Okay, if you guys could open up your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 49. In your Black Pew Bible, that starts on page 609. And we're going to be in the first seven verses today of Isaiah chapter 49. So let's read this together. Isaiah chapter 49, starting in verse one. The word of God says this. Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb. From the body of my mother, he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand, he hid me. He made me a polished arrow. In his quiver, he hid me away. And he said to me, you are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified. But I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity. Yet surely my right is with the Lord and my recompense with my God. And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has become my strength. He says, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and His Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. Well, if you are interested in real estate, which I'm aware that many of you in here are, and you go on these websites like Zillow and Realtor, and you look at these real estate listings, you will find that there's one word that's used in like 80% of all listings, and it's the word desirable. Desirable. Come see this charming ranch in desirable blank. Fill in the blank with any name that you could possibly think of of any city in the entire world. If we were living during World War II and Nazi Germany was bombing London and we were looking for a home in London, it would still say, come see this charming ranch in desirable London. And we see things like that, and we kind of understand why these real estate agents, why these realtors put that out, right? They're trying to draw attention to their listing that they put out. It's kind of their job to bring attention to it. But then you start to think and you say, well, it's not only real estate agents that are doing this. I mean, this is literally what is happening all around us. Everywhere you look, Everyone and everything is trying and grasping for your attention. Whether it be newspapers trying to get your attention, movies trying to get your attention, websites and stores and things like that, everyone is grasping for and trying to get our attention. And it's into this world where everyone is vying for our attention that someone speaks. And he speaks with a voice greater and with more power and authority. And the one who is speaking, he outright demands our attention. The one who is speaking to us today is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is saying, give me your attention and give it to me right now. This passage of scripture that we're in today in Isaiah chapter 49 is known as the second servant song of the Lord Jesus Christ. And last week, if you remember, last week we saw that Israel, the nation of Israel, as God's servant, they failed. They rebelled against God. They sinned against God. They failed in the sense that they failed to honor God, failed to be a light to the Gentile nations around them, and as a result of this, what God did was He scattered them, and thus leading to what's known as the Babylonian captivity. And in Isaiah 42, in that first servant song, we saw that God promised to send his saving servant into the world. And he said that his saving servant would do two things. He would establish biblical justice throughout the world, and he would be the one who would free his people out of their bondage to sin. So in the most general way that we can put it, Israel in Isaiah, in the book of Isaiah, the nation of Israel, their main problem is their sin and their rebellion against God. And the solution to their problem is to believe in God's saving servant. Likewise for us in our society today, our big problem is our sin and our rebellion against God. And the solution is the same, it's to believe in God's saving servant. In Isaiah 42, what we had was a biographical depiction of God's saving servant, in the sense that it was God the Father describing this servant for us. Here in Isaiah 49, we have an autobiographical depiction. We literally have Jesus describing himself for us. And what we're gonna see, we're gonna see that Jesus, God's saving servant, we're gonna see that he's mighty to save, that he's well-equipped with the weapons necessary to bring about our salvation. We're gonna see that he is incredibly self-sacrificial. And we're gonna see that his self-sacrificial salvation has literally had worldwide ramifications. Here's what he says in the first part of verse one. He says, listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. So he says, listen, listen. This is an imperative command. He is demanding that your attention be on him. He is saying, pay attention. He was speaking directly to the Jew in Babylonian captivity, and he's speaking directly to us here today. And the entire world is his attentive audience. Says, listen to me. And notice the power and the authority from which he speaks. Listen to me. He is the authority behind it. You know, prior to this point in Isaiah, that phrase, listen to me, had been used four times. And each time that it was used, it was always Yahweh speaking. It was always God speaking. So the first time it's used is in Isaiah 41. There God says this. He says, listen to me in silence, O coastlands. Then in Isaiah 46, God says, listen to me, O house of Jacob. Also in Isaiah 46, God says, listen to me, you stubborn of heart. In Isaiah 48, God says, listen to me, O Jacob. And in our text here, we have God's saving servant speaking, and he says, listen to me, O coastlands. Alec Motyer, He wrote a tremendous commentary on the book of Isaiah. And in it, he makes the point that this can only possibly be Jesus speaking. That all throughout the scriptures, you never see any prophet or