book, he found the place where it was written. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could say it as he said it? Wouldn't that be wonderful? To be there, to listen to him say it. Now you just use your imagination. Sometimes it's good to, you know, and our imaginations are supposed to be factified ones. So we can put ourselves there and just think of him as he says it. 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, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Now what on earth does this word might mean? To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. What's that got to do with anything? How many times have you read that? Some of us. Lots and lots and lots of times, I suppose. What does that mean? I have come to proclaim, to announce the acceptable year of the Lord. Eh? It doesn't seem to make much sense, does it? What do you think that means? Now let me make a suggestion or two to you, and when I do so, you will see why he selected the passage he selected, and you will see that the setting of what he has read is very Jewish. But for you and I today, this is no longer fixed within the setting of a Jewish culture, but is a statement by Christ of something he has come to do for all men. And you will please note, and do take it to your heart, he has come for what? To preach the gospel to whom? To the poor. What's wrong with the church? Shouldn't they hear the gospel? Yes, sure they should. Why did he choose the poor? He sent them to heal the broken-hearted. The word heal means to bind up. Why does he select from Isaiah chapter 61, which is where he has chosen to read from? And what does he mean by this acceptable year of the Lord? I want to take you into the Old Testament for a moment or two, just to kind of lay the foundation. In the Old Testament, there are two references to this word year. Not this, but Y-E-A-R. All right? And they are to be found in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Now, you might think to yourself, oh, come on, Guy, I don't think I've ever read the book of Leviticus. And if I did, it's probably so long ago. And it's all so boring. It's all laws and all testaments. I don't even know what it is. Have you studied the Bible yet? I do see some pages rattling away there. Yes, it's not what you read very often, is it? But you know, the Old Testament is so necessary because Jesus used it. And he used it as a springboard to talk about the real purpose of his coming. Having read the passage that we just read from Isaiah, you may remember that he called the book, and he gave it back to the attendant, and he sat down, and all the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. How wonderful that a man can so speak that the eyes of one and all are fixed upon Jesus Christ. May I say this to everybody? Preaching is not real preaching, and let those who have heard the preaching are left with the sense of the person of Jesus Christ, and never with a preacher. Now, let me ask you another thing. Do you make sure that you pray that the preacher who is going to preach here on a Sunday morning moves under the anointing of the same Spirit that Jesus Christ moved under? Because he said, I can't do this except by the anointing of the Spirit. I have been anointed to do just this. The same prophet Isaiah said, it is the anointing which breaks the yoke off the neck. There is a need for the Spirit of God to come. I wonder whether Judas prayed for those who preach in their pulpits, or in front of their lecterns, or wherever. Do you? Do you? Do you pray for them? Or is it a kind of, God bless the preacher, he needs a bit of help. Hope he doesn't go on too long. Or do you pray, Lord, let the anointing of the Spirit move upon that man, because if it does not, he can utter a pile of words, and he will not touch a heart, he will not reach the real need that lies beneath the surface of the lives that can gather in a place like this. Christ declared right from the outset of this meeting, this is how I am going to do what I am going to do. I am going to succeed because I am going to live in dependence upon the Spirit. I am going to be moved by and live under the anointing of the Spirit of God. They all, I was fixed on him, and he then in verse 21 began to say to them, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. That is, that's back in Father Luke's Gospel. Now, why did Jesus pick the passage he picked? And what did he mean, and what does it mean, by speaking about the acceptable year of the Lord? Will you please turn back into the book of Liberty, because I guess you've all found it by now, have you? Yeah, you've both? Awful. Alright, and we're going to go to chapter 25. And in chapter 25, from verses 1 to 7, and I'm not going to spend much time at all in the passages, I just want to point this out to you, that in chapter 25, 1 to 7, there is recorded for us there what is described as the Sabbath of the seventh year. OK? Keep that in your mind. There's a year called a Sabbath year. Not just a Sabbath day, but a Sabbath year. Alright? I'll post a little bit more detail in a moment. And then, if you go from verse 8, all the way down, right the way through the rest of the passage, to the end, and there are 55 verses in the passage, the rest of the passage speaks about a year called the year of Jubilee, the fiftieth year. So Jesus, in making reference to Isaiah chapter 61, is referring to, perhaps to both of those occasions, but certainly I would think to the year of Jubilee, which is the year of relief. And that's the setting in which he is speaking. I have come to set the captives free. What happens in the year of Jubilee? We'll take a look at it in a moment. What happens in the year of Sabbath? We'll take a look at that just very briefly. But it's an interesting little phrase, isn't it? He used it in reading from Isaiah, and there's no doubt that Isaiah had this passage in his