The Anointing that Breaks the Yoke

…get hold of the youth and even to destroy the youth. And the Lord brought out so forcefully in this, that none of these things are going to do anything. We know this, and you wouldn’t have to tell us. But it’s another thing when the Lord brings it out that none of this can be done. But the part that He brought out was the yoke that’s upon the nations, the yoke that they are in and held, bonds, bands, we could say. There are different kinds of yokes, yoke of iron and yoke of bondage, and the different yokes that are upon the peoples, as we’ve seen even pictures of, say, Africans, a man there with the big burden upon his back. All of these are yokes that have been put on by the enemy.

And the Word says, “The yoke shall be destroyed, because of the anointing.” This is what is going to destroy. Not by might, not by armament, not by swords or not by spades. Just like with David. It wasn’t a case of having armament upon him. It was the anointing that was upon him. And there should be the anointing, the anointing among us. If there’s no anointing… That’s so important, the anointing of the Lord. The anointing of the Lord is very important.

And this is what Jesus had when he went into the temple there. He was handed the Word, and it says, “And Jesus came to Nazareth, 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.”

Now Jesus went into the synagogue. He went right in the synagogue, every Sunday as was his custom, and there he sat. Someone can go into a church and there you sit. But there had been a prophecy prior to that, we know, in Isaiah, where it says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” That’s what Isaiah said. “Because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our Lord; to comfort all that mourn.”

Now, there’s the Scripture, and different ones could take that Scripture. We could take that Scripture today. And we could say… Well, I want to say this, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” but it must be upon us, you see.

And when He was in the synagogue, and there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” now, it’s different, “because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel.”

The anointing, the yoke shall be destroyed, because of the anointing. And all of the might and the power of nations or presidents or majors or captains of the army or orders or any of this, this will never do this, we know this. Well, what does do it? What will do it? The anointing of the Spirit of God upon us, His people, upon His people.

And this, as we know, isn’t a day for one leader to go forth. This is not a day for Moses to come forth, and not a day like the day there’s just one man. This is the day when God has called a Body, His Bride, a company. And this is not invested in one man. And we see, say, evangelists or preachers or somebody fulfilling their place, but they are not connected with the Body of Christ, and they’re loners. They’re out there and have so much success sometimes and others. But they do not regard the rest of the members of the Body of Christ. So they’re out on their own, and they say, “Well, I can do this, I’ve been called to do this.”

But the day is not in vogue at all. And that’s why we say when we see different evangelists that are up on the front lines, there’s too few, as it were. But there are evangelists in the Body of Christ. There are evangelists in the Body of Christ that are held and supported and functioning and operating with those that are called to be evangelists, with those that are called to be pastors, with those that are called to be teachers, with those that are called to be prophets, with those that are called to be apostles. And there is the company. So there’s where again we come into the place “how blessed it is when brethren dwell [together] in unity.” That unity is like the oil, the anointing oil that was poured out upon the high priest. But he’s not talking… In that day, it was just one high priest that the Lord poured out the oil upon before he would be ready for the ministering to the congregation.

But this day is that there’s to be a Body with the oil poured out.

And He said in one place, “He hath anointed me,” Jesus said, “with the oil of gladness above my fellows.” And there’s the oil, this oil of the Holy Spirit, that we cannot be without. The only thing that will accomplish, the only thing that will count throughout eternity is what has been done by the Holy Spirit. Nothing else will count. My good thoughts, my good deeds, my good words, my good intentions, all of that goes by the board. Whatever is done in the Spirit of God will count throughout eternity. Without this, there will be no counting. You might get a rebound or reaction from people, “Well, you’ve done something great, you did a kind act here.”

But what is not prompted or unction, we could use anointing as an unction of the Holy Spirit. An unction, that word is not hardly used, I don’t find it in the Word of God. But anointing is used in the Word of God. And how wonderful that it was just the same word probably that had been used by many, many.

And Jesus comes and picks it up and He says, “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, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” And so, what did He do more?

Then people could have said, “Go ahead, do it!” you know, go ahead and do it. Of course, He did, when it was time.

But “he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister.” This is one of the most impressive Scriptures to me. “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.” What a day!

“And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” Of course, then they tried to slough it off. They had a case. The minister says “me,” just one of the things around Him was this. Of course, they had a case there, say. But He said unto them, “Well, you will say, Physician, heal yourself,” and so on. And He spoke.

But we know when the Holy Spirit is moving, don’t we? I don’t think that we don’t know that. Or are we still not sure of whether it be the Holy Spirit or whether it not be? Because we will come to days when we’ll have to be sure. I mean, everybody will [x].

