Isaiah 42: 1 – 25
The Perfect Servant
“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. 2 He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. 3 A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth. 4 He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands shall wait for His law.” 5 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: 6 “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, 7 To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. 8 I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images. 9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; Before they spring forth I tell you of them.” 10 Sing to the LORD a new song, and His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you coastlands and you inhabitants of them! 11 Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. 12 Let them give glory to the LORD, and declare His praise in the coastlands. 13 The LORD shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies. 14 “I have held My peace a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will cry like a woman in labor, I will pant and gasp at once. 15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will make the rivers coastlands, and I will dry up the pools. 16 I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them. 17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, who trust in carved images, who say to the molded images, ‘You are our gods.’ 18 “Hear, you deaf; And look, you blind, that you may see. 19 Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is blind as he who is perfect, and blind as the LORD’s servant? 20 Seeing many things, but you do not observe; Opening the ears, but he does not hear.” 21 The LORD is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will exalt the law and make it honorable. 22 But this is a people robbed and plundered; All of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses; They are for prey, and no one delivers; For plunder, and no one says, “Restore!” 23 Who among you will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come? 24 Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Was it not the LORD, He against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in His ways, nor were they obedient to His law. 25 Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger and the strength of battle; It has set him on fire all around, yet he did not know; And it burned him, yet he did not take it to heart.
I would like you to look at your bibles for a second. I think we all need to reflect that from the beginning of God’s book we read only a few chapters where everything is good. Then as humans we messed everything up. We now have to look at the wonder how our Amazing God took the rest of this book to correct the awful condition we caused.
In the book of Genesis we see how God went about bringing His Perfect Holy One to undo the harm that we created. Jehovah Elyon – The Lord Most High’s Special Anointed One had to come to us earthly inhabitants in order to pay the price of our sins. He would be a traceable Holy One. To do this as you know our Great Master chose a man from Iraq by the name of Abram.
Having stressed God’s gift to the world in Abraham and of His coming to the land of God’s inheritance with the purpose that through his seed all the world would be blessed there is now revealed one who will fulfill that function to the world, one who had been, as it were, in the loins of Abraham.
In a very real sense Abraham is the original from which the Servant of Yahweh comes. The Servant is a representation of him and those who were in his loins. The Servant will fulfill the promises given to Abraham. But the ministry of the Servant would not be fulfilled through Abraham directly. The Servant is the later expression of Abraham through his descendants, and especially through the One who will be the greatest of them all.
“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.
Please check out the statement again ‘Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights.’ It is not a coincidence that this is the seventh ‘Behold’ in the passage from chapter 41 verse 8. Divine perfection has been reached.
The ‘behold’ that we see here connects back with what has gone before. The gods are as nothings, and all are called on to ‘behold’ this fact as recorded in chapter 41 verses 24 and 29. But God has raised up One Who will act in His Name, One Who has come from the north and trodden down rulers. And from him has sprung Zion. Thus eyes are turned on them, ‘behold them’ which chapter 41 verse 27 highlights.. But as verse 28 reveals no one has arisen from them in order to give counsel or answer a word. So now God turns their eyes on one who will arise in the future, and says, ‘Behold My Servant’.
But who is ‘My Servant’? Israel/Jacob are declared by Isaiah to be His servant and chosen one because they were in Abraham His servant and are his seed. These words can hardly therefore be denied to Israel. But it is clear in these passages that Israel as a whole have come short, and that the reference is therefore to the faithful in Israel which at this present time is Isaiah and his disciples.
It is they who are the true Israel. In this particular song therefore this is where the emphasis lies. God visualizes the faithful in Israel as fulfilling their ministry to be a kingdom of priests. For they stand in for, and spring from, Abraham, God’s chosen servant and friend, as fulfillers of the promises.
But the description also demands that the Servant be their righteous king. No Israelite at this time would have imagined this destiny of setting judgment in the earth and establishing the law of God among the nations unless it were to be under the rule of the mighty Davidic king who was to rule over them for ever as promised by God. And in the light of the earlier teaching of Isaiah this meant Immanuel. The destiny of God’s true king and God’s true people went together. David was God’s Spirit-endued chosen one and servant from the beginning and this privilege was seen as passed on to his descendants when they were true to God, although it is possibly not without significance that Scripturally no Davidic king after David is described as endued with the Spirit of Yahweh until the promise of the coming One. None fulfilled the potential. The idea leaps straight from David to the coming David.
