God's Promised Servant - Isaiah 42:1-9

Isaiah 42:1-9

©May 29th, 2022 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Isaiah

There’s an old saying that a guarantee is only as good as the person making it. Most of us have found that to be true time and time again. We know that some people will do everything they can to keep their word, while with others, we just assume they won’t and hope to be surprised. Regardless, we know that even the best people don’t always keep their promises—sometimes things are just outside our control.

God, however, is not like us. He keeps His promises all the time. Just in the book of Isaiah, we have seen His faithfulness proven over and over again. We know that when God makes a promise, He will keep it. This morning we look at a specific promise—the promise of God sending His servant into the world to ensure justice for all of creation. We’re going to look at the content of this promise, its fulfillment, and why that matters to us today. My hope is that as we look at the fulfillment of God’s promises, we will be reminded of His greatness and faithfulness, and we will be driven to trust Him more fully than ever before.

Chapter 42 begins with God telling us about His servant who will come. If you remember the way chapter 41 ended, God was talking about the futility of worshiping all the false “gods” that people often turn to. Now, He draws a sharp contrast between these powerless gods and the Servant whom He will send into the world.

1 “Look at my servant, whom I strengthen. He is my chosen one, who pleases me. I have put my Spirit upon him. He will bring justice to the nations. 2 He will not shout or raise his voice in public. 3 He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. He will bring justice to all who have been wronged. 4 He will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth. Even distant lands beyond the sea will wait for his instruction.” (Isaiah 42:1-4, NLT)

This servant stands in stark contrast to the false gods mentioned in chapter 41. The false gods were powerless to do anything, but the Servant God is promising will accomplish much. We are told the Spirit of God will be upon Him and He will do great things. He is very different from the false gods the people of Israel were worshiping.

The Bringer of Justice

So what will this servant do? He will bring justice. When we hear the word justice, usually our minds immediately go to legal proceedings. We think of the guilty being punished and the innocent being set free. Certainly, this concept of justice is in mind here, but I believe the word Isaiah uses here actually carries with it a deeper meaning.

The word Isaiah uses for justice here is also used to describe the blueprint God had given for the tabernacle. Knowing this gives us a sense of what God means by justice in this context. It is not only about ensuring that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free, but that the world functions as it was designed to function. He is going to ensure that the whole earth is made right.

When we begin to grasp justice from this perspective, it becomes clear that this Servant cannot simply be a human king, because a merely human leader could not bring about this kind of perfection. Our world is profoundly messed up and the solution is not political in nature because the problem is not political in nature. The problem is sin. Because of sin, everything in the world has been corrupted, and nothing functions as it should. Isaiah promises this servant will solve the sin problem and restore the world to the way it is supposed to be. That is more than any mere human being can do.

Obviously this promise has not seen its complete fulfillment yet, as our world is still profoundly messed up. Sin has not been completely abolished. But knowing God will bring justice to the world should remind us of two things. First, if we want to see things function as God intended, we must live as God commands. We rebel against the Lord and then act surprised when things go poorly. We choose to embrace the philosophies and approaches of the world rather than the Lord’s, and in so doing, we are moving further and further from Him. If we want to see things get better (though not always easier), we must start by living in radical obedience to Him. The first step in seeing the world change to be more as God intended is for us to start living the way God intended. We cannot expect to see a change in the world if we are unwilling to make changes in ourselves.

Second, we should not despair at the state of things now. Because we serve a God who keeps His promises, we know there is coming a time when He will restore all things to the way they should be. Again, this will not be found through political action or fighting with the weapons of the world. It will be found through patient trust in the Lord and obedience to His commands. We can continue to do what we know is right even when it doesn’t seem like it’s doing any good because we have the promise from God that justice will ultimately be served.

I know many of you are facing storms in your lives. Let me remind you of this hope. God is still working; we just need to stick close to Him and keep doing what He tells us as we wait for His promises to be fulfilled. The world may tell us that following the Lord’s commands is foolish but trusting the One who keeps His promises is always a wise choice.

What He Won’t Do

Isaiah tells us that this servant will bring justice, but he also tells us what He won’t do. He says this servant will not shout or raise his voice in public, he will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle, and he will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth.

So what does all this mean? Well, it shows us again that this servant stands in stark contrast to all the human leaders we see. Chapter 41 describes Cyrus, the king of Persia, and chapter 42 contrasts the Lord’s Servant with him. Cyrus, like most human leaders, established his rule by crushing people and forcing them to submit. But Isaiah says the Lord’s Servant will not raise his voice in public or crush the weakest reed. He will still establish justice, but unlike human leaders, he will also be gentle, even as he exercises great power. Much of the time we don’t think that gentleness and power can go together, but Isaiah promises that this servant will have both gentleness and power in spades.

