SPEAKER_02: Thank you, choir and orchestra, for leading us so well in worship this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for thankful for our brothers and sisters who've come to worship with us this morning.
SPEAKER_02: This morning we'll be in the book of Isaiah in chapter 42.
SPEAKER_02: For the next few weeks, our pastor Jesse Johnson will be out of town leading a tour in Israel with some members from our congregation.
SPEAKER_02: And this coming week we'll be in Los Angeles to attend the graduation ceremony of the Master Seminary.
SPEAKER_02: As you know, Emmanuel Bible Church hosts a distance location for the Master Seminary.
SPEAKER_02: We have about 15 students studying for gospel ministry, and this year we're celebrating our first graduating class.
SPEAKER_02: Four men from that seminary are graduating.
SPEAKER_02: Because of the ministry of this church, they've been trained up and they are ready to launch into further gospel ministry.
SPEAKER_02: So would you be praying for our pastor and for those men this week as they get to celebrate that ceremony, that they'd be encouraged and they'd come back filled with zeal to serve the Lord in this church and in the church churches that they serve in in this area.
SPEAKER_02: This morning we'll be examining a text in Isaiah, and so would you begin our time this morning by turning your attention to God's word with me?
SPEAKER_02: Let me read our passage.
SPEAKER_02: Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.
SPEAKER_02: I put my spirit upon him.
SPEAKER_02: He will bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: He will faithfully bring forth justice.
SPEAKER_02: He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his law.
SPEAKER_02: Thus says God Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it.
SPEAKER_02: I am Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: I've called you in righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: I'll take you by the hand and keep you.
SPEAKER_02: I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and from the prison those who sit in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: I am Yahweh, that is my name, my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare, before they spring forth, I tell you of them.
SPEAKER_02: This is God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Well, for the next few Sundays, we're going to explore a series of passages in the closing chapters of Isaiah's great book of prophecy that depict a mysterious servant.
SPEAKER_02: These passages, Isaiah 42 for this morning, and in the coming weeks, chapter 49, 50, and 53, have traditionally been called the servant songs.
SPEAKER_02: They are poetic texts that display our Savior.
SPEAKER_02: And they're repeatedly referred to in the New Testament, alluded to, quoted, and the New Testament writers identify this mysterious servant as none other than the Lord Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_02: But though the New Testament writers often refer to these texts, if we were to only examine them in the New Testament, we would actually miss much that these texts have to teach us about our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: So by discuss excuse me, so by exploring these texts in their Isaiah context, we'll really have a new vista opened up for us by which to behold the glory of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you could think of these texts a bit like this.
SPEAKER_02: If you were to go up and down the eastern seaboard, hitting all of the major, highly trafficked, scenic views, you'd be amazed at the glory of God's creation and what you would see.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, if you only hit the most trafficked locations, you would miss some of the most beautiful views.
SPEAKER_02: Some of the most beautiful views would be off the beaten trail.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you could think of these texts a little bit like that: leaving some of the typical texts that we go to to behold Jesus and finding embedded within this ancient prophecy poems that display the glory of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: This morning I want to look into Isaiah chapter 42 with you, and we'll find that this text displays for us that our Savior is a liberating Savior.
SPEAKER_02: A liberating Savior.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll look at this text under four headings.
SPEAKER_02: This text is going to show us the servant, his mission to bring forth justice to the world, the means, that is, he'll bring us into a covenant, and the results, your liberation for God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: We'll walk through the text under those four headings.
SPEAKER_02: Let's begin with that first point.
SPEAKER_02: Let's look at the servant.
SPEAKER_02: Notice in verse 1, he is upheld for us.
SPEAKER_02: So look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: Let's ask some questions about who is the servant.
SPEAKER_02: Look in your Bibles at verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: And we read, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.
SPEAKER_02: I've put my spirit upon him, and he will bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Now I want to make a number of observations about the servant in this text this morning, but let's begin with this.
SPEAKER_02: If you'll notice carefully, this text really joins two seemingly opposed qualities in this person.
SPEAKER_02: Notice at the end of verse 1, we find that this servant is going to bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Justice is a theme throughout Scripture, and it's especially an office that a king would execute.
