A Day of Deliverance
by Darrell W. Johns
Atlanta West Pentecostal Church (Lithia Springs, GA)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Luke 4:14-21, Isaiah 61:1-2, John 9, Psalms 126:1-2

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/darrell-w-johns--a-day-of-deliverance
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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luke 4 14 and jesus returned in the power of the spirit into galilee and there went out of fame of him through all the region round about and he taught in their synagogues being glorified of all and he 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 for to read and there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet isaias and when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written he turned scrolled through this spot the spirit of the lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he has sent me jesus said to heal the brokenhearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set at liberty then that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the lord isaiah wrote this jesus quotes it and isaiah continued that jesus paused between his first and second coming the judgment that followed in isaiah jesus closed the book he gave it again to the minister and sat down and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him and he began to say unto them this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears i want to preach for just a few moments on the day or a day of deliverance now would you lift your hands again and say lord i believe that you o god are going to do the impossible in my life what is humanly impossible is possible with you and i believe you lord i have faith for today in jesus name amen god bless you today i have a specific mission to preach and see the words of jesus come to pass before we leave today and i believe that jesus christ has ordained today as a day of deliverance i recognize that overcoming things that bind you often involves the spiritual and the behavioral years ago i called brother trepani i mentioned this not long ago i was dealing with the situation in this church not long after i became pastor and i said brother trapani i need to ask your advice he was a a counselor and he said brother john's if it's the devil we can cast him out if it's a personality then we have problems i recognize that there are some things that are the way you think and there are other things that are the bondage of satan over the way you think he attacks us in our vulnerabilities and weaknesses and plays on our minds and the trouble that we may be causing ourselves or that we have been through by the hands of other people satan attacks there and he establishes a strong cold there but the bible says that jesus christ pulls down strongholds this is a picture a word picture in the bible for some place on a hillside that has been fortified over time that seems to be impenetrable but jesus christ by his spirit pulls down strongholds he casts down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of god and he brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of christ but you have been bound for a long long time it becomes your identity it becomes a mental battle as we worship today i felt like i needed to tell you that the lord may be going after some old strongholds in your life i'm not speaking just of sin but it may be sin an area in your life that has become a stronghold of satan it fights you mentally emotionally and spiritually it affects you physically and it may become a physiological issue but today by the power of god i believe the lord is going to come in and give deliverance and healing amen and then i will tell you that the process of changing the way you think is something that the word of god must come in displace old improper attitudes and thoughts and patterns of thinking but the lord has the power to go into your past he is not bound by time he is not the god of just the present and everything exists for him in one eternal now he is able to go back 10 20 30 40 years or more he's able to go into an incident that traumatized you that has affected your life ever since he has the power to go there and heal your mind and your spirit and set you free amen the apostle paul said we had the sins of death in us but god has delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trusted he will yet deliver us paul said there was something in the past god delivered us from and he is still delivering us now from other things that we are facing and he is still a god that is going to deliver us from things that we may be facing in our future today is a day of deliverance amen today i'd like to challenge you to do what paul said to forget the things which are behind you need to forgive those who have wronged you in your past you need to let it go and you need to let it be buried just like you were buried in the name of jesus christ by baptism into death you need to let god bury some things in the past so that something new can be born in your life amen today is a day of deliverance now luke 4 records the temptations of jesus christ he went into the wilderness to be tempted full of the holy ghost and after being tempted by the devil there 40 days of fasting afterward he hungered he came out of the wilderness luke says in the spirit he went in by the spirit he came out from jordan led by the spirit luke says that jesus went in to be tempted and after his temptations he came out by the power of the spirit and the fame of him went out throughout all the region beyond here's jesus christ proving that he has power over the devil in every area of temptation and then luke says after he was tempted and was victorious he came to the synagogues and preached there and then he came to nazareth his own hometown it was his custom to go to church that should be our custom he was god in the