We cannot take anything of a gush or some kind of emotional strain or something that’s just the maybe touching our emotions and say, “Well, now, that’s the Holy Spirit.” We must have unction and anointing ourselves to know. Because we’re coming into the time of the anti-Christ. We know the spirit of anti-Christ already works, and he’s working right now. And he’s going to make such a fling at the whole thing. He’s going to make such a stab at the whole thing to put himself forward. As Jesus said, “I came in my own name, you didn’t receive me. There’s coming another in his own name, you can’t… this is the one you can receive.”

And we will have to be very sure of our steps in the Lord, that we’ll have to know. We cannot say, “Well, that’s the Holy Spirit,” if it wasn’t the Holy Spirit. And Jesus Christ there said, “He hath anointed me.”

How many times do we really know that we’re anointed? Or that we’re moving in the freedom and that’s the Holy Spirit moving? Because even though we have a good session here or what we might say something that sort of appeases or fills the need or maybe some confirmation that our meetings we ourselves and with one another as the Body, we must call out first for what? What’s the first thing?

Praise the Lord, somebody answered: “Unity.”

And upon the unity will come the anointing. And then what will come? The breaking of the yoke upon those that are in bondage.

I believe that those three are absolutely that which will dominate the situation. And we should let nothing hinder the unity of the Body of Christ. We should let nothing, no matter how the enemy comes, what the flesh says or what the enemy does, because the further we start to move out from the Spirit, the more there the enemy will strive to knock us out, and the more there will be some kind of reaction to go against somebody else or to say something against somebody else.

“Let the peace of God rule,” the Word of God says, “your hearts.” Let this be the…what would you call it? The measure. The peace of God rule your heart and know, as has been brought out… We must go by the Word of God and, say, well, the Word of God says thus and so and it says again thus and so. You must know the Word of God and the angle and the setting and how it blends and not take it out of its setting. When the Word of God says thus and so, “Yes.”

As Jesus said to the enemy… Look, the enemy quoted the Word of God. But Jesus said to the enemy, “But it is written again. You took it out of its setting here,” He said to the enemy. “It is written again,” and He brought him back to where it belonged. The enemy just took it right up and said, “It is written, if you dash your foot against the stone….” It’s written! If that’s true, it was written, he can bring you… the enemy can bring you the Word of God and your flesh too. And he said, “It is written that you could dash your foot against… you wouldn’t dash your foot against a stone because angels will keep you going.”

But He said, “It is written again you cannot tempt the Lord your God.” And the Scriptures must be kept in conformity and coordination, coordinating the whole thing, because we cannot take Scriptures out of its setting. We must come with the whole counsel of the Lord.

And the three primary things, as I remember, maybe some of you remember this—more of this prophecy or this word—the primary things that stood out to me was the unity of the Body of Christ.

We know it was on the day of Pentecost that they spent from 7 to 10 days. We would almost know that there they were getting straightened out and things straightened out. And as they did, they were in one accord—what does it say? “In one accord, in one place,” take it backwards or forwards, it’s one, when the Holy Spirit then… They were right where they should be at the right time, and the Spirit of God came with a mighty rushing wind to fill the place. And they all began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. This was the Spirit of God. This was no, nothing thought up or nothing of the mind, part-mind and part-Spirit, or part-flesh and part-Spirit. This was all Spirit. Hallelujah.

Because of unity, because of the anointing, the unction, and then how much bondage was ripped off of those people? The yoke was broken, the yoke was broken off of 3,000 Jews that had come from different parts of the world: Parthians, Medes, and all these different nationalities where the Jews had been. And just think how the yoke was broken that day off of those people until they said, “Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?”

The anointing, the unity, and the yoke went down off of them. Praise God. Oh, that is so wonderful.

And as I was praying, I don’t know whether it was last night or some time or this morning, it just came to me, well, I don’t know whether Peter would know just in that minute how many is going to come through, you know. Because with Stephen, the same thing: he went over the rehearsing of what God did or Abraham, how he came out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and all the different things, and he went through it and through it, and they were just astounded there, and they just listened. Till at the end they rose, and it cost him his life.

And Peter went back, and he went all the way down. He rehearsed it, he brought it out and up until this day, they said, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” There was a church there. There were 120, absolute unity; they had become as one. And they break their bread afterwards with singleness of heart. They went from one place to the other, all of them glorifying the Lord, all of them, only wanting the plan of God to be accomplished for their generation. Praise the Lord.

So there are those things that were brought out so outstanding to us this week of the unity, of the anointing, of the yoke broken because of the anointing, because of…. Destroyed, because of the anointing. Praise the Lord.