SPEAKER_02: A king is charged with the duty to bring justice to his society, to put down evildoers, to establish equity in his society.
SPEAKER_02: And this servant is going to bring forth divine justice to the nations, not just in a community, but to the entire globe.
SPEAKER_02: He'll establish God's just rule on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this servant is really a king with divine exalted power.
SPEAKER_02: This is a high individual.
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, he's exceedingly lowly.
SPEAKER_02: Notice in verse 3, the servant is described as one who a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll examine this verse in more detail in a moment.
SPEAKER_02: But for now, notice that this servant, with his exalted divine power to execute justice, is going to do it on behalf of the hopeless and the lowly.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this isn't this what every politician and athlete is doing when they go for a publicity shoot in the hospitals or in a care center.
SPEAKER_02: Is we are in awe of someone who is high and of a dignified status coming down to identify with those who are seemingly lower than them.
SPEAKER_02: And when you see that not just done for publicity's sake, but done genuinely, a person who has power and status, genuinely lowering himself to identify with and serve someone who seems lower than him, that's admirable.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, what we see on a human level is just a faint whisper of this servant.
SPEAKER_02: Because this servant is coming from divine heights, infinite heights, and plummeting to the lowest of lows.
SPEAKER_02: You know, this the 18th century pastor and American intellectual Jonathan Edwards preached my favorite sermon that I've ever read from him.
SPEAKER_02: It's called The Excellencies of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And he describes in that sermon that over and over in Scripture, what the New Testament sets before us is, in his words, an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: How about that for a sentence?
SPEAKER_02: An admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: That is, you get both justice and grace.
SPEAKER_02: You get strength and weakness.
SPEAKER_02: You get power and you get meekness.
SPEAKER_02: And here you get height and humble humility.
SPEAKER_02: This is an incredible figure.
SPEAKER_02: This person set before us in Isaiah 42, verse 1, is described as being higher than the kings of the earth, of divine status, higher than anything in the created universe.
SPEAKER_02: His power is unsearchable, his wisdom is unlimited, his riches are infinite.
SPEAKER_02: There is nothing that you could possibly add to him.
SPEAKER_02: He has no need for us.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't create us because he was lonely or needed anything.
SPEAKER_02: And when we worship him or give him glory, we don't add anything to him that he did not already have.
SPEAKER_02: This is one who is beyond our searching, beyond our comprehension, who holds all of the nations and all of the created world like a drop in the palm of his hand.
SPEAKER_02: This person then is described as becoming infinitely humble and associating with the lowly.
SPEAKER_02: There is no one so low, so outcast, so despised, yea so wicked, that he won't identify with them and even say, Come unto me.
SPEAKER_02: And even beyond that, come underneath them, taking on the form of a slave to bear their burdens, bear their sins, and make them right with God.
SPEAKER_02: Highness and humility perfectly joined in this servant.
SPEAKER_02: This is a person like no other.
SPEAKER_02: But the text doesn't stop there in displaying this unique figure.
SPEAKER_02: We also see that not only is there this incredible conjunction of highness and humility, but this text also describes a person in unique relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: Unique relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: Notice again in verse 1, look down at your Bibles at verse 1, we find, Behold, my servant announces God.
SPEAKER_02: This is God, Yahweh Himself speaking.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Whom I uphold, my chosen, get this, in whom my soul delights.
SPEAKER_02: I have put my spirit upon him.
SPEAKER_02: In whom my soul delights.
SPEAKER_02: That's intense poetic language to describe the joy that God has in this servant.
SPEAKER_02: This is really actually unique language in Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: Now the verb delight isn't unique.
SPEAKER_02: God says over and over, He delights in His people.
SPEAKER_02: For example, we see that over and over in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_02: David says in 1 Chronicles chapter 28 and verse 4 that God delighted to choose him and make him king, but not this kind of language where this text says that God's whole soul, his whole being, his whole divine essence delights in, is satisfied, enjoys this person.
SPEAKER_02: Whole personed enjoyment of the servant.
SPEAKER_02: This person is of such status, such glory, such wonder that God Himself is satisfied in him.