For me this verse is quite meaningful. It is my desire that perhaps in a way our Adoni Yahweh could say this about all of us - ‘In whom my soul delights.’ This requires a righteous servant, potentially at least. God could not delight in one who was unrighteous as He regularly makes clear. It is only as righteous that the Servant can delight Him. These words were specifically applied to the Jesus by the voice at His baptism. The Servant will bring joy to God’s heart, and He will delight in Him and His people. The word regularly contains within it the idea of acceptability. God delights in uprightness. He delights in His people and in David. But that delight is in those who are responsive to His ways and obedient to His commandments. So it must be here.
I also want us to take a hard look at this statement -‘I have put My Spirit upon Him.’ Do you realize has fortunate we are? In the Old Testament days the Holy Spirit would only be on a few people at best. Because of the word of our Holy Master and Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ all of us who place our trust and belief in Him can receive these same words from El Shaddai – God Almighty – “I have put My Spirit upon Him [or her].
This statement by our Holy Supreme Ruler could only be describing the One Who would arrive in the later times. But not necessarily only Him. Jacob/Israel will also be endued with the Spirit in the glorious days to come. So again Davidic king and people are united, in being Spirit endued. The Servant is both king and people, His true people headed up by His true King. The Servant of Yahweh is to be endued with His mighty Spirit. In the Old Testament the enduing of the Spirit always results in visible success. So God’s people will sweep forward under their glorious king.
2 He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. 3 A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth.
Unlike us The Messiah will not be a complainer, or a rabble-rouser, or a self-propagating orator, or one who is dictatorially demanding, but rather will deal gently and tenderly with the weak and the helpless, restoring the bent and bruised reed, bringing back to flame the smoking, dimly-burning flax, quietly but firmly dispensing justice. The picture is one of someone of great authority, but perfectly controlled and tender. The true servant of God is distinguished by his quiet competence. And central to the fulfillment of his position as ruler and judge will be truth. There will be no deviation, no darkness, no manipulation, all will be true and will reveal truth. The Servant can thus only signify those who hold firmly to God’s truth, and reveal His tender heart.
4 He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands shall wait for His law.”
The Servant will continue steadfastly, finally unfailing in the task given him, refusing to be discouraged, until at last righteous judgment and true justice are total, and even the furthest outreaches of mankind are under His Instruction. They will ‘wait’, either in certain hope for His word, or in obedience under the dispensing of His word.
I find it very interesting that the words ‘Fail’ and ‘discouraged’ are from the same roots as ‘burn dimly’ and ‘bruised’ that we see in verse 3. He will not allow bruising and dimly burning to affect him. He will be steadfast against all difficulties and hardships. It is not that He will not be bruised as we know from reading chapter 53 of Isaiah, but that it will not be in such a way as to cause Him to wilt. He for all sake and purposes is the Only the True ‘Man’s man.’The necessity for these words is demonstrative of the trials through which the Servant will go. His path is not to be easy but He will conquer in the end.
5 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:
Our Great and Magnificent God now gives His charge to His Servant. But before He does so we have a description of the One Who is giving the charge. It is El Yahweh, Father God, The Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, Who is active within them. It Is He Who constantly stretches out the heavens, maintaining the day, bringing out the stars nightly under His control. He is the One Who made the earth so expansive, and is the cause of the fruitfulness of the earth. He Is the One Who is the source of all life and breath and inward spirit, without whose work they would have no life sustaining source. He Is the One Who has provided for and sustains all, without Whom no man would have food or life. And thus He Is over all and His concern is for all. And His Servant Is here to perform His service on behalf of the whole world.
6 “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, 7 To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
Please take note again the stress on righteousness. The Servant is ‘called in righteousness’, as was Abraham. He is accepted as righteous by our Father God Yahweh and righteousness is required of Him. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. His initial call was all of God’s grace but demanded a response in righteousness and it resulted in him becoming righteous before God through faith. The same was true for His people at Sinai. The covenant, which is here seen as directly connected with the person of the Servant, was an offer of grace, but it had to be accepted, acknowledging a requirement that they be righteous, both by atonement through the shedding of blood and through subsequent obedience.
