Alright, let's look at Isaiah
chapter 42. Isaiah chapter 42. Now this is the Lord God speaking.
And this is what it says in verse 5 there, Isaiah 42, Thus saith
God the Lord, He that created the heavens and stretched them
out, He that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh
out of it." This is who's speaking. It's God the Lord speaking. And
He says here, He begins in verse 1 by giving a command. And this is His command. Behold
My servant whom I uphold. Mine elect whom I uphold. He
said, Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom
my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him.
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not
cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.
A bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not
quench. He shall bring forth judgment
unto truth. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged,
till he have set judgment in the earth and the isles that
shall wait for his law. Now this servant is Jesus Christ. He's the Son of God. I read Matthew
12 to you to show you there that It says the scripture was fulfilled,
this scripture about Christ, how that He went out from the
Pharisees when they were determining to put Him to death, to destroy
Him, and how that all the multitudes around came to Him and He healed
them. He healed them. Now, whenever we set forth the Gospel,
there's a goal in mind. And the goal is as far Those
that do not know who God is, how God saves sinners. To know
that, to come to an understanding of who God is, to know how God
saves by grace, how He saves according to His will, according
to His purpose, how He saves particularly those He's chosen. how he saves effectually and
how he gets all the glory. We want sinners to know that.
That's what I want sinners to know and I want believers to
be reaffirmed in this and rejoice and reassured. And then there
are those who are struggling and who have all kinds of problems
and who have all kinds of trials and sin. And the goal is for
our minds and our affections to be lifted out of ourselves
and out of our circumstances and to behold Him and to find
peace in Him by His grace. And these are the things that
are on my mind when I'm studying, when I'm looking for a word from
the Lord for you. And I think sometimes that We
hear a word preached and we think, well, I need something that applies to my situation. I need
something that is speaking to me particularly and giving me
particular details about what I should do now or what I ought
not to do now. But this is the command that
the Lord gives and He tells us the one way that our questions
are going to be answered. He tells us the one way that
the trials are going to be made to find peace in the midst of
trials. He tells us here the one way
that we're going to have our sins become real in our eyes
and the salvation that's in God to become real in our hearts.
It's going to come by this way. Behold my servant. Behold my servant." Everything
that's not pointing us directly to Christ is a complete and total
waste of our time. We need to see Him. We need to
see Him more. We need to see Him often. We
need to see Him continually. That's the sure reason for all
of our troubles and our questions and the things that cause us
so much despair in our hearts is we lose a sight of Christ.
We lose a sight of Him. So he says here, behold my servant. And that's natural to the heart,
that's natural to the flesh to look to ourselves. Fallen man's
righteousness really is only a comparative righteousness.
You would be speaking to someone and they'll say, but aren't all,
they're good men, aren't there good folks in this world? Well,
comparatively to scoundrels, yeah, they may be, God's the
righteousness. And here is the standard that
we have set before us, and it's Christ. Christ our righteousness.
The Lord our righteousness. This is He by whom the world's
going to be judged in righteousness. So it's good to behold Him. Now,
if you go into a jewelry store and you ask to see a diamond,
They're going to take out a black backdrop and lay it down. And
they're going to put that diamond in the center of that black backdrop
so you can really see that diamond. So, this morning we're going
to look at what the Lord God says of Christ here, and we're
going to look at it against the black backdrop of what the Lord
God says of all men as we're born in Adam. And I hope He'll
cause us to look away from ourselves and to truly behold Christ this
morning. I have four things to show you
that this passage teaches us. They're very simple. The first
one is this, Christ is the servant of God. The second thing is Christ
is God's choice. The third thing is Christ is
God's anointed. And the fourth thing is Christ
shall not fail. Now here's the first thing. Christ
is the servant of God. He says first of all, behold
my servant whom I uphold. Now this is what God requires
of a servant. Let's look over at Deuteronomy
10. Talk about serving. This is what God requires. Deuteronomy
10 verse 12. Now Israel, what doth the Lord
thy God require of thee? This is what he requires. To fear the Lord thy God, to
walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and to keep
the commandments of the Lord and His statutes. This is what
the Lord commands of His servant. Now, in case any of us think,
well I've done that. I've done that. I'm a servant.
I've done that. This is what God says. This is
the clearest thing I could find that God says of everybody He
saves. It's in Romans 6, 17. He says,
ye were the servants of sin. We didn't do what God said to.
