I invite you to open your Bible with me tonight to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 42, as we're in a series on these chapters. Isaiah chapter 42. We're going to read the first four verses. I'm going to encourage you to keep your Bible open as we'll be just jumping back a little to chapter 41 as well. Isaiah chapter 42. And we'll be reading verses 1 through 4. This is God's Word. Behold My servant whom I uphold, My chosen in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law. Let's bow and ask the Lord's blessing. Father, now as we come to your word, we thank you that you show us here through the words of Isaiah, the beauty of Jesus, and I pray that the Spirit would give us eyes to see and to believe, to be blessed, encouraged, that we would worship Christ, love Christ, trust our Lord Jesus in all things, in all times. for He cares for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I'd like to ask you, what would you think of a person who could really and truly predict your future? So imagine you met a man in the store and he said to you, tomorrow afternoon at 3 o'clock you're going to have an accident and you're going to receive 11 stitches, but you'll be okay. You would probably think he was nuts. And then what if it happened? And then the next week you ran into him in the store again, and he told you what you're going to be doing next year at this very date, or 10 years from now at this very date. It was just evident that he clearly knew what was going to happen to you. I think you would take notice of that. I think you would ask him, how do you know these things, because we know that only God can truly know the future. The phrase for this ability to foretell what's going to happen is called predictive prophecy. And the book of Isaiah is full of it because in the book of Isaiah, God is, well, He's judging the Israelites for their idolatry, and he's judging the nations for their idolatry. And one of the proofs that God raises in the book of Isaiah over and over and over again is that there are no gods that can predict the future except Jehovah, Israel's God. And that's where I ask you to keep your Bible open. If you look at chapter 41, God is Pointing out in chapter 41 the futility of idols, if you look at verse 21 and following. So this is God speaking, "'Set forth your case,' says the Lord. "'Bring your proofs,' says the King of Jacob, Israel's God. "'Let them bring them and tell us what is to happen.'" That's predictive prophecy. "'Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome, or declare to us the things to come.'" Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods. Do good or do harm, that we may be dismayed and terrified. Behold," verse 24, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing. An abomination is he who chooses you. If you look at verse 29, you have that word again. Behold, they are all a delusion, their works are nothing. Their metal images are empty wind. God is just saying to Israel, look at these false gods. Look at their sheer incompetence. Just tell them to do something, anything. Something good, something bad, it doesn't matter. Ask them to do anything and you'll see they're just wind, emptiness, vanity, delusion. They are not gods. Behold, look, notice, see, and then verse 29, the same, behold, they're all a delusion. Their works are nothing. And then directly then, in comparison, we have the first word of chapter 42. Behold. In contrast to the vanity of all false gods, behold my servant. Behold my servant. You see, God has a message for this world. In the face of all the delusions of idolatry, God says, look at my servant, pay attention, see, notice, focus your mind on him. This one is the revelation of the truth of God. in the person of Jesus Christ. Dane Ortlund, in his new book, Deeper, argues that the single most important thing, if we're to grow as Christians, the single most transformative thing is to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. That by looking to Christ, by seeing Christ, beholding Christ, It's the most transformative thing that happens to us, and I think that's absolutely true. In fact, John will talk about that. When we see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Now when you see the beauty of Jesus and the glory of Jesus, the truth about Jesus, it washes away any delight or love for sin. It purifies, it transforms. And so if we want to grow as Christians, we want to be focusing on exactly the thing God says to focus on, which is the truth of Jesus. And so here in Isaiah chapter 42, we just have a wonderful text of Isaiah prophesying, certainly not knowing. Isaiah doesn't understand all the things that he's telling us here. The Holy Spirit is moving him to speak of this future coming one, the servant of God. But with New Testament eyes, we know exactly who this is. And here we see in chapter 42, Jesus' identity, Jesus' character, and his mission. So his identity, his character, and his mission. Notice in verse 1 where God says to us, Behold My servant. It's very instructive the way God says this because we tend to think of Jesus in terms of what He is for us. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is our Redeemer. Jesus is our Friend. And all those things are true. But if that's the only way you think about Jesus, you're not seeing the full person of Christ, the full glory of Christ. In fact, we could argue that the primary glory of Jesus isn't what He is to you or to me. The full glory of Jesus is, first of all, what He is as God and for God and to God. You can illustrate this. When children are young, And even when they get older, children have just a natural tendency to view their parents in purely self-referential terms. That's my dad, that's my mom, she cooks, or she cleans my room, or she teaches me school, and dad does these things, and they do these things for me. Children don't stop to ask themselves, I wonder what mom's dreams really are. Right? Kids aren't saying, you know, what does mom wish that she could do? They're not really concerned about that at all. It's purely self-referential terms. And only as kids grow up and become adults, then you begin to see your parents in a different light. They're whole people with histories and gifts. and abilities that have nothing to do with raising children. They're actual people with dreams and aspirations and desires, and you come to know your parents in a fuller, truer way. Well, it's the same with Jesus. He doesn't simply exist as our Savior. He is, praise the Lord, but he exists as his own glorious person and to the glory of his father. That was the passion of Jesus in this world. Father, glorify your name. That was his aspiration. That was his zeal, to glorify the name of his father. And so when God speaks of his servant, well, let's just notice what he says. Behold my servant. God's servant, of course, a servant is someone who's just devoted to doing whatever the master wants him to do. And Jesus is that. Jesus says in John chapter 4, my food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work. That's my food. That's what I feed on. Jesus would say, I don't say anything of my own. I just say what the Father tells me to say. I don't do anything of my own. I just do what the Father tells me to do. Jesus wants to make it very clear. He's not here on a mission of His own making. He is a servant in the truest and purest sense of the Word. His words and His works are in direct obedience to the call and command of His heavenly Father. Jesus exists, first of all, to God, for God, for His Father. Now, why does this matter? Well, I think it highlights, first of all, the glory of Jesus in His incarnation. Because what we see then is that Jesus, being the second person of the Trinity, God of God, right? Very God of very God, begotten, not made. In all of his glory, the second person of the Trinity humbles himself and embraces this role of a servant, being found, Paul says, in human form. He took the form of a servant and became obedient even to death on the cross. The wonder of the Gospel is that the very Son of God, the very Son of God was willing to embrace the role of a servant, and all the way down to the cross and to the tomb. The Son of God did that. Not just Jesus the man from Nazareth, yes, but the God-man, the Son of God did that. You see, the mystery of the Gospel is just highlighted. by the truth of Jesus as He is in His being, His person, in His deity, so that Paul will marvel that the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me. The Son of God did. And it's a great comfort then to God's people that Jesus is the servant, because He's not Jesus isn't engaged as a mediator in the sense of God the Father is over here, and sinners are over here. God the Father wants nothing to do with us, and we want nothing to do with Him. And Jesus inserts Himself and tries to bring these two parties together. That's not what happens in the Gospel. The truth is, is that Jesus is the Father's servant. It is God reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ. God moving towards sinners in Jesus Christ. That's what's happening. And the great comfort then you see is that, well, as the servant of God, Jesus is in that sense God the Father himself coming after us and seeking us and drawing us back to himself. And so to see Jesus in His glory is to see Jesus as this magnificent, devoted servant of the Father. Secondly, God says, My chosen. And as the chosen, of course, Jesus is the preeminently chosen. We are chosen too, aren't we? Chosen before the foundation of the world. But our choosing is in Him, in Christ. God wants us to know that this one, and only through this one, God will accomplish His redemption, His work of making everything new, and reveal His glory. The glory of what God is like, His grace, His justice, His mercy. All of that is going to be put on public display once and for all time in the person of Jesus Christ, God's servant. Jesus will be lifted up as the preeminent final sign of who God is and what God is about. God's self-revelation in the final and ultimate degree. One of the things that we need to remember about Jesus, there's no one like Jesus. That's not true for any other person, any other person in your life or in the history of the world, of course. You can say, well, he's kind of like so-and-so. You can't say that about Jesus. There's no one like him. He's in a category completely to himself as the chosen of God, the one who reveals God and accomplishes his work. And God delights in him. Behold my chosen in whom my soul delights. Why would God add that? Why would God want to add these words, in whom my soul delights? It's not unintended or accidental. It's not a throwaway phrase. It's a crucial part of God's message to mankind. It's something that God wants us to know. He wants us to understand this. In fact, you find God saying exactly the same thing in the Gospels. In the Gospels, if you remember, There are only two times that the Father speaks. The rest is Jesus talking. There's two times the Father speaks. Once at the baptism of Jesus, and once on the Mount of Transfiguration. And both times, the Father says exactly the same thing. This is my dearly beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. This is my Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him. You see, that's the point. That's why God wants us to know that He delights in Jesus. He wants us to realize that if we want to know the Father, the only way is to come to the Father through the Son. You can't