any mere man say, listen to me with the authority that is being used here. You never see any prophet, any mere man say, listen to me in this personal way, how it's being used here. And by virtue of saying this, God's saving servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, by virtue of saying this, what he is doing is he is saying that he has the same authority as Yahweh. And you know what that tells us? That tells us that this saving servant is, in fact, God. He's Yahweh. He's God the Son, Yahweh the Son, the second person of the Trinity. He's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is equal with God the Father on the authority scale. You know, we saw this all throughout the course of the Lord's earthly ministry. For example, if you remember when Jesus heals the paralytic, Jesus heals him and after healing him he says, my son your sins are forgiven. And people hear that and say that's blasphemy. And Jesus says, no, I have the authority to do this. In Matthew chapter 28, Jesus says all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. And in our text, what Jesus is doing is he's drawing upon this authority, and he's drawing the attention of the entire world upon himself. He has the floor, and we ought to take heed to what it is that he's about to say. He goes on in verse one, and he says this. He said, the Lord called me from the womb. From the body of my mother, he named my name. So he is called for the task at hand. This is his destiny. This is his divine destiny. He was destined to be the saving servant of the world. He was destined to do what he did throughout the course of his earthly ministry. He was destined, the Lord Jesus was, to come here and to bear witness to the testimony of the truth of God's word. Jesus, he's standing before Pontius Pilate, and Pilate asks him, he says, are you a king? And this is how Jesus responds to him. He says, you say that I'm a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the testimony to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. So did you hear that from Jesus? Jesus is saying that if you want to be on the side of truth, You need to be on his side. You need to be on his side because he's the one that bears testimony to the truth of God's word. You know, wrapped up in what Jesus says there in John chapter 18 is the fact that truth is objective and not subjective. Okay? And that's something that our society would look at it and they would flip it around, they would say, no, no, no, there's no such thing as objective truth. Truth is subjective. Kind of the most common way we see this is when you share something true about the Bible with someone, they'll say to you, well, you know, that's your truth, but that's not my truth, or that's your truth, but that's not his or her truth. They're operating from a standpoint that truth is subjective, but it's not. It's objective. About a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to talk to an old friend of mine from high school. And we talked maybe every year and a half to two years. And every time we get the opportunity to talk, I always share the gospel with him. And this time was no different. And after I shared the gospel with him, he says to me, he says, well, he says, you don't know that that's true for certain. And I said, no, I do. That's why I told you. And he goes, no, no, no, you don't know. You can't know for certain that that's true. And I said, oh, I said, I think I know what you're saying. And he goes, you get it now? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. So I can't know anything for certain because I'm a Christian. But you know for certain that I can't know anything for certain because you're the only one that can know anything for certain. I said, do you see the inconsistency in your logic? And to his credit, He did say after, he was like, yeah, you're right, that actually is inconsistent of me. But you know where he was operating from? Operating from where the world operates. That truth is subjective, but it's not. Truth is objective. It's conclusive. It is definitive. And everything that Jesus says about himself, in the word of God is true. And everything in his word is true. In John chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. In Revelation chapter number 19, if you remember the Apostle John, he says that this is what's going to happen when Jesus comes back. He says the sky will break open. Christ will descend on a white steed with his garment stripped in blood, the blood of his own enemies. But then John goes on to say, and he says that the one who is sitting on the horse, Jesus, that his name is called faithful, and his name is called true. So he is literally truth itself. And he is the one who bears testimony to the truth of God's word, and there is total truth to what he's telling us here in Isaiah chapter 49. He tells us that the Father called him from the womb. Says the Lord called me from the womb. So you see what he's speaking about here. He's speaking about the incarnation. He's saying that he will come here and he will put on flesh and dwell among us. He's telling us here, 700 years before the incarnation happened, that the incarnation will happen. You see the authority behind Jesus here? You see how we know that Jesus is God? Here for example, he's predicting the future. He's saying this is what is going to happen. I will come here, put on flesh. I will be a real person. He will be the one who fulfills the prophecy spoken of in Isaiah chapter 7, which said this. It says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. and shall call his name Emmanuel. Emmanuel, God with us. That's who Jesus is. Jesus is God with us, born of a virgin, called by the Father, and he is fully equipped to get the job done. And that's our next point. The next point