By now, you may have been able to piece together who Isaiah is talking about. He is describing Jesus! Jesus is the perfect marriage of all these traits. God’s power is within Him; He promised that one day He will restore all things to the way they should be; and while He has tremendous power, He is also gentle and loving to those around Him.

Isaiah’s original audience likely understood this promise was speaking of the Messiah, even if they didn’t have the benefit of seeing Jesus’ ministry, like we do. They didn’t know when this servant would come (and it wouldn’t be for hundreds more years), but God gave them this promise so they could have hope. In the midst of difficult times, this was a reminder that God had not forgotten them, He had not abandoned them, and He had a plan to rescue them and set things right once more.

God holds that same hope out to us. As we look around at our world, it is tempting to throw up our hands in despair. We may be tempted to think that God has taken His hands off things just because Jesus is no longer physically on the earth, but these verses remind us that God is not done yet. Isaiah tells us that this servant would not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth. God will not rest until His mission is accomplished. He will restore the world. God is still working, even when we can’t see it. So take heart!

God’s Assurance

God made these wonderful promises to the people of Israel, but they may have been tempted to believe they were too good to be true. So God reminds them of why He can be trusted.

5 God, the Lord, created the heavens and stretched them out. He created the earth and everything in it. He gives breath to everyone, life to everyone who walks the earth. And it is he who says, 6 “I, the Lord, have called you to demonstrate my righteousness. I will take you by the hand and guard you, and I will give you to my people, Israel, as a symbol of my covenant with them. And you will be a light to guide the nations. 7 You will open the eyes of the blind. You will free the captives from prison, releasing those who sit in dark dungeons. (Isaiah 42:5-7, NLT)

God points to His own character as proof that He will keep His promises. Whenever we look at creation, as we stare up into the vastness of space, or contemplate the marvelous complexity of the world around us, we should be driven to remember the One who created it all. If God spoke and the world suddenly came into existence, what reason do we have to doubt that when God speaks, what He says will come to pass? God’s character gives us confidence He will keep His word.

God also reminds us of the scope of His mission. He says that Jesus will be a light to the nations, which reminds us that Jesus not just the savior of the Jews, but of everyone. Through Jesus, salvation is available to every person on the face of the earth, regardless of background, race, location, past history, or other people’s opinion of you. The gospel message is not just for you or me, or the people we deem worthy, it is for everyone. There is one thing that all of humanity holds in common—we all need a savior, and Jesus is the savior for all who will believe. One day, those who believe in Him will experience life as it was intended: life without the curse of sin. Those who reject Him will have all God’s blessings withdrawn from them and will spend eternity separated from Him. This is a message we must share with everyone—friends, neighbors, co-workers, and people around the world, because it is the only hope for us all—and a hope we all desperately need.

Isaiah also says this servant would open the eyes of the blind, set free the captives in prison, and release those in dark dungeons. How are we to understand these things?

Though Jesus did all these things in a literal sense (he made blind people see, and set Peter, Paul, and Silas free from prison), I think Jesus also does these things for us in a spiritual sense. Whether we realize it or not, spiritually speaking, we are both blind and in prison.

We don’t tend to think that we’re blind, but the sad thing is that most of the time you don’t know how poorly you see until it is corrected. I always laugh when I talk to people who have cataract surgery because they talk about how much better they see afterwards—most tell me that they didn’t realize they were seeing so poorly until the problem was corrected. I know one person told me they were horrified to discover just how dusty their house was, because they hadn’t been able to see it before, but after the surgery it was clear as day!

That’s what happens for us spiritually as well. We like to believe we see ourselves accurately. But the more we allow Jesus to transform our lives, the more we begin to see just how skewed our vision is. We imagine ourselves to be pretty good people, but it is only when God begins to correct our vision that we see how messed up we really are. It is only then that we can begin to start seeing positive changes in our lives. Until we see clearly, we can’t see the problems that need to be fixed. That’s what Jesus does for us—He helps us to see ourselves clearly when we haven’t before.

Similarly, we don’t like to think of ourselves as prisoners, but the Bible is clear that we are in bondage to the sinful tendencies of our lives. The good news is that Jesus sets Christians free from that bondage, so we can walk away from sin and live in victory and obedience to the Lord.

But here’s the challenging part—if you’re a Christian, Jesus has opened the door to your prison cell, but you must choose to walk out of it. A common problem with people who have been in prison for a long time is that they are scared to leave. They have become so comfortable with what they know that they imagine it’s better to stay in prison where they’re comfortable than to step out into freedom which is unknown and scary. Some of these people even commit crimes so they won’t be released.

