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A SAVIOR FOR THE BROKENHEARTED
BIBLE
TEXT – READ (LUKE
From this portion of
scripture, in the Bible, the Word of God, we learn that there was a particular day
and time when the Lord Jesus Christ returned to
These two simple actions
by Christ are very significant AND FULL OF MEANING FOR EVERY PERSON BORN INTO
THIS WORLD. “HE OPENED THE BOOK”. “HE CLOSED THE BOOK”. Dear reader, have you ever considered
that there is a creator God and that He loves YOU? If not, these two simple actions by Christ
demonstrate this. By his act of opening
the book and reading the portion He read and closing the book and not reading
the remaining portion of verse 2 he has demonstrated God’s loving-kindness,
God’s longsuffering and God’s grace and mercy to rebel sinners. This will become evident as we consider this
portion of scripture. Five particular people problems or
afflictions are mentioned here in (Luke 4).
From this passage of scripture we learn there is someone who has the
answer. There is someone who has the
solution for your every need. Jesus
Christ is Himself, the answer, the solution, to your every affliction if only
you will come to Him. He alone is able
to completely resolve these five people problems because of who He is and
because of what He has done.
By way of outline and in
five separate messages we will consider the following from this portion of the
Word of God (Luke 4:16-22):
1.
The Substance of the Savior’s Message (verse’s
16-18)
·
A Savior for the POOR.(verse 18a)
·
A Savior for the BROKEN HEARTED.(verse 18b)
·
A Savior for the CAPTIVES.(verse 18c)
·
A Savior for the BLIND.(verse 18d)
·
A Savior for the BURDENED.(verse 18e)
2. The
Opportunity from the Savior’s Message (verse 19)
3. The
Warning from the Savior’s Message (verse 20)
4. The
Reaction to the Savior’s Message (verse’s 22, 28)
IN THIS MESSAGE WE WANT TO FOCUS ON “A SAVIOR FOR
THE BROKENHEARTED”, A SAVIOR FOR THOSE WHO ARE OVERCOME WITH SORROW, “A SAVIOR
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE GRIEF AND AN ACHING HEART.
Notice first of all;
The Substance of the Savior’s Message
The Lord Jesus said in, (Luke 4:18) “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he
hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; HE HATH SENT ME TO HEAL THE
BROKENHEARTED”. The dictionary
defines the BROKENHEARTED as those
who are crushed by sorrow, grief or disappointment sometimes to the point of
being inconsolable.
This world is filled
with brokenhearted people. There is a
sighing, sobbing, and sorrowing multitude in this world. A preacher once said to his students, “Preach
to the brokenhearted and you will never want for an audience”. In our day we live in a broken world. Everywhere we look, things are
broken. Increasingly there is broken
confidence because of the uncertainty of the future and an unstable
world with its unstable societies. There
are broken
relationships resulting in broken homes and broken
lives. Hospitals are filled with
broken
bodies. Mental institutions are
crowded with broken minds. Prisons
are filled to overflowing with those who have broken laws. Dear reader, are YOU included in any
of these descriptions? Are YOU among the
BROKENHEARTED?
What is the cause of a broken heart? The
answer is sorrow, sorrow in all its
aspects. The broken heart comes from
sorrow that reaches intensity beyond the limits of endurance. When this occurs we say, “The heart is
broken”, broken by overwhelming sorrow.
This sorrow can be the sorrow of illness, the sorrow of loneliness, the
sorrow of remorse, the sorrow of sin, the sorrow of calamity or sorrow from
many other things. What is the cause of
YOUR sorrow?
Why do we have so much sorrow in the world? The first
mention of sorrow in the Bible, the Word of God, is found in the very first
book, the book of Genesis, chapter 3. It
is in connection with our first parents, Adam and Eve and their fall into
sin. The Lord God said to them after
their sin of disobedience, (Genesis 3:16, 17) “Unto the woman he said, I
will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be
to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
“And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of
thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou
shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life”. We see then, that sorrow and sin
are connected. There is sorrow and broken hearts in the world because there is sin in the world. Here then, is the root of the
problem for BROKEN HEARTS. It is SIN. The “disease” of sin is not something you
hear or read about in today’s news
media. But, the Bible, the Word of God, has much to say about sin and the sins
of mankind. Dear reader, are YOU aware God says in His
Word that YOU are a lost, helpless, hopeless sinner? As far as God is concerned you are, “dead in trespasses and sins”. (Ephesians 2:1)
Sin
is in mans nature and the evidence of a sinful nature is the manifestation of
sins in the life. God says in His Word,
“Both Jews and Gentiles, they are ALL under sin”. “There is NONE righteous, no, not one”. “ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory
of God”. “ALL the world (are) guilty
before God” (i.e. subject to the judgment of God). (Romans 3:9, 10, 23, 19).