SPEAKER_02: We see this coming to the fore even more in the New Testament, in the baptism of Jesus recorded for us in Matthew chapter 3, as Jesus comes up from the waters of baptism, it says in that text that the Holy Spirit descends like a dove to reside on him, and God's voice is heard from heaven audibly declaring, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_02: This one is of such glory that forever I have been satisfied in him.
SPEAKER_02: And in whom I'm well pleased comes from our text, Isaiah 42, which describes a humble servant identifying with the lowly.
SPEAKER_02: Now, having made some of these observations, I think we can now ask a question, the question we all should ask when we read a text like this, who is this?
SPEAKER_02: I hope that it sounds a bit like a redundant question.
SPEAKER_02: Who is this?
SPEAKER_02: It's the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The New Testament tells us we've been just parsing out this passage, and it seems quite obvious.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, this has been a controversy in the history of interpretation.
SPEAKER_02: Who is the servant?
SPEAKER_02: It has been said repeatedly that the servant really isn't an individual, it's the believing community of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: There's a couple reasons that would be given for that.
SPEAKER_02: One would be in Isaiah chapter 11, which describes this king who's gonna come and establish justice in the nations, where we see that God has declared in Isaiah 11 that there's going to be a king who will establish justice in the nations, but he's not gonna be weak, he's gonna be strong and execute God's will with power.
SPEAKER_02: Then Isaiah 42 says that there's going to be justice, but it's going to be through a servant who's humble and lowly.
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't seem like those two can be the same person.
SPEAKER_02: So this must be the believing community somehow participating in that.
SPEAKER_02: Moreover, this term my servant isn't exclusively used for an individual, it's also used for Israel as a community.
SPEAKER_02: Just flip back in your Bibles to Isaiah 41 and verse 8, 41 and verse 8, just a page over in your Bible, in Isaiah 41 and verse 8, the same language is used for Israel.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 8, but you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend.
SPEAKER_02: That's the same language used to describe Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And even in chapter 42, after our text, at the end of this same chapter, chapter 42 and verse 19, listen to this language.
SPEAKER_02: Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send?
SPEAKER_02: Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?
SPEAKER_02: Same language.
SPEAKER_02: How do I know that's Jacob or Israel that God's referring to?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because of verse 24.
SPEAKER_02: Who gave up Jacob to the looter and Israel to the plunderers?
SPEAKER_02: There, the servant is explicitly identified as Israel.
SPEAKER_02: So you see, this same term, my servant, is being used interchangeably to refer to a community, a group of people, or I'm arguing, an individual.
SPEAKER_02: So how do I know that this is indeed, in our passage, an individual, not the community?
SPEAKER_02: Well, we'll see this even more clearly as we go through the servant songs, that this person is doing a work to bring the community back to God.
SPEAKER_02: He can't be the community.
SPEAKER_02: He's bringing the community to God in Isaiah 49.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 53, verse 8 says, He's stricken for the transgression of my people.
SPEAKER_02: He's suffering and dying on behalf of the community.
SPEAKER_02: He's not the community, he's not the group.
SPEAKER_02: He's an individual.
SPEAKER_02: And even in this text, look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 7 in your text says that this servant is going to open the eyes that are blind.
SPEAKER_02: But then the text I just read, verse 19, the servant Israel, the group, is blind.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this can't be the group.
SPEAKER_02: This is the individual who is acting for the group to bring them to God.
SPEAKER_02: See, there's a concept that we need to have when we are reading texts like this that at first appear to be a bit confusing or contradictory.
SPEAKER_02: A concept in biblical interpretation is often called corporate solidarity.
SPEAKER_02: It's a fancy word just to speak of a very common concept that we use in everyday life of an individual being so united to, joined to, a group or a community of people that he can act for them and represent them.
SPEAKER_02: So we do this in politics when an individual is so united to a country, he represents them and acts on their behalf.
SPEAKER_02: We do this in sports, when a captain is so identified and united to his team that he acts on their behalf.
SPEAKER_02: A father is so united to, identified with his family, that he acts on their behalf.
SPEAKER_02: And here we have an individual who is so united to the people Israel that he acts for them on their behalf to do what they can't do and bring them to God.
SPEAKER_02: Now, we've made some interpretive observations.
SPEAKER_02: Let's zoom out and see what we've discovered.
SPEAKER_02: See what this verse is doing?