The same thing can happen to us spiritually. Sometimes we become so comfortable in our sinful patterns that we are unwilling to change. We say that we can’t change, but that isn’t true, because Jesus has made it so we can. The reality is that we are unwilling to change or are scared to change. Sometimes you have lived in a certain sinful way for so long, that you can’t even imagine living differently. But God’s way is always better. It’s scary to try a new way of doing things, but it’s also the only way to see positive changes. If we keep doing the same things, we’ll keep getting the same results. Today, let me challenge you to take hold of the power Jesus has given you to be free of your sinful patterns. Take a step in the direction of holiness. Begin the process of changing your sinful tendencies knowing that God has given you the power to do so and that His way is always better.

The Glory of God

At the end of this proclamation, Isaiah returns to the theme of idol worship, and once again contrasts God with the false idols in which the people had placed their faith.

8 “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols. 9 Everything I prophesied has come true, and now I will prophesy again. I will tell you the future before it happens.” (Isaiah 42:8-9, NLT)

God declares that He will not share His glory with anything else. He will not share praise with idols. This is a reminder to us that anything that distracts us from the Lord is something that is robbing God of His glory. God will not stand for that. Anything that stands between God and the glory He deserves will be destroyed. So we must work to identify anything that keeps us from God in our lives and get rid of it, because God deserves to receive all our honor and praise. We will talk more about this in a couple weeks too.

God also gives Israel (and us) one more assurance that He is worthy of our worship and of our trust. He declares that this prophecy (like all the other prophecies He had made before) will come true. Any time that we find ourselves doubting that God can deliver on His promises, or that He is worthy of our worship and obedience, we need only to look at His track record. Everything He has said has come true. And everything that has not yet come true, will one day be fulfilled. As we look at prophecies like this, we should be reminded of the faithfulness of our God and be driven to trust Him more fully.

Conclusion

Isaiah promised the people of Israel that the Messiah was coming and that He would ensure justice not only for them, but for all people. And He promised them that this Messiah would provide for them a freedom they hadn’t previously known. I doubt the people of Israel understood the fullness of what this promise entailed (and I suspect we don’t either), but it gave them hope to continue serving the Lord, knowing that He was still working in and through them, even when life was hard.

So what can we learn from this passage today? What do these prophecies about Jesus, the promised Servant of God teach us?

First, God desires our lives to be right. God designed us to function in a certain way. If we will follow His instructions, our lives will be far better than they will be trying to go our own way. The same is true with the world at large. The problems we see in our world are not primarily political in nature—they are spiritual problems! The issue is that our world is trying to go our own way rather than following the Lord. How should we respond when we look at a world that seems to be spiraling further and further away? First, we need to pray. God is the only one who can change hearts. Every other means of changing the world is less effective than fervent prayer. Second, we need to start with us. Identify the places where your life isn’t right and start working there. We can’t change others, so we need to start by changing what we can—ourselves. Third, we need to point others to Jesus. The only hope for any of us is Jesus, so we need to be more focused on convincing people of the gospel message than we are on winning them to anything else.

Second, we should emulate Jesus’ pattern. Jesus was and is the most powerful being in the universe. But unlike many people who get power, Jesus was not cruel or prideful. Jesus was gentle and loving to the people around Him. Our world tells us that the way to get ahead is to be aggressive and mean, because that’s just how our world is. Jesus takes a very different approach. Think about how Jesus has dealt with you. He has been gentle, loving, patient, and forgiving toward you. That is the attitude we must work to have with others. If we will do that, I suspect we will find that Jesus’ way is better, and people will be much more likely to deal gently with us as well.

Third, we are reminded that God is trustworthy. Sometimes it is hard to believe the Lord because we can’t see Him, and sometimes He feels distant from us. But God has shown us over and over again that He can be trusted, that He keeps His promises, and that He has a plan, even when we can’t see or understand it. Throughout the book of Isaiah, we have been constantly reminded that God is worthy of our trust. So, let’s trust Him! Take Him at His Word, rely on His promises, no matter what the odds seem to be. Much of what God tells us is scoffed at by our world today. But our world today has consistently failed us. God never has. Maybe we should follow Him instead of the pattern of the world.

We have hope that is found in the person of Jesus Christ. He sets us free from our sin and promises to help us as we walk through this life. And we have hope that God will do what He says. We just need to look at these promises about Jesus, written hundreds of years before He ever arrived on the scene. Our God can be trusted! He loves us and desires the best for us. So if He can be trusted, then we ought to follow Him in all we do.

©May 29th, 2022 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Isaiah