Notice that God says “ALL” have sinned. This includes YOU. There are no exceptions or no exclusions. Furthermore,
sin has consequences and pays wages because God says in His Word, (Romans 6:23) “The wages of sin is death”. He also says in His Word, (James 1:15) “Sin when it is finished, bringeth forth
death”. Following physical death
is the judgment of God because we read in, (Hebrews
9:27) “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”. Notice
there is an “after life”. Sooner or later YOU will stand before
God as Judge. Think of what it will mean
to die in your sins and to stand, in all your sins, before the Great White
Throne (Revelation 20:11). Everything
you have ever done or said in your life is recorded in God’s books in
heaven. It is the place where every
unbeliever will be judged according to their works and then be confined for all
eternity in the dreadful flames of hell in that place called the “lake of
fire”. Dear reader, we urge you to “flee
from the wrath to come”. God has no
pleasure in the death of the wicked. He
says so in His Word. (Ezekiel 33:11) “As I live saith the Lord God, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked: but that the wicked turn from his way and
live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die”. This leads us to our second point we
want to consider:
The
Opportunity from the Savior’s Message (verse 19)
We read that the Lord
Jesus said He came, (Luke 4:19) “To preach the
acceptable year of the Lord”. From these words the Savior would have us
understand that He was announcing, now
is the time when God will be gracious to sinners. Now
is the time when a welcome for sinners is offered. Now
is the time when every person can find acceptance with God. It has been two thousand years since the
cross of Calvary and this period is called the dispensation of God’s
grace. This is the time when God will be
gracious and receive sinners who come in God’s way for salvation. Will YOU take advantage of this opportunity
while you can and call upon the Lord for salvation? It says in, (Romans
10:13) “For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved”. YOU
have an opportunity to be saved because as it says in, (john
3:16) “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. God can offer salvation to you in
these days of grace because the Son of God left His eternal home in Heaven and
came into this “valley of the shadow of death” in order to provide salvation
for poor, helpless, hopeless sinners. We
read of the purpose of His coming in, (1 Timothy 1:15)
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. The Word of God tells us, (Galatians 4:4) “When the fullness of the time was come, God
sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law”. Scripture tells us “unto us a child was born unto us a Son was given”. The Son of God was incarnated. Deity took on humanity. The Son of God became the Son of man. It says in, (1
Timothy 3:16) “Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the
flesh”. We are told in, (Philippians 2:5-7) though He eternally existed “in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal
with God: But, made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men”. The Lord Jesus could say,
(Luke
He
took my sins and my sorrows
He
made them His very own
He
bore the burden to
And
suffered and died alone
The
Lord Jesus was not only “acquainted with grief” and not only bore our griefs and carried our sorrows” but we
read further in, (Isaiah 53:10) “It pleased the Lord to
bruise Him; He hath put Him to
grief”. This would speak of
His personal grief, the sorrow and suffering inflicted upon Him when God laid
His stroke of judgment upon Him for our sin.
We need to remember that Christ was not obligated to go through all this
except that, in marvelous grace, He obligated Himself to be our Savior. We read in, (Philippians
2:8) “And being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross”.
For us death is an unavoidable necessity. For the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, death
was an act of obedience. The Savior’s death on the cross was therefore a voluntary act because He said, (John 10:17, 18) “I lay down my life, that I might take it
again. No man taketh it from me, but I
lay it down of myself. I have power to
lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
This commandment have I received of my Father”. The Lord Jesus was under no compulsion
to die. He laid down His life as a
voluntary sacrifice. We read in, (Hebrews 9:26) “Once in the end of the ages he appeared to
put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”.
The Savior’s death on the cross was not only voluntary it was vicarious.
That is, He died for you and me.
We read that He came to “give His life a ransom for many”. When He died
on the cross He stood in man’s place.
“Ransom” speaks of the life of Christ given up in death. The giving up of His life and the shedding of
His precious blood was the ransom price paid for the deliverance of all who
will accept it by faith. He died for
sins but not His own for He was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from
sinners.
The Lord Jesus not only
laid down His life, He took it back again.
This is the Gospel message, God’s good news. (1 Corinthians 15:3,
4) “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to
the scriptures”. The
resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof that all the righteous demands of a holy
God have been perfectly met and satisfied through the sacrificial death of
Christ on the cross. Dear reader let me
ask you, do YOU believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? God says if you do you can be saved. We read in, (Romans
10:9, 10) “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus (Jesus as
Lord) and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved’. “For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”. There are many who refuse to believe
in Him or His resurrection from the tomb.
For those who reject God’s offer of mercy and free gift of salvation
there is a warning. This leads us to;
The Warning from the Savior’s Message (verse 20)
It says in, (Luke 4:20) “HE CLOSED
THE BOOK”. Thank God He
closed the book and did not read the words, “and the
day of vengeance of our God”. How
gracious, merciful and longsuffering God is.
God’s day of vengeance and wrath is postponed until He opens the book in
heaven which is recorded in Revelation, chapters 5 and 6. Now is not
the day of God’s vengeance but as we read in, (1
Corinthians 6:2) “Now is the accepted
time; behold now is the day of salvation”.