SPEAKER_02: This is the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: The God of the universe has forever delighted, wholehearted, whole-personed, infinite delight in his son.
SPEAKER_02: And he chose to give him.
SPEAKER_02: And the Son of infinite heights and of infinite glory chose to plummet to infinite depths, to identify with sinful people, to take on your nature so that you could become a partaker of his divine nature, to bear your sorrows so you could enter into his joy, to suffer under the wrath you deserve, so you could enter into the favors that he deserves.
SPEAKER_02: This is the gospel of God giving his son and plummeting down to enter into and identify with you and represent you to bring you to God.
SPEAKER_02: So, what it means to be a Christian then is to put your faith in Jesus, and when you become a Christian, your life becomes so identified with Jesus Christ that God can look at you and see you as joined to Jesus in such a way that this announcement, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased, now applies to you.
SPEAKER_02: All of the favor that God has forever been infinitely been placing upon his son, now he places on you all of God's favor, all of his love, all of his delight is now fixed on you because you are in his son.
SPEAKER_02: All through this servant.
SPEAKER_02: This is your servant who identifies with you and brings you to God.
SPEAKER_02: This is a servant in Isaiah 42, but we should move on because the text also tells us about his mission and what he intends to do in the world.
SPEAKER_02: And his mission we'll find in verses 2 through 4 is to execute justice.
SPEAKER_02: Justice.
SPEAKER_02: Now I want to read verses 2 through 4, but I want you to read very closely with me because in verses 2 through 4, Isaiah is describing the mission of the servant, and he's doing it using a Hebraic poetic device called a kiasm, in which you repeat the same idea at the beginning and the end of the poem, and you sandwich an idea in the middle in order to highlight it.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to read through the text and then I'll try to piece this together for you, and we'll make some observations along the way.
SPEAKER_02: So look down at your Bibles.
SPEAKER_02: Let's begin at the end of verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: And I the end of verse 1 reads this He will bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_02: He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the middle of it.
SPEAKER_02: And now we're back to some repetition.
SPEAKER_02: He will faithfully bring forth justice.
SPEAKER_02: He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his law.
SPEAKER_02: Now, did you see that?
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to walk walk you through.
SPEAKER_02: There's three layers here.
SPEAKER_02: There's an outer layer, an inner layer, and a sandwich, the meat in the middle.
SPEAKER_02: The outer layer is in verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: He will bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Exhaustive earth covering justice.
SPEAKER_02: And that's picked up in verse 4, till he's established justice in the earth and the coastlands.
SPEAKER_02: The coastlands are the far-flung parts of the world, await his law.
SPEAKER_02: That's repeated to tell us that the extent of his mission is global justice.
SPEAKER_02: Then there's an inner layer, which is in verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or made it heard in the streets.
SPEAKER_02: Those verbs are used repeatedly in the book of Isaiah to describe people who have failed in their mission, failed to live up to God's standards, and so will be judged.
SPEAKER_02: And they cry out.
SPEAKER_02: And this text is saying this servant will not fail.
SPEAKER_02: He will succeed, so he won't have to cry out.
SPEAKER_02: And that's repeated at the end of verse 3.
SPEAKER_02: He will faithfully bring forth justice.
SPEAKER_02: He'll succeed in doing it.
SPEAKER_02: So the outer layer, it's going to be exhaustive justice.
SPEAKER_02: The inner layer, he will succeed in doing this.
SPEAKER_02: And now the inside.
SPEAKER_02: What is it that Isaiah wants to draw our attention to?
SPEAKER_02: It's in verse 3.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse 3 in your Bible.
SPEAKER_02: A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.
SPEAKER_02: He will faithfully bring forth justice.
SPEAKER_02: What's in the middle is that this exalted divine servant is going to bring forth universal justice for the hopeless.
SPEAKER_02: He identifies with the lowly and he executes justice for them.
SPEAKER_02: Now that's this the uh the structure of this poem, but I want to maybe flesh this out just a bit more because this concept of justice is a massive concept.
SPEAKER_02: And I think perhaps to kind of get our arms around it, it would be good to look at a famous text that I've already referenced.
SPEAKER_02: It's Isaiah 11.
