A SMOLDERING WICK

Once again I am posting in two pieces, because otherwise I cannot post anything as lengthy as these notes on the sermon. 
Sermon by Dr. Timothy Keller
Based on Isaiah 42: 1-9
A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break
 
For centuries the church has focused on the mission of Jesus Christ.   What did He come to do?   Isaiah prophesies about a mysterious figure called the Servant of the Lord, and in the New Testament over and over again, the writers identify the Servant of the Lord with Jesus Christ. We are going to look at the Servant Songs.   This is the first of the Servant Songs – Isaiah 42:1-9.
 
SERVANT KING:
 
Vss 1 – 2.   “Here is my servant whom I uphold–my chosen one in whom I delight.  He will bring justice to the nations, but He will not shout or cry out or raise His voice in the streets.  Justice means putting everything right – to order everything the way it ought to be.  This is a job for a king – who has power – and yet this person is a servant.   The word cry out in particular means to drown out another voice.   This servant’s methods are such that He does not seek to control putlic discourse, which a king has to do.  He gets the results of a king but does not use a king’s methods.  
 
The Servant of the Lord suffers.  He is tortured.  He is spit upon.   He is despised.  He is rejected, and He is executed.  The Hebrew people were looking at all of the prophesies about a coming king – a messianic king who was going to put everything right.   Students of the Scripture say this person cannot be that – he won’t cry aloud, and he gets executed.   Still today many people interpret this as a symbolic, poetic personification of a believing community.   The Servant who is suffering is just a believing community who is suffering.   This is not exegetically possible. The servant ends up turning the believing community back to God, so the Servant cannot be the believing community.  
 
It must have been literally lightning from the sky:   When Jesus Christ shows up at the river where John the Baptist is baptizing people, and he goes down into the water and is baptized.  Then as he comes out, heaven is opened, and the Spirit descends on Him, and a voice says “This is my beloved Son in whom I delight, in whom I am well-pleased.    The first half of this statement is a quote from the Greek version of Psalm 2.   The second half “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased, in whom my soul delights”  – that is a quote from Isaiah 42:1.  God’s voice is saying that this great strong messianic king and the suffering servant are the same person, and they are Jesus. 
 
There is a juxtaposition of these almost contradictory things:   This weakness, meekness, softness – and then this hardness, power, and majesty – all together.  Jonathon Edwards, the 18th century minister and philospher preached and published the sermon called “The Excellency of Jesus Christ.”    He starts by saying, “Have you ever seen a great man or woman – maybe powerful, maybe intellectually brilliant, maybe talented, having money stop and take the advice of their driver?   Or go over to a sick neighbor and make a meal.  Or sit with sympathy and listen to the problem of somebody who in the human scheme of things is not important”.   He asks “How do you feel when you see that?”  You feel this great person is ever greater for not acting great.   He says there is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ that would seem to us uterally incompatible in the same subject.   Infinite highness and infinite humility.   He is infinitely above any of us, so that we cannot be of any profit to Him.   And yet, He is one of infinite humility None are so low or inferior but Christ is willing not only to take notice of them but to enter into friendship with them.    He takes our nature upon Himself to become one with us.  He is great enough to become low for us.   To expose Himself to shame and spitting and death.  He is altogether beautiful.  It just fills you with worship and wonder.   
 
If you know Christ, if you have His Spirit, if you think you are following Him, then do you not realize that this same supernatural, humanly impossible juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory virtues must be to some degree reproduced in you.     Jesus makes the bold tender, and the tender bold and direct because they know that they are saved by grace.   
 
HEALER KING: 
 
The first aspect of His mission is in verse 3:   A bruised reed He will not beak and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out until in faithfulness He brings for justice.   To you and I the word bruise is not a very strong one.  We say “just a bruise.”  The Hebrew word that here is translated “bruised” is also translated “crushed.”   It is a deep contusion, not a break in the skin, that has either injured or destroyed a vital internal organ, and therefore often this word means a death blow.   The bruised reed is broken at an angle – it is not broken into two pieces.  However, its life is over.  It is never going to produce grain.  The servant would heal it so it can produce grain again.   Jesus is attracted to hopeless cases.  He loves the fragile.  He loves people who are beaten and who are battered and bruised, and maybe don’t show it on the outside, but inside they are dying. 
 
In I Kings 18 and 19, Elijah is a mighty prophet of God, but in chapter 19 he is cracking.   Cracking under the pressure of his ministry – he is despondent and suicidal.  So God sends an angel to him.  What does the angel do?   The angel cooks.  Elijah is asleep and wants to die.  Twice he wakes up and the angel cooked him something – Twice!   The angel says “You need more strength for the journey.”  Eventually through the angel God challenges him.   Physicians who encounter a despondent person would prescribe a pill.  Ministers and theologians would tell the person “Repent!”   Psychologists and counselors say “Let’s talk.”    If you ever give the wrong therapy or medicine for the particular condition, you break the bruised reed, you put out the candle.   But Jesus never does – so infinitely caring, tender, and wise is He.   The Servant has come down to deal with the weakest people in the human race – the people at the very end of their rope.   
 
Richard Sibbes, the great 17th century British puritan minister wrote a classic work entitled “A bruised reed and the smoking flax.”   In it he says, “See Christ’s mercy to bruised reeds.  If you want to see it consider His borrowed names from the mildest creatures.   He is called the Lamb or a Mother Hen.  Consider that Jesus will heal the broken-hearted (Isaiah 61) At His baptism the Holy Spirit sat on Him in the shape of a dove to show that He should be a dove-like, gentle mediator.  “Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy-laden.  (Matt. 11:28). Say this to yourself: If Christ be so merciful as not to break me, I will not break myself by despair.   How do  you like that for medicine?  

What is your take-a-way this week and why?

I want Jesus to be my greatest dream. I want to love Him more and to grow closer to Him, so I can become more like Him. I want to be kinder and gentler with others because I don’t want to break a bruised reed or put out a faintly burning wick. I tend to be brash if not with my words, then with my thoughts. I want God to give me grace for others. I want Him to show me when to speak and when to be silent. I want to be worthy of God saying of me, “You are my beloved child, and I am well-pleased with you.”

Beautiful….especially the images.