David too was a man of righteousness. Thus the continual requirement for the Servant is righteousness and acceptability to God and obedience to the covenant, and until Israel are righteous they cannot be His effective Servant. Indeed in the end their being accounted righteous, when they are, will be the result of the work of Another, the Servant Supreme, because they cannot make themselves righteous.
Take a look again at this amazing statement ‘And will hold your hand, and will keep you.’ Every one who walks as one with The Servant will be able to know that God walks with him and ‘holds his hand’, that is, walks alongside him. Is this something we all desire but feel missing? This fact will especially be true of the One Who could say, ‘I a My Father are one’. The holding of the hand is in order to demonstrate that God is with His Servant and working through him, so that he need not fear. It is an expression previously used of ‘Israel - My servant’. It is in order to demonstrate that he can know that he is being guided by Him, and will be delivered from danger and from the darkness. It denotes God’s control. It is a strong hand. ‘And will keep you.’ The word means to preserve. Thus the Servant can be sure of the closeness of, and the protecting and confirming presence of, God.
For all you ‘Rapture’ adherents this statement is important to point to you that the use of Daniel’s prophecy of the ‘antichrist’ confirming the covenant is incorrect. Many wizards change the word covenant to ‘peace treaty’ which the bible does not list. Look again at Isaiah’s statement. ‘And give you for a covenant of the people.’ The basic idea is that God’s covenant of grace and mercy will be extended to the nations through the Servant who will be its guarantee and mediator. There was a very real sense in which Israel as God’s covenant people could offer that covenant to the world, but in the end it was most full offered in Jesus Christ, Who as the Servant came to give His life a ransom for many. He contains within Himself all that is the covenant.
He is the fulfillment of the offer in the Abraham covenant, and this also has in mind the extension of that covenant in the covenant with David, and the Davidic covenant promised. David was the guarantee to his people of God’s care and protection through his house by an everlasting covenant, the sure mercies of David, which nothing could rescind. And that covenant was revealed as something that would become worldwide because of the promise to the Davidic King of the future, of worldwide dominion. It may be suggesting that the Servant as the greater David will renew and extend that covenant and offer it to the nations, a guarantee that those who respond to Him will enter into a covenant relationship with God (which would eventually be revealed as through His blood of the new covenant shed for the remission of sins.
8 I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images. 9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; Before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
‘I am Yahweh. That is my name.’ This is not just the announcing of His name, it is drawing attention to Who and What He is. The name was seen as indicating character and being. And He is Yahweh, the One Who has caused to be from the beginning, the One Who will be, the One Who is there.
Being Yahweh, the only living and active God, He will not allow the credit for what He has done, ‘the former things’, in the raising up of Abraham and David, and what He is going to doing to do, ‘the new things’ that He is now declaring, in the effective choosing of the greater David and spiritual Israel, to go to anyone else. - Certainly not to graven images. The glory belongs to Him and to Him alone.
10 Sing to the LORD a new song, and His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you coastlands and you inhabitants of them! 11 Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. 12 Let them give glory to the LORD, and declare His praise in the coastlands.
I want us all to think about this fact for a second. Think about all the other religions. What kind of worship songs do they sing to their gods? Mostly they are chants which to me sound a bit annoying. We, on the other hand can sing a new song which has words not just guttural sounds.
If the Lord has said it, then you can bank on it. The certain success of the Servant is now made clear. The whole world is called on to give praise. The point is that all will be rejoicing, north, west, east and south, in every furthest and most obscure place, even the dry places in the wilderness, because of the work of the Servant. They will sing to Yahweh a new song. It is a new song because of the new things that are happening.
13 The LORD shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies.
As often in Isaiah we move to the contrast. On the one hand glory, on the other judgment. While the Servant is bringing about the Kingdom of God, and the redeemed are singing their song, and shouting in rejoicing from the mountains, God will also be visiting the world in judgment, and shouting out His battle cries. It is described in terms of a Champion going out to war. He will go out like a warrior, He will stir up zeal in Himself, like soldiers stir up each other’s zeal before the battle, He will call out against the enemy, yes, He will shout His battle cries, and then He will battle mightily against His enemies, bringing them to destruction and defeat. Again it will occur through history but find its final fulfillment at the end of time, for Isaiah is not depicting particular events, he is describing what God will do when He chooses to act.