is this. Jesus is equipped with the weaponry needed to do what he's called to do. Let's look at verse two. Verse two says this. He made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand he hid me. He made me a polished arrow. In his quiver he hid me away." So he's equipped, Jesus is, he is equipped with a sharp sword and a polished arrow. But it's not the sharp sword and polished arrow that We're thinking of, he's equipped with a sharp sword and polished arrow of the word of God. It's speaking about Jesus making warfare with his words. He's equipped with the sword of his mouth. It says, he made my mouth like a sharp sword. Speaking of the fact that his ministry will be one that's based around the preaching of the word of God, based around the preaching of the gospel. You know when Jesus went around preaching the word of God, you know what people said about him? They said, no one has ever spoken like him. In the gospel of John, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, and they say, we're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus says, I am he. What happens, they all fall back, they're pushed back to the ground because of the power and the authority from which he spoke. He constantly went around preaching the gospel, preaching the message that in order for sinners to be saved, they had to repent of their sins and come to faith in him. And when he did this, when he went around preaching the word of God, it was as if a sharp sword was coming from his mouth, just cutting everybody in its path. And listen, this is what the word of God does, by the way. The word of God, it cuts you, and it cuts you like a sharp sword. Hebrews chapter four says this, it says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing through the division of soul and of spirit, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So there's cutting power in the Word of God. Here's how Charles Spurgeon described this cutting power of God's Word. He said, the Word of God is so sharp a thing, so full of cutting power, that you may be bleeding under its wounds before you have seriously suspected the possibility of such a thing. And the reality is, if we're all being honest with ourselves, this is something that we need to ask God to do for us. When we sit down to read God's word, whether it be private devotional time, or maybe devotional time with your family, we need to ask that God would cut us with his word. We need to ask, we need to pray, say, Lord Jesus, would you cut me with your word today? Would you slice me open like the great physician that you are, convicting me of my sin where I need convicting, showing me where I'm not trusting in you as I ought to be trusting in you, and then will you sew me back up like the great physician that you are? That's something that I think if we're all being honest, we all need to be doing a lot more. The text tells us that the word he preaches will be like a polished arrow. It'll be like a polished arrow. I liken this polished arrow in my mind to that of a locked-on guided missile with the best radar system ever, weaving and hitting its intended target. I liken this polished arrow of the Word of God in my mind to that of two fighter jets in the sky, where one fighter jet shoots a missile at the other fighter jet, and the fighter jet, who just had the missile shot at him, you know, all these radar things go off in the cockpit. And then what does this fighter jet do? Well, he tries to do all these tricks in the air, and 99% of the time, can't outrun the missile. Missile hits its intended target and blows up. That's what I liken this in my mind to, the polished arrow of the Word of God, with the exception being, obviously, that God's Word doesn't hit its intended target 99% of the time, but it hits it 100% of the time. This is the arrow that pierces the heart of guilty sinners the moment that they believe. This is the arrow that stabs the Christian continuously and keeps him or her from falling away. I'm sure we can all think of times in our Christian walk when the word of God struck us like a sharp sword or pierced us like a polished arrow. Time for me when this happened, it's about four or five months after I got saved, and I was having a conversation with my twin brother, and my twin brother was saved about three years before me. And I remember saying to him, I said, you know what? I said, I don't think cursing is that big of a deal. Like, I just don't think it's that big of a deal. And my brother looks at me, and he goes, dude, that might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard, what you just said. And I go, no, no, no. Like, I mean, does the Bible say it? Like, I don't think the Bible says that. And he goes, what? Are you serious? And he takes me to Ephesians chapter 4. where it says, let no unwholesome speech come from your mouth. And I remember he read that to me, and then I said, no, no, it doesn't say that. I said, let me read it. And then I read it, and I remember the word of God cutting me like a sword, piercing me like an arrow, because that's what it does. That's exactly what it does. And all the while, while Jesus went around preaching the word of God like a sharp sword and like a polished arrow, all the while he did this, he was protected by his father. That's why it says also in verse two, it says, in the shadow of his hand, he hid me. In his quiver, he hid me away. So we see in the gospels during Christ's earthly ministry, we see the sovereignty of God all over his life. For example, even before his earthly ministry, even before that, when he was just a little baby and Herod wanted to murder him, what happened? Well, God the Father protected him. He hid him away. Even during his earthly ministry, if you remember in John chapter 8, verse 58, when Jesus says to the