The 4th Sunday in Lent

SERMON

INI

Text: Isaiah 42:1-8

“Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for His law.” Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it: “I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another; nor My praise to carved images.”

In Christ Jesus, Who was chosen by God the Father to be our Savior, dear fellow redeemed:

A coach gathers his team together and says, “Listen up, guys, this is important!” Listening is important, isn’t it?! If we fail to listen, we often find ourselves without vital information and missing out on important things. We tend to listen more carefully when we consider the person speaking important; or when we believe that which is being spoken is important! In my opinion one of the best series of television commercials ever produced was produced years ago for the financial brokerage firm E.F. Hutton. They all featured two people talking in the midst of a variety of situations—in a restaurant, on an airplane, or in an office coffee-room. Each commercial featured the same line: “Well, my broker is E.F. Hutton, and he says…,” at which point everyone else in the area dropped what he or she was doing and leaned closer to listen. The implication was that if you truly wanted good investment advice you would listen to the people at E.F. Hutton.

My dear friends, Someone important is speaking to us today in our text, and what He is saying is likewise very important! The Person speaking is the LORD God Himself! In this marvelous text He first addresses us with important information about Jesus, and then turns around and addresses Jesus with important information about us! In order to convince you of the importance of the LORD God consider how He describes Himself in verses 5 and 8 in our text. He first describes Himself as the One “Who created the heavens and stretched them out.” The universe in which we live is so vast that it really goes beyond our comprehension, yet God created it all in an instance through the power of His almighty Word, “Let there be!” (Genesis 1) In his fortieth chapter Isaiah describes the LORD God as measuring these vast and incomprehensible heavens “with a span” (verse 12b)—the distance between the end of our thumb and our little finger! He goes on to speak of that which is much closer to us—our world. He says that He “spread forth the earth and that which comes from it.” Again, the LORD God accomplished this through the power of His Word, creating such complexity that the men of science in our world today still shake their heads and admit—“We don’t understand…how the eye actually works, how our brains can reason and imagine, how life actually originates!” It is the LORD God who “gives breath” to each of us and all people. It is He who animates us, giving us souls and enabling us to dream and plan and produce while we walk on this earth! He is the LORD—Jehovah…the God of love and compassion, Who seeks to restore to us a close and intimate relationship with Himself. He is the one and only true God, Who will not give up His glory to another and Who does not want to share His due praise with idols! BEHOLD! THE LORD SPEAKS! LISTEN, my dear friends…

I.

…as He first speaks to us about His Servant—the Lord Jesus! The LORD God says, “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!” The Book of Isaiah speaks so clearly both of Jesus’ humiliation and His exaltation. He is presented as the humble “Servant,” as we find Him described here, but also as “the Prince of Peace” Who would sit “upon the throne of David…forever” (Is. 9:6-7). Jesus entered this world as His Father’s “Servant”—He was the LORD’s “Elect One”...the One chosen specifically by God to carry out God’s planned rescue mission for our souls. Jesus came to fulfill His Father’s will and, therefore, was the One in whom God delighted to the very core of His divine being! Paul Gerhardt captured this thought in the first three stanzas of his hymn, “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth.” Please open your hymnals to hymn 142:

In this sermon text the LORD God then tells us: “I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.” Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descended upon Him at the beginning of His public ministry when He was baptized. He was sent for the purpose of dealing with our sin crisis by being that “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). By bearing the punishment of our sins, He has paved the way for God to justify us—to declare us righteous, and so to allow Jesus to bring a message of justice to all people! “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation,” the apostle Paul informs us (2 Corinthians 5:19).

The LORD God then describes the manner in which our Lord Jesus would carry out His appointed ministry: “He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.” Jesus was not a rabble-rouser! He was not a revolutionary! He did not call upon His fellow Jews to rise up against the Romans, for His kingdom and His purpose were not of this world (cf. John 18:36). Rather, He preached to individuals and to multitudes beside wells, in remote areas, in private homes, and on the sides of mountains and seashores—impressing upon them the truths of His Father in heaven, which were intended to convict fallen minds of sin and impress upon grieving hearts the grace of God. Yes, “a bruised reed He will not break,” the LORD God tells us, “and a smoking flax He will not quench. He will bring forth justice for truth!” Gentle Jesus came to serve and to save us—to bestow upon us the very righteousness of God…to impress upon us the truth that salvation is ours not by any merit on our part, but solely and alone because of the merciful kindness of our God.

As the LORD God concludes His conversation with us about His Servant—the Lord Jesus, He assures us: “He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for His law.” Oh, how Jesus’ disciples needed to learn this, as they saw the events of our Lord’s ministry and passion unfold! Months before His passion Jesus told His disciples that “He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” Yet Peter rebuked Him, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” (Matthew 16:21-22) On Maundy Thursday evening in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus told His disciples: “The hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going,” (Mark 14:41-42), but the disciples initially thought of armed resistance only to succumb in the end to fear and to flee. Yet, Jesus persevered until He was able to say, “It is finished” (John 19:30)—everything God had planned and demanded to atone for the sins of the world was done. Justice had been served, and what remained to be done was to proclaim this truth to everyone!

II.

Yes, BEHOLD! THE LORD SPEAKS! LISTEN, dear friends, as He speaks, secondly, about us to His Servant—the Lord Jesus! The LORD God, having completed His conversation with us about Jesus, now turns to Jesus to speak about us! He says: “I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles.” God called Jesus “in (connection with) righteousness” and kept Him, that is strengthened Him, so that He might bring us God’s promise of salvation and so enlighten our hearts and minds. This is what the gospel is all about! This is what Paul was saying, when in his opening thoughts of his epistle to the Romans he declared: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith’” (1:16-17).

Jesus came to bring us a new covenant—a covenant not based upon the demands of the law, but upon the grace contained within the gospel. In this new covenant He assures us that the ransom price has been paid, and that as we are moved by the Spirit to confess our sins before Him, those sins are cleansed by His precious blood. He comes to us in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and bestows upon us that very body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine, so that we might be assured of His love and forgiveness and confident of His promised blessing of eternal life.

It is this message, then, that God informs His Servant—our Lord Jesus will “open blind eyes” and “bring out prisoners from the prison” and bring out “those who sit in darkness” into the precious light of God’s truth. It is here that God speaks to our root problem—our condition by nature. By nature we are blind to God and His goodness. By nature we fear God and are suspicious of His intentions. Like Adam and Eve we try to hide from Him. It is only when the Spirit of God impresses upon us the utter hopelessness of our natural condition and then holds before us the glorious redemption of Jesus Christ, that our blind eyes can truly see. By nature we are prisoners of Satan, caught in the web of sin and selfishness—sitting in the darkness of unbelief and destined to eternal death. But then the Spirit comes and works faith within our hearts and liberates our hearts and lives, so that we can truly be free—free to love and to serve, to hope and rejoice, to know with certainty that our past is forgiven and that our future is assured. What wondrous love is this of which our LORD God speaks! My dear friends, let us LISTEN and rejoice! Amen.

—Pastor Paul D. Nolting
To God Alone be the Glory!