We were the servants of sin. God was not able, not willing,
not able to hold us up before the world. That is, not able
to depend upon us to magnify His glory and to save His people
from their sins and not able to hold us up and say, here is
my servant. He wasn't able to do that with
anybody. Look back just one chapter there
in Isaiah 41, 28. For I beheld, and there was no
man, even among them there was no counselor, that when I asked
of them could answer a word. Behold, they are all vanity,
their works are nothing, their molten images are wind and confusion. We see this so clearly in Matthew
12 there where it says the Scripture was fulfilled. Christ came. And he's there in the synagogue,
and the Pharisees have no idea who God is. They have no idea
how he's saving sinners. They have no idea the righteousness
required of a sinner. And they sought to destroy the
Prince of Life. That's the black backdrop of
our service, of our service. But now concerning Christ's service,
God was able to entrust all to His Son. He was able to entrust
everything into the hands of His Son. Everything concerning
His very glory. And Christ came from Heaven's
glory and He took upon Him the form of a servant. And He went
about doing everything that we just read about that's required
of a servant. God's own arm, His own Son sustained
Him. His own Son, His own arm brought
righteousness to Him. His own arm glorified Him. His own Son. And this is Him,
look at Romans 3.25, that God upholds, that God holds forth,
that God set forth. Look at Romans 3. Whom God, verse 25, whom God,
whom Christ, His servant, whom God set forth a propitiation
through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness. That's
why He set Him forth, to declare His righteousness. For the remission
of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare,
I say at this time, His righteousness, that He might be just that His
law might be honored and magnified, His justice satisfied, and that
He be the one who does the justifying of all them that believe in Jesus.
And because He came and He fulfilled it, He fulfilled all righteousness. The verse tells us there, verse
31, by faith in Him, we establish the law. We don't make it void,
we establish it. That doesn't mean now we turn
to the law, it means by faith in Christ, by faith in God's
servant whom he says, behold, behold my servant, behold the
one who's highly exalted me, behold the one that served me
with all his heart and his soul, who completely kept my commandments,
who came and fulfilled the righteousness of God, who is the righteousness
of God, this one whom I have given for a covenant to the people. This one who is my word, my promise,
my salvation, because he's my righteous servant, he says behold
him. Behold him. And when we behold
him by faith, casting all our care on him, what the righteous
servant did, that's what we've done. what He did. That's what we've done. And so
God's highly exalted Him because He's satisfied with His service.
So behold, behold, do you see whom God says He wants all attention
on? This word here where it says,
whom I uphold, Some say it means he leaned on him, he entrusted
everything to him, but it means just what it says, I hold him
up. He has highly exalted him, given
him a name above every name, and every knee is going to bow
and every tongue is going to confess that this servant who
made himself the absolute least is the greatest in the kingdom
of God. That's what being the greatest
is in the kingdom of God, is being the absolute least. Our thoughts are not God's thoughts
and His ways are not our way. We're just so backwards. We're
just in a cesspool of corruption, in just a puddle of dung and
trying to lift up ourselves and act like we're somebody and we
really serve somebody. And won't dare, won't dare lay
down all and say, let another have the glory. That's what Christ
came and did because God said, I won't share my glory with another.
So behold Him and you'll behold peace for you. Peace in your
own heart when you behold your own service and like thereof,
you'll behold the servant with whom God's pleased with. Here's
the second thing. Christ is the elect of God. He's
God's choice. He says there in verse 1, Isaiah
42, 1. He says, Behold mine elect in
whom my soul delighteth. You know, Left in our sin. God chose Christ. Left in our
sin. Will we choose Christ? We won't. Just left to ourselves,
we won't. Romans 3.11, he says, there is
none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. And what we saw this morning,
John said, now if we walk in the light, in that light God's
given us, we can say amen. That is so. There is none that
understand. There is none that seek. And
I'm the chief of them. I didn't understand Him and I
wasn't seeking Him and I wouldn't seek Him. If we can walk in that
light, there's some truth in us. To where we can see by His
grace what we are. But if we say, no, I was seeking
Him. We're walking in darkness and
the truth's not in us. It's just not in us. We've deceived
ourselves. Christ himself, God's own choice. He said, you have not chosen
me. Does God delight in us? He said he delight. This is mine
elect, my choice, my chosen in whom my soul delighteth. Does God delight in us? Is there
anything about us that He delights in outside of Christ? Back in
Isaiah 1, the folks were, oh, they were so loving and they
were so kind and they were so gentle that when they came into
the land God gave them, they began to invite the sons of the
land, the children of the land in to their homes and they began
to go into the the homes of those children in the land and next
thing you know they married their daughters and they gave their
sons to marry their daughters and next thing you know they
began to bow down to their idols and worship their gods and they
became corrupt and unjust and ungodly and everybody's claiming
now everybody's claiming to be worshiping the true and living
God. That's right. They're saying,
Lord, Lord, bell, bell. But here's the truth of the matter.