flesh he knew more than the rabbis knew you could argue that jesus didn't need to go to church but he did anyway and he went to be a part of that service during a typical typical synagogue service there is worship and then there would be the reading of the scriptures some from the law and then some from the prophets jesus stood up to read in his own hometown church in nazareth and they gave him the scroll of elijah the prophet excuse me of isaiah and jesus is there and he finds the place where isaiah says something about the coming messiah it is a dual reference to deliverance from babylon and then the ministry that the messiah will have jesus has the book of isaiah he is opening the book he finds the place he is reading from this verse and he says this that we read this morning on the screens the spirit of the lord is upon me i have a feeling that when jesus read those words that everybody in that that synagogue that day realized that he was doing more than reading something that had been written 700 years ago he was indeed speaking of himself 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 preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set it liberty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable year of the lord in that moment jesus closed the scroll he sat down and the bible said that after he gave that to the minister that everyone there that day in church had their eyes were fastened on him i believe that they felt the authority of his person they felt the power of god's presence that was resident in jesus christ for he was god in flesh he was reading the word that he had inspired isaiah to write and in the first words recorded by jesus after his temptations he does not just go into a discourse speaking from himself but he goes back and quotes the word that he had inspired the holy word of god the spirit of the lord is upon me one of the most powerful passages it it starts the ministry of jesus christ and he says this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears the beginning of his earthly ministry now isaiah had prophesied that not only would there be the acceptable year of the lord but they would be the day of the vengeance of our god but over 2 000 years separate those words that jesus repeated from isaiah and did not say the vengeance of our god i want to just pause in this message to say that jesus christ did not come into this world to condemn the world that the world was condemned already and you may be condemned by your sins or by your own conscience but the work of jesus christ today is not to condemn you but to forgive you of your sins and to deliver you from the power that has you bound amen preach the gospel to the poor heal the brokenhearted preach deliverance to the captives recovering of sight to the blind to set at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the lord when jesus spoke of the acceptable year of the lord he was making a reference to the old jewish jubilee that took place a year that changed everything for everybody after seven cycles of seven years in that 49th year the clock began to tick down to the 50th year that god had declared as a year of jubilee it was launched on the 10th day of the seventh month on the day of atonement with the blast of a shofar a trumpet the countdown to this year of jubilee an entire year of celebration after 50 years there were three specific things that took place on the year of jubilee first of all the land rested for that entire year no one farmed at all but the god who had been with them for 49 years would give them a season of respite and rest and god would provide from the past to take care of them for that year of jubilee the second thing was there was a reversion of profit property if through poverty bad decisions you had to sell your family land that had been in your land in your family for generations on the year of jubilee that land of every jewish person reverted back to the original traditional owners the third thing that happened on the year of jubilee is that if you were a jewish slave you were set free it didn't matter if you'd been a slave for 49 years or just a few months every israelite who had sold himself because of bad decisions or property was set free and jesus essentially declared that today the scripture is fulfilled in your ears that i am giving you rest i am giving you back what has been lost i am setting you free this indeed is a day of deliverance amen that's what i have come to preach to you today that by the power of jesus christ by the work of his cross that he has come to give the gospel to outcast to poor people he has come to heal your broken heart today amen he has come to preach deliverance to those of you who are bound amen he has come to give recovering of sight to the blind and i think it's interesting because this was the this was the issue that seemed to be the most difficult but in john 9 when jesus healed a man that was born blind they said since the world began has this ever been done it seemed to be that opening the eyes of the blind was like the litmus test for power but when jesus healed a blind man they knew if he can heal blindness that he can heal any kind of physical illness that has ever existed in the history of the world amen he said i've come to set at liberty them that are bruised liberty to bruise twice in this passage in the original greek it is release he has come to release people who have been bruised maybe in their slavery maybe in your abuse maybe you're in your addiction that you have just had the life beat out of you but today there is a release coming from the presence of the lord he said i've come to preach the acceptable year of the lord freedom deliverance i am setting you free today jesus said this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears now i am a pastor i open this message by giving you understanding about behavioral issues