Jews, he says, before Abraham was, I am. And the Jews pick up stones to throw at him because they knew that he was claiming to be God. He was claiming to be God in the flesh. But what does the Bible tell us? It says that he was hidden away, that he hid himself. And that's because God his Father was constantly protecting him until the appropriate time. Now, so far, what we've seen in these first two verses, we've seen Jesus is the one who demands our attention. He's told us what he was telling the Jews in Babylonian captivity, that he would come here, put on flesh, dwell among us. He's told us that his word that he preaches is like a sharp sword, like a polished arrow. And now in verses three and four, what Jesus is going to do is he is going to retell a conversation that took place between himself and God the Father. And let me say this. Verse three, at first glance, appears to be difficult. Okay, but it's really not that difficult. So let's read verse three. It says this, it says, he said to me, so the he here is God the father, the me here is referring to Jesus. So he said to me, you are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified. So what is going on here? Well, we know that these servant songs in Isaiah, and remember there are four of the servant songs in Isaiah. So there's one in Isaiah 42, second one here in Isaiah 49, next one in Isaiah 50, and the most common one, most famous one, is the one that starts at the end of Isaiah 52 and goes into all of Isaiah 53. We know that all of those servant songs are about the Lord Jesus. And we also know that Jewish people today, they look back on these servant songs in Isaiah, and they say, no, no, no, this isn't about Jesus, this is about the nation of Israel. So with that in mind, and coming to verse three, where God the Father says, you are my servant Israel, with all that in mind, it may cause some people to think, well, maybe Jewish people today are onto something. But no, they're not, okay? If you just think of the logical inconsistency to say that rebellious, idolatrous, sinful Israel could save idolatrous, rebellious, sinful Israel, right? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So what exactly is going on here? Well, before we even discuss that, there's something that we need to keep in mind. And that is this, when the Bible uses the word Israel, it is not always referring to the actual physical nation itself. All right, so most obvious example of this is the first time we see Israel used in scripture is in Genesis chapter 32, where God changes Jacob's name from Jacob to Israel. So obviously when it was being used there in Genesis 32, it wasn't referring to the physical nation. Another time where we see this distinction is in Romans chapter 9, verse 6, where the apostle Paul He says this, he says, not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. So in Romans 9, Paul is saying, look, there's a difference between the physical nation of Israel and between spiritual or true Israel. And spiritual or true Israel, by the way, makes up every single believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you are sitting here and your faith is in Christ, I can say to you, I can say you are a part of Israel. And you can affirm and you can say, yeah, I am a part of Israel. And certainly we wouldn't be speaking as if we were actually a part of the physical nation of Israel itself. So what's going on here in verse three is that this servant, the Lord Jesus, he is being referred to as a representative of Israel and the representative of Israel. And this is something that happens all throughout the Old Testament. All throughout the Old Testament, for example, you see that the king of Israel is the national representative for the nation as a whole. The most basic way you see this is, generally speaking, when the king of Israel was a good king who was seeking after God, What did God do? Well, generally he would bless the entire nation. When the king of Israel was an evil king, not seeking after God, what would God do? He would not bless the nation. So here, when it says, you are my servant Israel, it's referring to the fact that Jesus is the representative of Israel. And that's because he is the fulfillment of what the nation was supposed to be. So remember, Israel as God's servant, they failed. They sinned against him, rebelled against him, failed to honor him, failed to be a light to the Gentiles around him. But Jesus did not fail in his mission. He's the one that embodies everything that they should have been. He says, you are my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified. So again, this can only be about Jesus. Can't be about the nation, okay? And we know that because we could just ask ourselves the question, was God being glorified when sinful Israel, when they were engaging in syncretistic idolatry? For example, when the people of Israel at this time, when they were going around and saying, yeah, I worship Yahweh and I bow down to Yahweh. But you know what, I'm not gonna discount Bale and Milcom and Molech, and I'm gonna go into the marketplace and I'm gonna buy little statues of them and put them in different rooms throughout my house just to be on the safe side. Was God being glorified throughout that process? No, absolutely not. Jesus is the only one that can say that he glorifies God in absolutely everything. And by the way, We really shouldn't be that surprised that Jesus would be referred to here as Israel, because when you think of it, what was ultimately the point of God establishing and creating the nation of Israel? Well, ultimately, it was made for Christ. The Bible tells us that everything was made for Christ, and that includes the establishment and creation of nations. Colossians 1 says this... So Jesus, he is the embodiment