mind when he wrote his prophetic ministry to Israel. Please come with me to chapter 25 of Leviticus, and notice this. At the end of verse 2, it says that the land, that's the very ground, the land of Israel shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land. A Sabbath to the Lord, you're not to sow your field, you're not to prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. It's a year of rest for the land. And the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you, for your male and female servants, your hired mare, and the stranger who dwells with you. It will produce of itself, you won't need to do anything to make it happen. It will be just like the Garden of Eden to you. It will just bring forth. In that year of Sabbath. Now that's the first reference. There's a Sabbath year when they were to leave the land alone. Now if you're a farmer, you would say, oh well, that's good agricultural policy. You do work your land and then sow off after so many years, you reap it like fallow and it recovers and it produces better crops the next year. That's probably very true. And I suppose the farmers must have read their Bibles and thought, what a good practice, we'll follow that one. But behind it, there is something far more profound. That there was going to be a produce, something that was not going to be the work and the energies of man. It was going to produce of itself. It would come forth out of rest, not out of the sweat and labour of their brow. And they were to live in that Sabbath year on the produce of the Sabbath year's rest. Now, let's go on. We come to, in verse 8, to the year of Jubilee. Now this only happened once every 50 years. Did you know that? Isn't it interesting? You say, well how funny that God should have been, what did he do that for? Well, you will notice this. Verse 11, the 50th year shall be a Jubilee to you. Now everybody, I guess, would think to themselves, well Jubilee means a time of rejoicing. Did you have street parties up in Scotland when there was, what was it, the Queen's Jubilee, was it? What was it? What Jubilee was it on? 71? Was that Jubilee year? It was a long time ago, wasn't it? You must have been very young then, Peter. And they had street parties and everybody kind of put up decorations and everybody had a knees down. It was a time to rejoice. Listen to this. Verse 11, the 50th year shall be a Jubilee to you. In it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of the untended vine. That year shall be holy to you, you shall eat its produce from the field. Now what was it for? What happened during this year? Well, I'll tell you, there were three things that took place in the year of Jubilee. First of all, there was the cancelling of all debts. Isn't that great? What a marvellous thing. All debts were cancelled. I think that's remarkable. God has that principle written into His book so that you and I should see that there is to be for us an acceptable year of the Lord when all those debts are cancelled. Alright, that's the first thing. Secondly, there was a release of all those who were in slavery. They were set free. Now I want you please to go read this twenty-fifth chapter for yourself. I'm not going to do it. You will find three if not four references to the poor. You will find references to those who are in slavery, who are in bondage. You will find those who are in debt to somebody else and all of it is cancelled. The slave was to be set free, released. All debts were to be cancelled and if I, as a very poor man, could not find sufficient money to support my family and the needs of my family, I would be in a position to sell a piece of my land to my rich neighbour. And my rich neighbour would hold that land. He could work it, use it, profit from it, but it was still redeemable. I could go to my neighbour and if I somehow, you know, someone had died and left me a million, I could go back to my rich neighbour and say, rich neighbour, I want to buy back my piece of land. He could not say no. But if I had no such money, at the end of the fifty years of the year of Jubilee, I could go to my neighbour, my rich neighbour and say, it's mine! And he could not keep it. Every, all property which I perhaps had forfeited because of my poverty, because of my condition, it all came back to me. I was back in the fullness of my inheritance. Isn't that wonderful? What a marvellous thing. That's why Jesus Christ chose to grieve for Isaiah 61, to declare to men and women at the outset of his ministry, I have come to announce a year of Jubilee, of setting free. The acceptable year. I often wondered what that meant. Well now, I think I've discovered it. And isn't it wonderful to see how Christ took Old Testament pictures, and maybe a look at some Old Testament pictures in the course of the next two days, to see the truth of the coming of the Spirit to bring into my life and into yours a year of Jubilee, the acceptable year of the Lord. So that you should know, your debts cancelled. What debts? The debt of your sins. Cancelled. Gone. Never to be remembered again. And as surely as in the Old Testament, the debt was cancelled and it had to be erased, ripped out, taken away, and the man to whom the money had been owed could never raise the issue ever again. Marvellous. And likewise, Jesus Christ said I've come to set the prisoner free. I'll never raise the issue of debt again. I've come to set the prisoner free, the one who's bound up. Do you know what I find? I find in so many churches, men, women, who have got, well, I'm going to call them handouts, who have difficulties within themselves, within their personalities. They don't know how to relate to people. They just can't be themselves. There are things in the background which are hang-ups that somehow are there and affect the whole way they live their lives. I've got a man, he's my age, no he's not, he's a bit younger than me, brought