SPEAKER_02: So flip in your Bibles to Isaiah 11.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah chapter 11.
SPEAKER_02: I want to read a couple verses from there.
SPEAKER_02: What we find in Isaiah 11 is a description of an individual who is going to bring justice to the world.
SPEAKER_02: Now the context of this is just biblical context.
SPEAKER_02: The key text in the Bible that describes to us the effects of sin in the world is Genesis chapter 3 upon entrance of sin into the world.
SPEAKER_02: Humanity's relationship with God is severed, right?
SPEAKER_02: We know this.
SPEAKER_02: This is what we teach our children in Sunday school.
SPEAKER_02: And yet the Bible doesn't just describe a singular relationship for which we were created.
SPEAKER_02: That is, God didn't just make us to know him and glorify him and worship him.
SPEAKER_02: That's our chief end.
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't just make us for that, he made other people too.
SPEAKER_02: And so he also made us not just for this vertical relation, but for relationships with other people.
SPEAKER_02: And for relationship with his created world.
SPEAKER_02: Humanity was created to steward God's creation and to maximize its created potential.
SPEAKER_02: And when sin entered into the world, all three of those relationships were broken.
SPEAKER_02: Our relationship with God was severed so that we're born into the world with sin in our hearts, separated from God, alienated from him.
SPEAKER_02: And because of sin, our relationships are fractured, and there are wars, and there are fighting and there's gossiping.
SPEAKER_02: And our relationship with the world is broken because God has placed a curse on this fallen world so that it fights back, and there are torments.
SPEAKER_02: Tornadoes and tsunamis and disasters.
SPEAKER_02: So our world is replete with death, destruction, and disaster and pain.
SPEAKER_02: But God has promised in Scripture that there's a day when He will reverse all the effects of sin, and He will bring in an edenic paradise where all of our relationships will be restored.
SPEAKER_02: And the person who's going to do this is described in Isaiah 11.
SPEAKER_02: Let me introduce him to you.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse 1 in your text, down in Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, that is a descendant of David, so he'll be a king.
SPEAKER_02: And a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord, that sounds like Isaiah 42, the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he sh he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
SPEAKER_02: The righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
SPEAKER_02: This divine king is going to come and execute God's will on the earth comprehensively.
SPEAKER_02: The following verses tell us the results of this promised divine king's reign, and it's going to be the restoration of the entire world.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse six.
SPEAKER_02: These following verses contain that poetic language that you've heard even if you haven't read this text in a while, probably in your high school literary classes about lions laying down with lambs.
SPEAKER_02: This is the text that that comes from.
SPEAKER_02: Verse six reads The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and the little child shall lead them.
SPEAKER_02: The cow and the bear shall graze, and the young shall lie down together, and their and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
SPEAKER_02: The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put out his hand on the adder's den.
SPEAKER_02: You see what's happening?
SPEAKER_02: Restoration of our relationship with the created world.
SPEAKER_02: The created world is set right so that there is no more destruction.
SPEAKER_02: The earth doesn't fight back anymore.
SPEAKER_02: Animals are in harmony.
SPEAKER_02: Nature is in harmony.
SPEAKER_02: Everything is operating rightly as God originally intended it before sin.
SPEAKER_02: The next verse says that our horizontal relationships with humanity will also be restored.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 9, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.
SPEAKER_02: And then this, the end of this verse tells us our relationship with the Lord restored.
SPEAKER_02: The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as waters cover the sea.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see what this is promising?
SPEAKER_02: This divine king is going to return, is going to come, and he's going to recreate the world.
SPEAKER_02: An identic paradise is God originally intended it, where righteousness characterizes all relationships.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 42, you can return to that text, is saying this servant is going to do that.
SPEAKER_02: A comprehensive recreation of the world where everything is made right.
SPEAKER_02: But the particular contribution Isaiah 42 wants to make to our understanding of this is right in the middle that he's going to do it for bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks.
SPEAKER_02: Let me flesh out this metaphor for you a bit.
SPEAKER_02: Bruised reed.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of a it's a poetic and wonderful translation.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a great liter literal translation.
SPEAKER_02: The word bruised means break, something that's destroyed.
SPEAKER_02: But bruised reed sounds so good.