14 “I have held My peace a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will cry like a woman in labor, I will pant and gasp at once.
From the moment when man first fell, and even from before, from His awareness of that in eternity, God has waited for this moment. He has been still and restrained Himself from acting, but now the time has come to bring judgment to birth, and like a woman in labor He cries out, He pants, He gasps, all at once. The end of all things is at hand, and God is constrained until it is fulfilled.
15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will make the rivers coastlands, and I will dry up the pools.
Here the cause of it all is drought. The vegetation in the mountains and hills will be dried up and the mountains made like a waste place, the river levels will drop resulting in large islands where once there was water, and the pools will dry up and become empty. The rain has not come and the land is bare and desolate. So, while for the people of God there is blessing, for the unbelieving world there is only final judgment.
16 I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them.
While God is going forward in judgment He will not forget His own. This is God’s preparation for that day, and describes God at work through the Servant. The blind will be led by him safely through their darkness in ways and paths that they do not know because they cannot see.
17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, who trust in carved images, who say to the molded images, ‘You are our gods.’
In contrast to those who see are those who are idolaters. To the cry ‘behold your God’ they reply ‘you idols are our gods’. God does not so much have deep concern for them (they have forfeited that), but deep concern about them. Their end can only be disastrous for they are trusting in nothings. This can only result in their discomfort and shame. Instead of going forward confidently like the blind led by the Servant they will be turned back and discomfited.
18 “Hear, you deaf; And look, you blind, that you may see.
Look now how God calls on the spiritually deaf and blind to recognize their true situation. Let them hear. Let them see. For only then can His purposes can go forward. This my friends is the order given to us all. To go to the blind and through love and witness allow them to see their blindness and need for spiritual sight.
19 Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is blind as he who is perfect, and blind as the LORD’s servant? 20 Seeing many things, but you do not observe; Opening the ears, but he does not hear.”
We might have a problem with this verse. For we may be thinking that it is speaking about our Majestic Holy King Jesus. It isn’t. It is talking about the nation of Israel who has failed the responsibility of being God’s servant. The sad present state of ‘the servant’ as represented by Israel is being brought out as God addresses the world. It is done in such a way as to emphasize to the world why they have no messenger, while at the same time stressing to the servant [ the nation of Israel] his true condition, that he is culpably blind.
He first speaks to the world. His servant is blind, His messenger is deaf. Of what use is a blind servant, a deaf messenger they may well ask? God has a message to send to the nations, but the messenger is deaf, he will not hear it. How then can he pass it on? And he is blind, how can he even come to them or reveal anything to them?
21 The LORD is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will exalt the law and make it honorable.
God’s purpose for the nations was that His Law, His Instruction, should be magnified before them and revealed as honorable, as glorious, so that His righteousness might be upheld.
22 But this is a people robbed and plundered; All of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses; They are for prey, and no one delivers; For plunder, and no one says, “Restore!
But the purpose has been held up. The servant who should have been revealing it to the nations has been robbed by the roadside and despoiled. They are cowering in holes, they are hidden in prison houses, they are treated as a prey. No one delivers them. For they have turned from the One Who could.
23 Who among you will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come? 24 Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Was it not the LORD, He against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in His ways, nor were they obedient to His law. 25 Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger and the strength of battle; It has set him on fire all around, yet he did not know; And it burned him, yet he did not take it to heart.
The answer is given. It was Yahweh Himself Who has done it, for they had sinned against Him and would not obey His Law. That is why all that has happened, has happened to them.
Note how Isaiah does not exclude himself from the sins of the people. ‘We have sinned.’ Since his inauguration in chapter 6 he was ever aware of his own sinfulness. But then he distinguishes his own walk from theirs. It was they who would not walk in His ways. He at least sought to walk with Him and be obedient to His Law.
So it is because of their sin and rebellion that they are experiencing the fury of His anger being poured on them. This is why they have had to face fierce battle. And yet although they have been set on fire round about, and burned, they still do not face up to what they have done, they still do not lay it to heart. What is to be done?
These situations occurred thousands of years ago to God’s people. Yet, this information if for our benefit as God’s people living in the present. Let us all take our own inventory. Have we failed to represent our Great and Holy Master as the people of Israel did? If so, confess your sins like I am acknowledging, and seek the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives again.