God said your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth. They are trouble unto me. I'm
weary to bear them. He said in Leviticus 26.30, I'll
destroy your high places, I'll cut down your images, I'll cast
your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols. My soul shall
abhor you. But, thanks be to God, He chose
His Son. Aren't you glad He didn't choose
any of us? I mean, to honor Him and to glorify
His name and to save His people from their sins? Aren't you glad
He didn't choose us to do that? I'm glad He didn't. I'm glad
He didn't. Because we wouldn't have done
it. We wouldn't. He said, I've laid help upon
one that's mighty. I've exalted one chosen out of
the people. Disallowed indeed of men, but
chosen of God and precious. And God, by His grace, put a
people in Him. He elected a people in Him. Ephesians
1, according as He's chosen us before the foundation of the
world that we should be holy and without blame before Him
in love. And because He chose His people in this one whom He
loves and said, Behold mine elect whom my soul delighteth from
the... We're talking eternity here.
So when you say from the moment, there was no moment, just it's
eternity. But from the moment He said,
He said, this is mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. And
he chose a people in his son from that moment. What he said
of his son, he said of that people in his son, my soul delights
in them. They are holy and without blame
before me in this one in whom my soul delights. So behold Christ,
behold the one whom God chose, behold the one whom God elected,
and we'll find peace in our hearts so that we don't wrestle against
God's electing grace anymore. We don't wrestle against the
fact that God chooses whom he will and causes them to approach
under his throne of grace. We'll say, thank you, Lord. Thank
you for doing it. Thank you. If He hadn't chosen
me, I wouldn't have chosen Him. But now by His grace, He can
say of me in Christ, He can say of you. Think of this. Think
who's saying this to us. The Lord God. God the Lord who
stretched out the heaven and made all things that dwell therein. He says, of all those He put
in Christ, He says, Behold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. That's exactly what he says of
all his people. Behold him and you'll find this
delighting in your heart. Here's the third thing. Christ
is God's anointed. He says here, Behold. He says, I have put my spirit
upon him. He shall bring forth judgment
to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up,
nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed
shall he not break, and a smoking flack shall he not quench. He
shall bring forth judgment unto truth, unto victory. Now what
about the spirit that's in us by nature? Let's look at this
black backdrop for a minute. This is what God says of us,
a few pages to the right there, in Isaiah 50, verse 11. The spirit that's in us, By nature
He says, Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, accomplish yourselves
about with sparks. Walk in the light of your fire,
and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of
mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow. Now you think about
it. Our discernment, our judging
of things, our dealing with men by nature is carnal. It's absolutely
carnal. The Lord said, you judge after
the flesh. We see what we are in the Pharisees
and we see how we'll judge things by when we look at the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were constantly crying out. They were accusing
always. This is us. We accused Christ. That's what we behold in Matthew
12. They're saying, should a man
be healed on the Sabbath day? Is it lawful to heal a man on
the Sabbath day? That they might accuse him. That
they might accuse him. You be careful. You be careful
around religious folks who are constantly trying to You'd be
surprised how many folks are just trying to look for something
to accuse you. We lift up. He said he didn't
cry, he didn't lift up. We lift up. The Pharisees were
constantly lifting up, lifting themselves up, justifying ourselves
before men. Constantly causing their voice
to be heard in the street, boasting of our many wonderful works.
You know there's not one time, one time did Christ Jesus the
Lord ever say when He came into a place, He never said, now why
don't you come and worship with us because I go into the mountain
a lot to pray and we have a bunch of prayer meetings together.