SPEAKER_02: Who would change that?
SPEAKER_02: A reed is a slender, high-growing stalk that has a seed-bearing head, and if it were to break, it would snap and it would wave around in the wind.
SPEAKER_02: It would never bear seeds again.
SPEAKER_02: There's no coming back from that.
SPEAKER_02: It's hopeless.
SPEAKER_02: It's gone.
SPEAKER_02: And a faintly burning wick is a candle that's on its last bit of glowing and the smoke is beginning to come to signal it's about to extinguish.
SPEAKER_02: And candles don't come back from that.
SPEAKER_02: They don't just get some more vigor and go, oh, just push a little harder.
SPEAKER_02: That's done.
SPEAKER_02: It's over.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this is describing hopeless people.
SPEAKER_02: And I know that this is referring to people because Isaiah uses these same metaphors a number of places in his prophecies, and he uses it to refer to people and God's dealing with them.
SPEAKER_02: For example, Isaiah 43 in verse 17 describes God's conquest of the Egyptian army.
SPEAKER_02: Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt through the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_02: Sea parts, Israel crosses through, Pharaoh's army enters, and God causes the sea to crush them.
SPEAKER_02: And Isaiah says, that was like God putting out a candle.
SPEAKER_02: That's how easily God wiped out an army.
SPEAKER_02: And now this text says, yes, this servant is that same exalted Lord.
SPEAKER_02: He can snuff out an army as easily as you would extinguish a candle flame.
SPEAKER_02: But he loves the lowly.
SPEAKER_02: And he chooses instead of to extinguish them to identify with them and heal them.
SPEAKER_02: This is an incredible, unique person.
SPEAKER_02: I think what we ought to learn from this is that we ought to learn that Jesus loves sinners.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus loves hopeless cases.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus loves sinners who have sinned against God.
SPEAKER_02: And once you have sinned against God, you can't undo that.
SPEAKER_02: Once you have dug a hole and you're in debt to God, you can't pay it back.
SPEAKER_02: Everything that you could try to give him, you already owed him in the first place.
SPEAKER_02: Once you sinned, you can't go back, you're a broken reed.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus loves sinners.
SPEAKER_02: He loves to restore them, to identify with them, to bear their wrath, to remove their sin and restore them to God.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus loves battered saints.
SPEAKER_02: And during the trials of this world, lacking wisdom, burdened by the weight of their ongoing struggle with sin, Jesus loves hopeless, lowly, faintly burning wicks.
SPEAKER_02: Scripture tells us that this Savior heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
SPEAKER_02: What we ought to learn from this text is that no matter where you're at, you can come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: This text says that Jesus will not extinguish the f the smoking wick, so neither should you try to extinguish yourself.
SPEAKER_02: You can come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He is a friend of sinners.
SPEAKER_02: This text tells us about the servant, his highness and his lowliness, his mission to bring about justice for the hopeless.
SPEAKER_02: But this text also tells us something about the means, the way that he will do this.
SPEAKER_02: And this is actually quite important.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to read verses five and six.
SPEAKER_02: I won't then I want to try to tease out a little bit of a problem in this text that maybe you've already or already not identified.
SPEAKER_02: Let's read verses five and six.
SPEAKER_02: Verse five says, Thus says God, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.
SPEAKER_02: I am Yahweh, I've called you in righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: I will take you by the hand and keep you.
SPEAKER_02: I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Problem solved.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see the problem?
SPEAKER_02: We've just been talking about this righteous, divine king that this prophecy says is going to come and is going to restore the world and bring about an endemic paradise.
SPEAKER_02: But did you catch in Isaiah chapter 11, and just common sense would tell us that if God is going to bring about a world where there is no more evil, a world of perfect righteousness, then he has to destroy evil.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah chapter 11 says that he will destroy the wicked with the breath of his mouth.
SPEAKER_02: Well, if we're honest, that's who we are.
SPEAKER_02: We are the wicked.
SPEAKER_02: We're in that category.
SPEAKER_02: We have broken God's law.
SPEAKER_02: We don't meet God's standards.
SPEAKER_02: If God is going to rid the world of evil and bring about a perfect righteous paradise, you know he's not just going to destroy the evil around us in society that we don't like.