The day of salvation is fast coming to and end therefore there is
an urgency about getting saved and getting right with God. The day of God’s vengeance is fast
approaching and will soon break out upon this world. God says in His Word, (Romans 12:19) “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” We read in, (Acts
17:30, 31) “God ...now commandeth all
men every where to repent: Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He
will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained;
whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from
the dead”. God commands
repentance on your part. Have YOU
repented of your sins? Repentance is
essential to forgiveness so you must accept God’s demand for it. “Repentance” is a change of mind about sinful
deeds that brings them to an immediate end.
God teaches in His Word that in order for a person to be saved there
must be “repentance toward God and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20, 21). The
day of God’s wrath and vengeance has already been appointed and it will occur
when Christ returns. We read in, (2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8) “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed
from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Have YOU obeyed the gospel? Do YOU believe the gospel message?
The Reaction to the Savior’s Message (verse’s 22,
28)
There were two reactions to the Saviors message
that day. It says in, (Luke 4:22) “And all bare Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which
proceeded out of His mouth”. The
other reaction is recorded in, (verse 28) “All they in
the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath”.
What is YOUR reaction to reading or hearing the gospel
message? Are YOU filled with “wonder” or
are YOU filled with “wrath”? YOUR
reaction to the gospel message will determine YOUR eternal destiny. Will YOU believe God’s Word? It says in, (John
3:36) “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him”.
Dear reader, are YOU
among the many in this world who are called “THE BROKENHEARTED”? May be you are discouraged and feel there
is no hope or future happiness for you.
Doctors and nurses can sometimes help in the healing of the body. But, who can heal the bitter pain of a
BROKENHEART that no medicine can relieve or the bitterness of soul that no
surgeon can remove. Listen again to the
Words of the Lord Jesus Christ in, (Luke 4:18) “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor; HE HATH SENT ME TO HEAL THE
BROKENHEARTED”. No wonder His enemies said of Him, “Never man spake like this man”. ON
THE AUTHORITY OF THE WORD OF GOD, WE CAN TELL YOU THERE IS A PERSON WHO CAN
HEAL YOUR BROKENHEART. It is Jesus
Christ Himself. He is the “Divine
Physician”. He is both the healer and
the healant. It says of Him in, (Psalm 147:3, 4) “He
healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds (griefs). “He telleth the number of the stars; He
calleth them all by their names”. The
One who created the universe, and the One who can count and name the stars, is
the same One who can heal your broken heart.
When you by faith believe on Him and receive Him into your heart He will
heal you. Will YOU believe in Him? Will YOU receive Him into your heart and life
just now? He wants to save you. He says in, (Revelation
3:20) “Behold I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my voice, and
opens the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with
me”. He is knocking at the “door
of your heart”. You have to open that
door and in simple believing faith let Him in.
You may not understand this but we urge you to take God at His Word and
trust God to save you and heal your broken heart. The hymn writer understood this when
he wrote;
O
Christ, in Thee my soul hath found,
And
found in Thee alone,
The
peace, the joy I sought so long,
The
bliss till now unknown.
Now
none but Christ can satisfy’
None
other Name for me;
There’s
love, and life, and lasting joy,
Lord
Jesus, found in Thee
In closing let me remind you that you are
traveling the “HIGHWAY OF LIFE”, passing through time on the way to
eternity. There are only two
destinations before you. You will spend
eternity in one of these two destinations.
It will be either heaven or hell.
Now that you have read this message you have come to a “crossroads” in
your earthly journey. A decision has to
be made. Which way will you go? Will you continue to willfully neglect and
reject God’s free gift of salvation or will you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ and receive Him as your Lord and Savior?
The SOURCE of salvation and healing is found in a Person: Jesus, the Son
of God. To possess Him is to possess
everything that can heal a broken heart and bring true satisfaction in this
life and in the endless eternity to which all of us are traveling. The Bible says in, (1
John 5:12) “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not life”. If YOU do not get
saved it will not be because God does not love you or God’s Son did not die for
you but it will be because you have refused God’s offer of salvation. It is not God’s desire that you perish in your
sins. God says in, (Ezekiel 18:23) “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked
should die? Saith the Lord God; and not
that he should return from his ways and live?”
It says in the Word of God, (1 Timothy
2:3, 4) “God our savior, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto
the knowledge of the truth”. It
says also in, (2 Peter 3:9) “The Lord is not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”. God is not willing that you perish in
your sins. The question is, are YOU
willing to be saved?
Please give this matter your most serious
attention. Your eternal destiny depends
on your decision. Remember that “no
decision” is really a decision and it is the wrong decision. Hell is filled with procrastinators and God
warns in His Word, (2 Corinthians 6:2) “Behold, NOW is
the accepted time; behold. NOW IS THE DAY OF SALVATION”.
Christian Messenger