The other week I gave a talk on Isaiah 61 for the youth at church. I wrote the talk as part of a series on the whole book of Isaiah and took advice from the chief youth leader and talking with other knowledgable Christians at my church. The learning goal for the talk was that the Lord’s new covenant is everlasting and we only need to accept it from Jesus. Mentally I’ve broken up the passage into a few different parts, verses 1-3, 4-7 and 8-11.

Firstly I spoke about the context, because we had previously seen that the Assyrians besieged Jerusalem but were defeated by an angel of the Lord in chapter 37 and in chapter 39 Hezekiah showing the Babylonians the treasures of the temple and now chapter 61 is talking about after the defeat to the Babylonians, the exile into Babylonia and the return from exile after the Persian conquest of Babylon. So it is important to keep in mind this return from exile and captivity when reading chapter 61.

Next the first part of the chapter is verses 1-3, which talks about about one anointed with the spirit of the Sovereign Lord who brings freedom. Comparing to chapter 6 verses 9-10 we see a curse to callous the hearts of the people, and also comparing to the historical context where the Lord’s wrath is expressed through exile we see that the Lord is turning people’s hearts back to him and a release from the captivity of the punishment of sin. This results in comfort, honour, joy and praise rather than mourning, dishonour, mourning and despair.

Now the second part is verses 4-7, which again can be compared to earlier in Isaiah, in chapter 1 verse 7 where the Lord promises that their rebellion and injustice will result in the ruin of the country of Israel, so now we have restoration that takes place after the judgement of the Lord. However we see in chapter 1 verse 4 that this judgement came from them spurning the Holy One of Israel, that is the Lord and in verse 8 the Lord hates robbery and wrongdoing. Now comparing with chapter 1 verses 11-15 we see that the Lord rejects the people’s religiosity because they practice wrongdoing. We can see that the old covenant is broken by the people and the Lord rejecting them but also a promise of restoration.

The next and third part is verses 8-9 where the Lord has clothed with garments of salvation, and arrayed with a robe of the Lord’s righteousness and will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. Now we see the Lord at work to make an everlasting covenant with his people.

Looking back to chapter 47 we see that the Servant the one anointed with the Lords spirit here and is this everlasting covenant of the Lord. Now in Luke 4 Jesus references the start of Isaiah 61 and says that this is fulfilled in the hearing of the people in the synagogue, effectively claiming to be the anointed one of the Lord and further in [Luke 22(https://biblia.com/bible/niv2011/luke/22)] verse 20 Jesus explains that his blood is the blood of this new and everlasting covenant.

As you can see I tried to hone in on the everlasting covenant thread – which Hebrews 8-10 also elaborates on – to have a clear and simple thing to remember. Talking with some of the youth later some of them could answer questions based on the talk so I has satisfied that some learning had taking place.