and spiritual issues but they are connected together and satan again capitalizes on the struggles that we have i would be a foolish person just to say something randomly but this week the lord has put in my spirit that he wanted this to be a day of deliverance there are some old issues you battled with for far too long maybe 50 years it's been troubling you maybe it's just been a few months but today is a day of relive deliverance this is the day of the lord's release characteristic of bible prophecy the words of isaiah that jesus quoted had a double reference the first reference was to the deliverance from babylon i bring this on purpose because they were subject to a foreign power there was nothing they could do politically militarily there was not one thing that they could do to change their circumstances of being captives in babylon but almighty god in a single thought put it in the heart of a king to release them when it happened the people of israel in psalm 126 said when the lord turned again the captivity of zion we were like them that dreamed we have been there for 70 years we thought this was going to be for the rest of our life 70 years they had been in bondage they got used to it they thought it would never change and when the lord did it on a day of deliverance it seemed too good to be true but then they said our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue was singing and the heathen said the lord has done great things for them so today i've come to tell you that it may seem like a dream you may think that things could never change but i've come to declare to you by the name of jesus christ and the power of the holy ghost that today is a day of deliverance why don't you clap your hands to the lord it was brother brian kinsey that said preaching here one time that they believed that the clapping of hands was like the sound of breaking of change it was symbolic to them that something was going to change so why don't you clap your hands again as if chains are breaking in this place [Applause] amen the lord is here to deliver you today from the spirit of fear and depression you that have a wounded spirit that had been heard and is stuck deep inside of you the lord is here to deliver you today the lord is here to heal sicknesses and he is here to deliver you from addictions it doesn't matter how long you've been addicted and what area it is in if it is physical emotional if it is mental if it is spiritual today is a day of deliverance and because jesus christ is here to deliver you today this will be a day of jubilee of rejoicing and it may seem like a dream that you put up with this for so long and yet in a single day the lord broke the power of that bondage in your life to set at liberty them that are bruised and delivers to the captives would you stand like for you to bow your heads in prayer and we're going to pray a prayer repentance repentance is a change of mind repentance is turning from your sins but i believe that repentance is also a change of mind about our identity and about the past in the future today is a line of demarcation that will separate your past from your future i'm standing here as a pastor but i'm doing the work of an evangelist today hallelujah you've been bowed down your spirit has been way down and you thought i i'm just this has become my identity now i want to go to heaven and i want to be saved but i guess this is my lot in life and i've just got to carry this all my life i'll always be identified in my own mind as this abused person as this failure by this sin that i committed that i can never get past but today i'm praying that jesus christ will deliver you spiritually and emotionally and mentally so i'd like for you if you need to confess your sins would you lift your voice and pray right now lord forgive me of my sins if you've been harboring bitterness or resentment towards someone who wronged you you have become the prisoner of that abuse in your life of that hurt so would you let them go by forgiving them so jesus christ can forgive you and deliver you let it go right now in jesus name let god fight your battles vengeance is mine saith the lord i will repay it is not your place to repay those with hatred or with actions or with something in your spirit against them let them go today hallelujah that's it prayer in your spirit you pray out loud i know you don't want to say some things out loud those of you that are struggling with addictions it doesn't make sense to you it's like an equation that doesn't work out how can i be saved and yet i'm struggling with this i pray against things that have tormented your mind there's repentance there's a change of behavior there's letting the word of god replace those little thoughts there's walking away from things that are causing you to be addicted whether it is pornography or some abuse or whatever it may be you need to walk away from that that's what repentance is it is confessing and forsaking your sins but we're tired of being a dog going back to our vomit we're tired of being a pig going back to the wallowing in the mud as the bible says today will mark the beginning of the first day of the rest of your life today as jesus said this scripture is fulfilled in your ears now would you lift your hands right where you are and would you say lord i believe that you are a deliverer and you're going to deliver us from this present evil world lord you will deliver us from the power of darkness you will lord god deliver us from the fear of death you will deliver us from a lifetime of bondage thank you lord today that you will deliver us from every evil work and preserve us to your heavenly kingdom to you today lord we believe you god that you delivered paul out of the mouth of the lion and that you will deliver us today in jesus name in jesus name [Music] i said lift your hands everywhere and would you declare the day of deliverance