up in a home where he had a dominating, perfectionist father, and this fellow has never achieved anything because all the time he was growing up he was criticised, run down, never anything he did was good enough. It's not right, son, you should do it this way. Where do you go then? And they say that women can nag, well let me tell you, so can men. They can be dripping taps. And this fellow is my age. When he tries, he attempts anything, he is haunted by a fear that he's going to fail, and he's doomed before he begins. His personality is bugged up because there's something in his background. Isn't it wonderful to think that tonight Jesus Christ has come to set the prisoner free. Yeah, if you go into Mark's Gospel, the very first recorded incident in the ministry of Jesus, as Mark recorded it, was to set free a man in a synagogue in a place of religion who had a demon. And he cast the thing out and set the man free. Yes, he moved against the demonic realm. Yes, he came to set people who were prisoners free. But I find there are so many, many folk who today somehow hate their churches, and they're not free. Let me give you another example of what I mean. A person who has been hurt or been damaged, and it probably all began with resentment towards somebody in the home or the family or towards husband or wife or somebody. And that resentment just lodges in the heart. And do you know what? Before long that resentment becomes bitterness, and before long that bitterness becomes hatred and anger. And that resentment which becomes bitterness is described in the scriptures. And the Hebrew writer talks about you beware lest there be a root of bitterness in the heart which springs up and defiles many. Not just the one who's got it, but it somehow affects all those round and about. And I cannot somehow develop proper relationships with my brother, with my sister. I cannot love with my wife because there's this here. Isn't it amazing how many times Jesus in the course of the Gospels spoke about forgiveness. He said if you pray and you stand and you pray and you will not forgive, your prayers are not going to be heard. How many times did he talk about such things? And how wonderful when you can find a company of people who really do love one another. And there's no kind of ill feeling in the way. So it amazes me, just amazes me, how people can wear the veneer. They can put a nice Sunday smile on. Good. And they can say, oh good morning brother. And you say, oh it's a nice day. And then something happens and you touch something that kept something in the personality. And boy, look out. You discover there's something wrapped up and hidden away down in there that you never knew was there. But you get the right set of circumstances and boy look out. And thank God that he does cause those circumstances to come. So that none of us should be deceived into thinking we're something that we're not. It's necessary that this Christ of ours come and really sets us free. So that we can be men and women who love one another. Who can be, who somehow can rise above all the things that can come against us. And boy, look out, something's come. How do we do it? Oh says Jesus, I've come, I've come to do this. How? How are you going to do it Jesus? Because of the Holy Ghost. Because of the anointing of the Spirit who is upon me. Now it's about this blessed Spirit that I want to talk in some depth. I'm going to start for a few minutes. Listen. When Jesus, hours before his death, when he spoke in private to his disciples, he spent a fairly longish time talking to them about the Holy Spirit. And he said this, I'm going to go away to my father and I am going to send you another comforter. I want to speak about those two words for five, maybe ten minutes and then I'm stopping. Will you please imagine for a moment, I have just arrived on planet Earth. Alright? I've just descended from the heights. I've come from whatever far-flung distant planet. And I'm alive on planet Earth. And I've discovered that on planet Earth live all kinds of funny creatures and the funniest of all are those in this room. They've got two legs and a head and I look at my examine and I think to myself, now there's one of them there. There's one of them. And oh, there's another one of them. Another one. Now that another one there is indeed the same as this one. But then I kind of look around and I think, ah but hang on, wait a minute. There's another one there but that one's not the same as that one or that one. That one's a she and that one's a he because he told me so and she told me so. Now she's different from him and him. In the language that Jesus used, he had a choice of two words when he spoke about, I am going to send you another comforter. He could have used a word which means another but different. Okay, there's one, there's another, but different. That one is different from that one. I'm still an Asian, you know, you know. That one's different from that one. But that one's the same as that one. So the two words identify another but in this case another who is different but in that case another who's the same. And Jesus said, I'm going to send you another who's the same. Exactly the same as me. But if you stop and think about that, you must realise therefore that Jesus is saying that this Holy Spirit has personality. He has character. He's not an it, a thing, a power, an influence. He's like me, he said. That's the first thing. How wonderful. He's going to send another one, just like himself. Oh, I thought, well if that's the case, if you go back to your father, it won't matter because he's going to send another one, just like himself. Yes, he said and that's the word he used. And then he said, I'm going to send you another comforter. Now let me just mention, talk about that word because like so many words in our English language, that word has been corrupted. You can't use certain words