He never said, why don't you follow us because we're turning
the world upside down for God and we're bringing multitudes
to follow us and we're bringing multitudes out. Why don't you
follow us because we have a lot of healing sessions. I go and
I heal, we go and we heal people and we go and we're doing lots
for the sick and for the needy and for the broken hearted. Follow
us for that reason. He never, he never did that at
all. He never did that. And the Pharisees
constantly, and this is, listen to me, this is not somebody else,
this is us. We want others to see what we've
done. We want somebody to see what
we've done and follow because of what we've done. So that we
can glory in what we've gotten somebody else to do. That's what
Paul said. This is our nature. This is our
carnal desires. If we don't know this about ourselves,
we don't know ourselves. This is so. Christ never did
any of that. You think about the treatment
that the Pharisees gave to that blind man that was given sight.
You know what they did to him? They brought him in and they
had a council there and they examined him to see if he measured
up to their righteousness. And when he said, all I can tell
you is this, a man named Jesus Christ gave me sight. Or a man
named Jesus gave me sight. They said, don't try to teach
us anything. Don't you try to come in here
and usurp any authority in our midst. And they cast him out.
And you see the two different spirits of these folks. When
the Lord came to that blind man and he said, do you believe on
me? That blind man said, who are you, Lord? Who is he that
I might believe on him? That's that spirit we saw in
1 John where you come to the light just confessing our sins. That's what he was doing. He
was confessing his sin. He was confessing his ignorance.
He was confessing, I don't know it. I need to be taught. That's
a little child. And the Lord said, I'm he. And he took all his sin away
from him. And he saw, and he followed him. And the Pharisees, when he said,
this is why I'm coming into the world, for judgment, I've come
to give discernment, I've come to set judgment in the hearts
of my people, that they might behold me, and they might follow
me, and walk in the light, and have the light of life. And to
those who think they see, and those who are think they're grown
and they don't need any, and they're not dependent. He said,
I came to make them blind. And the spirit in the Pharisees
was this, are you saying we're blind? Are you saying we need somebody
to teach us something? Two totally different spirits.
One coming out in the light and saying, Lord, I'm just completely
ignorant, save me. And the others hiding back in
darkness, hating the light and not coming to the light because
they would not confess, we're dumb as a doorknob. They wouldn't
do it. This Pharisee stood and he prayed
with himself and he said, Lord, I thank you that I'm not like
others. I'm not like this publican. Proverbs 26.12 says, Seest thou
a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool
than of him. But God poured out the Holy Spirit
on Christ. He poured out the Holy Spirit
on him without measure. And Christ came forth, and the
Scripture says it made him a quick understanding in the fear of
the Lord. And he came forth and he didn't judge after the sight
of his eyes, he didn't reprove after the hearing of his ears,
but with righteousness he judged the poor. And he reproved with
equity the meek of the earth. He did that which was equal,
which was right. But at the same time, he smoked
the earth with the rot of his mouth and with the breath of
his lips, slaying the wicked. He did it with His Word. He didn't
compromise the truth in the name of love, but in true love, He
spoke the truth and He carried out the truth. And He was tender
and He was weak to those that were bruised and to those that
were smoking, but at the same time, He shut the mouths of those
that were the enemies of Christ. And He does this and He brings
forth judgment unto victory. He brings forth true discernment
in the hearts of His people. He does it for His people. He
did it for His people on the cross when He laid down His life
justifying us from all sins. He does it to His people in all
His righteous and just and equitable acts He does and performs in
providence to His people, and He does it in His people when
He sends forth the Spirit into our hearts. When that Spirit
of God comes in our hearts and He makes us to behold Christ
the servant, when He sets judgment in our hearts and gives true
discernment, when we behold God's servant, we'll stop accusing
others of not serving. Why? Because we know nobody's
served like Him. Why would I accuse you of not
serving? Here's the servant! And he makes
us to stop boasting about our service for the same reason.
Here's the servant. And he makes us to behold that
when we see his elect, we stop boasting about our choice and
start, stop showing partiality to this one or that one and call
it being, being a, But without, we stop doing that, we behold
Him who is God's choice and that He chose us freely in Him by
His grace. And we wait on God to reveal
that in the hearts of His people. And then, when we behold this
One who is truly The spirit, the judgment, the spirit of discernment,
this one who brings forth judgment into victory. We hear his voice
and we start following his voice. And then we become the broken
reed. Then we become the smoking flax. Then we become, in our own estimation
of ourselves, absolutely worthless, weak worms. And when we behold
that, we behold Him in meekness and lowliness of heart, planting
us so that we're not a reed shaken with the wind anymore. We find
Him strengthening us by His grace, pouring the balm of Gilead into
our souls so that our lamps are burning with the light of Christ
now. We'll appreciate the fact that
he doesn't break the bruised reed and he doesn't quench the
smoking flax when we're the bruised reed and the smoking flax. Behold him, hear his voice, and
learn of him. He's meek and lowly in heart.