SPEAKER_02: He won't operate on anybody's particular party platform.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to operate out of his own perfect holy character.
SPEAKER_02: So he won't just extinguish the wickedness outside of you that you don't like, he will also judge what's inside of you that you do like.
SPEAKER_02: If this righteous king is going to strike the wicked, then all of us will be struck down.
SPEAKER_02: How then, how then can he create a perfect world and bring sinners into it?
SPEAKER_02: Verse 6 is the solution to that problem.
SPEAKER_02: God says at the end of verse 6, I am going to make you a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Now, covenant is a way of relating to God, and this is going to be a covenant of light.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: Light is used over and over in Scripture, and particularly by Isaiah, as a metaphor for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this is a covenant of salvation.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus fleshes this out, and we'll see this.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, this text gets repeated again in verse 40 chapter 49, so we'll flesh this out more in coming weeks.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus tells us in his Last Supper in the upper room with his disciples the night before he's crucified that he has come to inaugurate a new covenant of salvation and forgiveness of sins by my blood.
SPEAKER_02: That's the way that God can bring sinners into a righteous kingdom without judging them.
SPEAKER_02: Is that Jesus comes to be judged for them first.
SPEAKER_02: But I don't have to just tell you because the next verse tells us just that.
SPEAKER_02: Let's hurry on to the last point.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen a servant and his mission to establish justice, the means is a covenant of salvation where he forgives our sins and brings us into his eternal paradise.
SPEAKER_02: And the last thing this text tells us are the results of that.
SPEAKER_02: The results of that are first your liberation.
SPEAKER_02: Notice this verse in verse 7.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 7 reads this.
SPEAKER_02: Look down at your your Bibles.
SPEAKER_02: This is a really wild verse.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 7 says that this servant is going to bring a covenant of salvation to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: To bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: Now, when I study and I prepare for, study God's Word, and I'm preparing a message and I'm going to teach it, sometimes, just maybe it's because I'm a millennial, there are verses that just jump out as Twitter worthy.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is a reason why I choose not to engage in Twitter, but this is that verse.
SPEAKER_02: This is that verse.
SPEAKER_02: This is, you gotta tweet this.
SPEAKER_02: How many times have you heard this preached in which the dungeon is identified as a genuine felt need that you're experiencing right now?
SPEAKER_02: Whatever that might be.
SPEAKER_02: A family issue, a financial issue, a health issue?
SPEAKER_02: And I like to think that I could get loud enough.
SPEAKER_02: I'm young enough and got some power in my lungs.
SPEAKER_02: I could get loud enough that if I identified the dungeon as the felt need that you have in your life right now, and I promise that Jesus is going to liberate you from that, if I get loud enough that even some of the most stoic of you would give me an amen.
SPEAKER_02: The trouble with that kind of preaching, though, is that that's not necessarily the promise that God's giving to you in this verse.
SPEAKER_02: Now make no mistake, God is giving you an incredible promise in this text.
SPEAKER_02: But it's not necessarily to free you from the real experience needs right now.
SPEAKER_02: So what is it that he's promising in this text?
SPEAKER_02: Look at that verse one more time.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to bring out of the prison, bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: See this collection of words prisoners, dungeon, prison, sitting in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: There's one other text, just one other text in all of Scripture that brings together all those terms.
SPEAKER_02: And it's used by the prophet Isaiah at the end of Isaiah chapter 24.
SPEAKER_02: You can turn there if you like, but I'll just read it for you.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah chapter 24 is a prophecy of the end of the world in which God judges the entire world.
SPEAKER_02: This particular chapter is referred to over and over at the book of Revelation, referring to the final judgment.
SPEAKER_02: And the culminating verse in Isaiah 24 describing the final judgment reads like this.
SPEAKER_02: On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven and all its inhabitants, and they'll be gathered together as prisoners in a pit, and they'll be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished.
SPEAKER_02: That's describing the final judgment.
SPEAKER_02: That's Revelation 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_02: And then the finale is the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, and Yahweh of hosts on Mount Zion will reign in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders, and that's Revelation 21 and 22.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the prison to which Isaiah is referring in his prophecy about the servant is not just our felt needs, as real as they are, and the scripture has so much to say about the way God deals with us and our felt needs, but this particular promise is talking about a greater need.