these days, can you? Because when I was a kid, you know, thirty years ago, I wish, you could use certain words that meant one thing and one thing only. Nowadays, you use that word and somebody says, ooh, I can't say that. Now, the word comforter, what's the word comforter mean? In our present day language, it means somebody who's got the ability to sympathise with, to kind of say, you know, well there, there, there, there. You know, I can understand how you feel and we kind of get alongside and maybe put our arm round the shoulder and say there, there. It would be alright. Now that's not what the word means. In its original meaning, the power of the strength of the word was to strengthen. How about that? I will send you another strengthener, another strong one. Boy, they'd seen him move in power, hadn't they, and strength. They'd seen him say to the wind, be muzzled. That's the word, just like you would a dog, be muzzled at the wind. And he would say to the deaf and dumb spirit, you've come out of him. Well, it was just done. And they saw this man move in strength and that's the power of the word, I will send you another strong one. Not someone to say, there, there, poor thing. You are having a hard time, aren't you? That kind of sympathetic stuff doesn't do any good to anybody, you know. Don't you do it to people, will you? Don't do that. You tell them, boy, let me tell you about one who will come and strengthen you in the midst of your circumstances, who can take you through. Let me tell you about this blessing of one who will come. And then Jesus said of this comforter, this other one, he said this, you know him because he dwells with you. Let me read it to you. If you go into John's Gospel for a moment or two, and I promise we're not going to be long. In chapter 14 and in verse 17, Jesus, speaking of him, says this. Let's read verse 16. I will pray the Father and he will give you another comforter so that he may abide with you forever, the spirit of truth whom the world cannot perceive because it neither sees him nor knows him but you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. So the first thing that Jesus said was that you do know him. Now how did the disciples know him? How did they know him? This spirit that Jesus said, as of yet he's not come. As of yet I have not sent him. I'm going to go back to my Father. I'm not going back there till after the cross and after resurrection and after so many days of appearing, I'm going to go back to my Father and I'm going to ask, pray the Father and he will give you this other one. At the moment he hasn't come, but nevertheless you do know him. Doesn't seem to make sense. He hasn't come, so how can I know him if he hasn't come? Well I said, Jesus, you know him because he dwells with you. So they must have thought, hang on, where is he? What do you mean he dwells with us? What did Jesus mean by that? He meant what we've already noticed and read in Luke chapter four. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me and I've set the prisoner free. I've set the captive free. I've preached the gospel to the poor. I've brought deliverance. You've seen him. You've seen him operating in me and I'm going to send this one who's been operating in my life. He's going to come. Then said Jesus, and this is perhaps the most staggering statement, it's not one of them, that ever occurs in this book of ours. For he dwells with you and the same one who's been operating and doing all that you've seen him do will be in you. In you, in you, in you, in you. Now either tonight you believe that Jesus Christ is true to his word or you must think him a liar. He can't be someone in the middle, can he? Is he true or is he not? He's true and there has to be a fulfilling of this in my life and in yours. As surely as there was a fulfilling of it in the lives of these to whom he speaks. At the time he's speaking, it has not happened. He has not yet died, nor risen, nor ascended, nor has the Holy Spirit come. But he said he will. As surely as I speak to you he will. And this one that you've seen operating in me is going to be in you. Now is that possible? Can that really happen? Do you mean, really mean what you say? And tonight you've got to be the living evidence of what he said he has fulfilled. May I ask you, are you the evidence of it? You say, hang on a minute, a bit hard. I'm so aware of my palings, I'm so aware of hilarious where I'm not all that I should be. Well, listen my friend, let me remind you of the very words that came from his mouth, I have come to set the captive free. Lord, I find I'm captive in my mind. I'm captive in certain areas. There are things in my life that I know really I need you to come and invade those areas and deal with things that have been hanged up in my life. And I want you to come and do it. If this one can come and be in me, can he make me Christ-like? Yes, my friend, if you will but see that he's the spirit of strength, he's the comforter, yes, but he's the one who comes and comes to make the things which Christ is and has done powerful, real in my life and yours. I'm going to pick up on that tomorrow morning because we need to see what this book really has to say about the way in which the spirit of God operates, moves in our lives. Okay, that is freedom. Set free, Lord, my year of jubilee. My death, God. Set free from the prison house of myself and my sin. Everything restored to me, that which I have lost. The picture is there in Leviticus chapter 25 and tomorrow morning, if you are here, we will check whether you've done your homework and read Leviticus chapter 25. So someone will need to tell me tomorrow morning how many times the word poor occurs in Leviticus 25, okay? You're going to stay up all night, don't forget, have a read and see how it links in. It's a wonderful fulfilment of what Jesus Christ said he had come to do. Alright, Amen. Let's pray.