of Israel. He's the one called from the womb. He's the man that demands our attention. And he is equipped for the task at hand with the proper weaponry that's needed. Now with all that in mind, you would think that the task at hand, whatever it is, you would think that it should be pretty easy. I mean, he's the son of God. and he's well equipped for the task at hand. So whatever the task is, you would think this should be pretty easy for him. But no, it wasn't. It wasn't easy. There was immense, immense difficulty of what Jesus had to endure for us, and it cost him much. And that's something that we can never forget, something we can never take for granted, is the immense difficulty of what Jesus did for us. A few years ago, I remember reading this story, and I think they made a movie about this, of this mountain climber who's climbing this mountain, and some way, I don't really recall how, his arm gets stuck under a rock, and he's trying to get his arm out, and he can't, so what he has to do is he has to take a pocket knife, and then cut off his arm, and then if that wasn't difficult enough, he had to continue climbing, and then when he got to a specific point, he then hiked seven miles to get to safety. I imagine that was pretty difficult. And even something like that doesn't even begin to compare to the difficulty of what Jesus did for us. Jesus responds in verse four to what God the Father said in verse three. And he says this in the first part of verse four. He says, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity. So we get a glimpse here We get a glimpse of just how self-sacrificial the Lord Jesus Christ is. We get a glimpse of his inward thoughts during his earthly ministry. And inwardly, during his earthly ministry, he was tempted with the belief that all of this was for nothing. And it's understandable that he would be tempted in this way. I mean, if you were to just think about it, Jesus, he went around, said that he was the only way in which sinners can be saved. He exposed people's sins. And then he also gave legitimacy to his message by living a righteous and perfect life, by performing countless miracles, healing countless amounts of people. He did all that. And yet, yet the people wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. And even in that, even in that, we see the self-sacrifice of the Lord. Because he didn't deserve to face any of that. He didn't deserve to be slandered and mocked and ridiculed. He didn't deserve to be rejected. He didn't deserve to suffer at the hands of sinful and evil men. He didn't deserve that. And all the while, all these things were happening to him, he was tempted to think that all of his work, that it was all in vain. We see a good example of this in Matthew chapter 12. If you remember in Matthew 12, Jesus he goes into the synagogue and heals this man with a withered hand. And he heals him. All these people see him heal this man with a withered hand. And you would think that after they saw this take place that they would just bow down and start worshiping him. But no, the Bible tells us that the Pharisees who saw it, says that they went out and conspired against him about how to destroy him. And that's just one example. I mean, we could list examples all day long of him being opposed for absolutely no good reason. And all of that caused him to be tempted to say and be tempted to think everything that I'm doing is in vain. But he never succumbed to this temptation. He never succumbed to it. And there's great application in that for us because so often, So often when we share the gospel with others, so often they reject. So often they're not so nice in rejecting the gospel. So often they'll yell at you, curse at you. And when that happens, there is a temptation to sit back and to look and to say, man, everything that I'm doing here, all of this is in vain. It's all for nothing. It's all vanity. But it isn't. It isn't for us, and it certainly wasn't for Jesus, despite the temptation to succumb to it. So he wasn't discouraged. He was never discouraged. And we see that even in the same verse, in verse four, the last part of it. He says, yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God. So he says his recompense, his reward, is with God. He's basically saying I need not worry, I need not worry because my father will reward me with what I rightly deserve. Now in verse five, there's a bit of a shift that happens. And Jesus, he's gonna go and he is speaking directly here to Jews in Babylonian captivity and really he's speaking to every single Jew ever that's ever existed. And he is going to tell them that a main purpose of him coming here was to reconcile them to God. Here's what it says in verse five. It says, and now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength. So Jesus is saying, this was part one of his mission. Part 1 or Part 1A of the mission was to reconcile believing Jews back to God. To reconcile believers who had come to faith in Him to God. But notice I'm saying believing Jews. Because it's not every Jew that he's gonna reconcile to God. And we see that in verse six. Verse six says, he says, so this is God the Father speaking now. He says, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. So God the Father tells him, it won't be every single Jew. It'll be those Jews who come to faith. It'll be the elect Jews. It'll be the preserved of Israel. And I wonder if you caught what God the Father says to God the Son at the beginning of verse six. He says to him, he says, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. So the father says to the son, he says to him, just giving you believing Jews isn't enough. That's not enough. Just saying that you will be the saving servant for Israel as a nation, that's not nearly enough. You deserve far