He will teach you, any one of you who are of a broken and contrite
spirit, That's what He does for us. Here's the last thing. This
is the last word of encouragement for our hearts. Verse 2, He shall
not fail, nor be discouraged, till He hath set judgment in
the earth, and the Gentiles shall wait for His law. Now it's in
the future tense there because He was coming, but He's come
now and He didn't fail and He's not discouraged. He was not discouraged. He didn't fail when He came forth
in the midst of His enemies. He didn't fail when He went to
the cross and bore the divine wrath of God. He did not fail
when He was under the weight of the punishment inflicted upon
Him for the sins of His people. He didn't fail, nor was He discouraged,
but He endured everything in perfect fidelity to His Father.
And this One who bore it has fully satisfied God. He has fully
satisfied the justice of God for the sins of His people. He
has fully completely finished the work of redeeming us from
all iniquity. He's finished the work brethren,
of glorifying the justice and the holiness and the mercy and
the grace of our God. And right now he's not failing
and he's not discouraged in sending forth the gospel in the earth,
the gospel of judgment and of truth. He's not failing to send
forth the messengers for which he gets all the glory in sending. who come forth and speak in spirit
and in truth, because this is what God said about him. He said,
He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He won't fail nor
be discouraged. He will set judgment in the earth. He will do this. God has entrusted
all the glory of His holy name to His Son to do this. And His
Son is going to get all the glory for doing this. Look down at
Look down here at verse 8. I'm the Lord, that's my name,
in my glory will I not give to another neither my praise to
graven images. That's who He is. He's the all-successful,
all-victorious King of kings and Lord of lords. No lies of
a truth. He saves in truth. He brings
forth judgment. He brings forth truth unto victory. Now, here's the last thing, and
we'll go home with this. Stop, brethren, listen. Any sinner
here that's trying to look at his own goodness, that's trying
to come to God by his own service, hear the Lord God this morning.
Hear what the Lord God says. He says, Behold Christ in whom
my soul delights. Come unto Him and rest in Him
and you'll find the light for your soul. And keep coming to Him. It's
not just a... You keep coming to Him. You keep
coming to His table. You keep being fed by Him. You
keep searching His Word. You keep studying. Keep going
to Him in prayer. Keep coming into the light of
Christ. Finding full, free, complete
forgiveness by what He's done. And finding this fellowship in
Him. and for all his bruised reeds
and for all his smoking flax. You know, a bruised reed is absolutely
worthless. I mean, what are you going to
do with a bruised reed, a broken reed? What are you going to do
with it? It's smoking flax. It just stinks
and it's not pleasant. But for us, for me and for you
who are bruised reeds and just stinking, smoking flack, just
all but extinguished, he says that he will never, ever allow
the light to go out. He'll never allow the reed to
be broken, but he'll keep his people. And he tells us here,
to wait. He says the Gentiles will wait.
His elect people he's drawing from the four corners of the
earth. We're going to wait. Waiting is believing. We're going
to wait on His law. You know what His law is? It's
His word. It's His gospel. It's the gospel
of faith. It's the gospel of salvation
by His wisdom. The gospel of righteousness by
this One who is our righteousness. The gospel of sanctification
by this One who is all our complete perfection. This One who is complete
liberty for us. For we, through the Spirit, wait
for the hope of righteousness. That's what we're waiting on.
We're waiting on the hope of righteousness. One day we're
going to be made completely conformable unto Him. We're waiting for the
hope of righteousness by faith. He says to us in Psalm 27 14.
We'll end with this. He says, wait on the Lord. Be of good courage. And He shall strengthen thine
heart. He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. And He says, if you want to look
at it a few pages over, Psalm 37, 34, this is the sure promise. Wait on the Lord and keep His
way. And He shall exalt thee to inherit
the land, and when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it. Behold Christ. Amen.