get to the Father any other way than through Jesus Christ. Mike Horton wrote an excellent book on this whole topic about how, well he's written several books on this actually, Christless Christianity, One in the Face of God, this tendency that people have to try to do an end run around Jesus and have an experience of God or relationship with God apart from a crucified Savior. Well, God says right here, this is my son whom I dearly love, my servant, my chosen one. Listen to him. He's placed Jesus in the middle of human history as the epical center of redemptive history. And God says, don't dream of coming to me apart from him. This is my servant, my son. Listen to him. So he's the appointed of God. He's also the anointed of God. I put my spirit upon him. I put my spirit upon him. Eric Alexander points out that the spirit of God is always given for, to carry out the mission of God. The spirit is given purely to that end, and so we find that in the gospels, that Jesus, the spirit descends like a dove. John says when he baptizes Jesus, he sees the spirit descend like a dove, and we're told in Luke chapter four, verse one, that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, went out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, full of the Holy Spirit. That's Jesus. That's how he carried out his mission, the most spirit-filled man in the history of the world. But Jesus was not just a fully spirit-filled man, but Jesus told his disciples, didn't he, that they were not to try to do ministry Until they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is given to empower gospel mission, God's mission. And that's what the text wants us to know, that God has equipped His Son to carry out His God-given mission. The full measure of the Spirit is given to Jesus, and in that power, He carries out His great gospel task. And so that's what God wants us to know about who Jesus is, his identity. But then the text moves on to tell us what he's like. What he's like, verse 2 and 3, his character. You see, the power of Christ is contrasted with his meek and gentle spirit. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. It's popular to hear people say today that Jesus was a social activist or a political rebel. Jesus was trying to undermine and overturn the social structures of His day. Well, I think that completely misses His mission, but it also misses His manner. Jesus did not have a loudspeaker. He wasn't out making a name for himself in that sense, right? He's not trying to build his Twitter platform or promote his brand. He would routinely tell people after he had done some miraculous healing, don't tell anyone. He's not a loud mouth. He's the Son of God on earth, in the power of the Spirit, going about his divine, cosmic, changing all things, and he's doing it quietly. And I think that's glorious about Jesus. When you watch Jesus, you have this sense that it's not about him. It's about his father. Primarily, it's about his father. Here's a man devoted to his father's will. And it's about the eternal well-being of those the father had given to him. Jesus loved his own, and he loved them to the uttermost and to the end. He prays for his own. Jesus is about making everything in this broken and sin-cursed world new. It's about those things. That's His manner. He's not a boisterous, loud mouth out to make, in that sense, a name for Himself. It's exactly in His humility that He is exalted and given the name by the Father that's above every name. And He was gentle. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He's both the most powerful man that ever, ever lived, and the most gentle and caring man that ever lived. A bruised reed is a reed that has suffered an internal wound of some sort, and it's caused that reed to bend over. And no matter how many times, boys and girls, maybe you've tried that with a broken piece of a reed or a blade of grass, and you can try to prop it up, but it can't stay up. It's been bruised, and it always falls over. A faintly burning wick is a wick that is nearly out of fuel. Its resources are exhausted. It's come to the end of itself, the end of its ability, and it's about to die out. Those are really descriptive or apt descriptions of the human condition. This is what it's like to be a person in this fallen world. We all have suffered internal wounds of some sort. Everyone does. Wounds of neglect or abuse, self-inflicted wounds of sin, pride, lust, greed, whatever it might be. There's a bend to us, and we're not able to stand up in the presence of God. And it's a wonderful thing to know that Jesus is compassionate and kind. A bruised reed he will not break. And some of us feel like fainting wicks, right? And we have that experience. If you've become a Christian, part of that experience was coming to the end of yourself and realizing you don't have the resources to fix yourself. You don't have the ability to make yourself right with God. You're at the end of yourself. And at that moment, you see, then, we come to this Savior who cares. He doesn't snuff us out. He cares, and it's important to remember that he cares. I remember, there's an old song, right, by Frank Graef, Does Jesus Care? I remember way back when I was in seminary, and there's a show on the radio by Bill Pierce called Night Sounds. Some of you maybe remember that. You might still be able to find it, but Night Sounds was just a wonderful late night, maybe 11 o'clock. And he had the most wonderful, melodic, soft bass voice. And he would just talk to you on the radio. It was beautiful. And then he would play hymns. And I remember one night, I was driving, and just really a hurting heart because of my stupidity and sin. And Bill was just talking to me. And he played this hymn, Does Jesus Care? Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth or song, as the burdens press and the cares distress, and the way grows weary and long? Does Jesus care when my way is dark with a nameless dread and fear, as the daylight fades into deep night shades? Does he care enough to be near? Does Jesus care when I've tried and failed to resist some temptation strong, when for my deep grief there is no relief, though my tears flow all the night long? Does Jesus care when I've said goodbye to the dearest on earth to me? And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks. Is it ought to him? Does he see? And of course the chorus says, oh yes, he cares. I know he cares. His heart is touched with my grief. Though the days are weary and the long nights are dreary, I know my Savior cares. And we know because scripture tells us he cares, right? First Peter 5.7, cast all your cares on him. because He cares for you. Jesus cares. That's what God is telling us in our text. He's concerned for bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks. He doesn't leave us to our fate, but shows compassion. So we have the identity of Christ and the manner, the character of Christ, and then finally the mission of Christ. What has He come to do? Well, that's the beauty of it. He's come to bring justice. Now that initially doesn't sound maybe appealing, but it's the word that shows up three times in our short text here. Verse 1, He will bring forth justice to the nations. Verse 3, He will faithfully bring forth justice. Verse 4, he will not grow faint or be discouraged until he has established justice in the earth. Well, how is that good news? Well, it's good news, you see, because justice means to bring things in line with law. And Jesus has come to bring things in line with the law of God. In other words, Jesus has come to make everything as it ought to be, everything as God intended it to be, everything as it should be in keeping with the character of God and the purposes of God. Jesus has come, in other words, to make things right. His mission was not simply to die on a cross and save us from our sin, though praise the Lord he did. But that is one part of his mission. The mission is a cosmic mission to make everything new, to defeat the power of the devil and to bring all things under the rightful rule and reign of God. We need to keep the big picture in view when we think about our Lord Jesus. And that he's come, you see, the wonder of what it means to belong to him and to be saved is that Jesus has brought us into that cosmic redemption. He's not just cared for me personally, praise God that he has, but more than that, he's cared for his creation. He's cared for all this world that God has made, and Jesus has engaged in this mission to bring everything to where it ought to be, under the rule and the reign of God. And that's how the Bible ends. Revelation 21, that Jesus says, I'm going to make everything new. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and there shall be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. That's our Lord Jesus. That's the Jesus of Scripture. That's the Jesus we profess, the beautiful servant of God. who was so tender and kind that he gave his life to rescue us and so committed to the Father's will that he has accomplished justice cosmically and the making of everything new. And so let's live in faith, right, in the presence of this Lord Jesus. Let's trust what he's accomplished and trust what he's said. Live in the truth. of who He is and what He's like and what He's done, and be glad in Him. Let's commit ourselves to knowing this Jesus, to seeing Him in His beauty and His glory, to loving Him in truth, and watch as that transforms our life. Let's pray. Oh Jesus, thank You that You care for us, for our grief, for our weakness, that you care for us in our lost condition, but oh Jesus, thank you that above all, you were devoted to your Father, and that you have brought us up into this cosmic redemption of making all things new, and that our lives are being defined not just by your care for us, but by what you've accomplished on the broadest scale, and that you're bringing us, Lord, into this new reality where everything is as it ought to be. In the middle of all of our brokenness and our sin and our grief and the losses that we grieve, Father, I pray that we would see Jesus as the one who's come to restore what's been lost. He's the one who's come to reunite us with our God and to reunite us with our loved ones who've gone on before and the Jesus who's come to perfect us, mind and body. The Jesus who's come to usher in the eternal kingdom in a new heaven and a new earth. And I pray that we would live then with expectation and patience and peace and joy. Because Jesus has said he will do it, and he always accomplishes what he promises. Oh Jesus, give us the grace to know you more and more. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. We're gonna sing together as we close out tonight a new hymn in the Trinity Psalter hymnal, Behold My Servant. The tune will be familiar to you. The words are new, but they speak exactly to what we've been talking about tonight. Let's stand together and sing. Children of ancient youth, behold this life-giving King. God of equal age, He judges you, through the grace of heaven's King. of your Redeemer. ♪ And lead you each day to praise and to say ♪ ♪ To each a year of humility and not the wrong we face ♪ ♪ Let my outnumbered foes eclipse the high of beauty's face ♪ As He came to save a wretched soul, He called him home from the crucifix, The Father of the world. As you go this week into the world, the life that God has ordained for you, called you to, go with His blessing. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and abide with you all. Amen.