more. We need to get the Gentiles in on this. You'll be the savior, you'll be the servant for the Gentiles also. You know what this conversation in Isaiah chapter 49 reminds me of? It reminds me of the conversation that Jesus retells for us in Psalm 2. In Psalm 2 the big question being asked there is why do the nations rage and why do the peoples plot in vain? Against the Lord, against God the Father and his anointed, God the Son. And the answer to that question, by the way, as to why the nation's rage and the people's plot in vain is because they want to cast off any and all moral responsibility before God. But in Psalm 2, Jesus, he retells a conversation between him and God the Father. And this is what he says. He says, the Lord, so God the Father, said to me, referring to Jesus, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. So you see that in Psalm 2, God the Father is saying to Jesus, to God the Son, he's saying all you have to do is ask me and I'll give it to you. Just ask and whatever you want, it's yours. And then here in Isaiah 49, God the Father is saying to God the Son, he's saying it's not enough that you just have believing Jews to reconcile. No, we are going to give you more. You deserve more, we're gonna give you the Gentiles as well. And listen, this is God's desire for his son. His desire, God's desire for his son is to give him a great many people as his reward. That's his desire. So part 1A of the mission is to reconcile Jews to God. Part 1B is to reconcile Gentiles to God. Now in verse 7, This entire section of scripture ends, and it ends in such an amazing way. We see God the Father describing for us what's known as the humiliation of Christ and the exaltation of Christ. And we will see the self-sacrificial love of Jesus and what he does for us. Let's read verse 7, the first half of it. It says, Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and His Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation. So who is the one deeply despised? Who is the one abhorred by the nation? It's Jesus. Jesus is the one deeply, deeply despised. Guys, listen. People hate Jesus. Okay? And I don't say that to be like controversial or anything. I say it because it's what the scriptures testify. I also understand that the only reason why I don't currently hate Jesus and the only reason why you in here don't currently hate Jesus is because of his grace for us. So I understand all that. but people hate Jesus Christ. You see this when you evangelize, you see it all the time, that just the mere mention of his name stirs up anger that surpasses all other anger. And when we see that, we tend to think that, wow, people today hate Jesus so much, but this has always been the case. People have always hated Jesus. Saw it during his earthly ministry. They hated Jesus so much that they made it a point to humiliate him as much as they possibly could. Just think about, just think about how sacrificial Jesus is. Think about his sacrificial love for us. in that all the while, while he was being humiliated, while he was being made fun of, while he was being mocked and derided and maligned and beaten, at any single moment, he could have ended every single person that was coming up against him. He could have done that. But he didn't do that. He pressed on, and that's something we can never take for granted. We can never take for granted how Jesus was humiliated for us, can never take for granted how much he sacrificed. And this humiliation of Christ, it has a guaranteed outcome, and his guaranteed outcome is his exaltation. It's his exaltation. Let's read the last part of verse seven. It says, king shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you. So his exaltation, it's guaranteed. It is 100% guaranteed. The servant who humbled himself, the servant who was humiliated, he will, in fact, be exalted. It says that kings will stand at attention in his presence. It says that princes will bow before him because he's the rightful king of kings. And those kings that I just mentioned that will stand at attention in his presence, they too will bow one day before him. Philippians chapter 2 says this, it says, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So his exaltation is guaranteed. And the one whose exaltation is guaranteed He calls out to us today in his word, and he says, listen to me, give me your attention. And he gives us multiple reasons as to why we ought to give him our attention. You know, this is one of the great things about the word of God, is that we have multiple reasons as to why we believe what we do. So for example, I've heard it said, and I may have actually said this to you guys, but I've heard it said where people say, well, God would still be worthy of our worship, even if we didn't have the Bible, because he's the creator of everything. And that's true, right? There's nothing really wrong with that statement. But isn't it awesome that God gives us reason upon reason upon reason upon reason upon reason as to why we ought to worship Him, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And we have ample reasons here in our text as to why we ought to bow the knee to Jesus, why we ought to worship Jesus, why we ought to listen to Him when He speaks. He is mighty to save. He's well-equipped to bring about our salvation. He's self-sacrificial. And his self-sacrificial salvation has had worldwide ramifications. And the question today, the question today is, are you hearing him? He demanded your attention at the beginning. So are you giving him your attention? Or is your attention elsewhere? Are you distracted by other things? Are you distracted by meaningless things that cannot save you? If you are, stop being distracted by those things. Give your attention to Jesus. He's 100% worthy of it. Let's pray together.