SPEAKER_02: It is talking about the prison of eternal condemnation, the prison to which we all ought rightly to be resigned because we have violated the holy character of God.
SPEAKER_02: And if that's indeed what this text is referring to, the prison of eternal condemnation, then that means the liberation that the servant offers is eternal liberation, infinite liberation.
SPEAKER_02: This text is saying that the God of the universe, who dwells beyond all time, space, and matter, is willing to plummet not just into this created world, but into the prison of divine punishment and rescue us.
SPEAKER_02: He's willing to come down underneath us and shield us from the wrath we deserve, scoop us out of that prison and launch us back up to the heights from whence he came to unite us with the Father and the Spirit to enjoy divine communion with God forever.
SPEAKER_02: That's the liberation.
SPEAKER_02: And do you know that if you are liberated by this Savior, He has rescued you from hell and He is taking you to heaven and on the way, you may bypass some of the pleasures of this world.
SPEAKER_02: He may not have it in His will to have the American dream for us.
SPEAKER_02: But we're going somewhere better.
SPEAKER_02: And some of us, because of this announcement, because of this liberation, we will be liberated from holding on to and hoarding the pleasures of this world that are fleeting because we're going somewhere better.
SPEAKER_02: He's rescued us from something worse than this world could ever threaten us with, and he's taking us somewhere better than this world could ever offer us.
SPEAKER_02: That's his liberation.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, you could say it like this: the following verse, verse 8, says that he's rescuing us from the prison of punishment and bringing us into the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: He's liberated us for God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse 8.
SPEAKER_02: I am Yahweh, that is my name, my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
SPEAKER_02: Now I think when I we use the phrase for God's glory, and I use it in a context like this, you're liberated for God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: Initially, what may come into your mind is the idea that God saves me for his glory, not for my glory.
SPEAKER_02: That's a profound theological reality.
SPEAKER_02: God does all that he does for his glory.
SPEAKER_02: He won't diminish, he can't extinguish, he can't trade his glory any more than the sun can trade its heat.
SPEAKER_02: But in this context, what Isaiah is referring to is that the servant has rescued you, liberated you from the punishment that you deserve in order to enjoy God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: You see, God can't diminish his glory, but he can enable you to enjoy it.
SPEAKER_02: Just as the sun can't extinguish or diminish its heat, but it can cause creatures to enjoy it, to feel it.
SPEAKER_02: This text is telling you that Jesus has liberated you to enjoy the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: Now put together the pieces that we've been assembling from this text.
SPEAKER_02: This servant is none other than the infinitely glorious Son of God, who forever God has been infinitely satisfied in.
SPEAKER_02: And he has sent him on a rescue mission to liberate you from the prison of divine punishment to bring you back into that same joy.
SPEAKER_02: What were you rescued from?
SPEAKER_02: Wrath.
SPEAKER_02: What are you rescued to?
SPEAKER_02: Divine, infinite joy to live in a world of perfect righteousness with God at the center to enjoy nothing less than what God has enjoyed forever.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we could close with a picture that we find in Scripture of the realities that this text is describing.
SPEAKER_02: At the end of the book of 2 Kings, there's a king from Judah named Jehoiachin who's taken to Babylon in captivity and he's put in a prison.
SPEAKER_02: And after a number of years, the text says that a new king came to reign in Babylon.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 25 says that this king graciously freed Jehoiachin from the prison, and he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above all the seats of the kings who were with him.
SPEAKER_02: And Jehoiachin put off his prison garments, and every day of his life he danged he dined regularly at the king's table.
SPEAKER_02: That's a picture of the liberation that the servant wrought for us.
SPEAKER_02: Once his enemies had now seated at his table to enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, this is your servant.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_02: Father, we are so thankful that you have given us nothing less than yourself and giving us your son.
SPEAKER_02: And God give us hearts to behold the glories of Christ and to treasure him above all else.
SPEAKER_02: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You have been listening to Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: You can find more resources like this at IBCVA.com.
SPEAKER_00: Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibcva.com.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: We're located in Northern Virginia, and for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.
SPEAKER_01: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_01: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource gets involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_01: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.