Our scripture reading this evening is taken from Isaiah chapter 42 that's found on page 715 in the Pew Bibles and we'll be reading Isaiah 42 verses 1 to 9. Hear now God's own word. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law. Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Thus far the reading of God's holy and inerrant word. Well, in these past weeks, some of you may have been listening to a little bit of Handel's Messiah. And I know that's the case for those of you who were here in recent evening services when we got to feast our ears to some of our own up here singing from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah. If you've ever listened to Handel's Messiah, you know it's full of Scripture. It's just packed full of Bible. But did you know what is the most represented book of the Bible in Handel's Messiah? It's Isaiah. It's the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is cited more times in the Messiah than any other portion of Scripture. And why is that? Well, if you've read Isaiah, you know the answer. It's because Isaiah is full of pointers to our Lord Jesus Christ, to the Messiah. Jerome, an early church father, called the prophet Isaiah the fifth gospel. You know what he means. We've got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, our four gospels. But he said there's so much about Jesus foreshadowed in Isaiah's prophecy that Isaiah should rightly be called the fifth evangelist. And others down through church history agreed with Jerome. There's a beautiful illustration of this. you're a manuscript historian sort of geek like I am, you would be able to appreciate just how beautiful it is when we have ancient manuscripts that not only preserve the scriptures or commentaries on them, but sometimes have marginal notes or little doodles. Scribes were sometimes prone to draw pictures in the margins of ancient manuscripts. And we've got just such a manuscript of jerome's commentary on isaiah from the 12th century and right at the beginning there's a little picture and it's in vivid color and isaiah is here seated on a a sort of stool and jerome is seated at his feet and he's looking up at isaiah and there's a scroll going from jerome's mouth up towards the prophet isaiah it's like it's like a 12th century version of a cartoon speech bubble. And on that speech bubble, written in Latin, of course, because that's how you write in those days, is this, Jerome looking at Isaiah saying, teach them about Christ. Teach them about Christ. Go on, Isaiah, says Jerome. Teach them about Christ. And that's exactly what we have in our passage this evening, Isaiah 42, where the prophet points us so clearly, so vividly, so encouragingly to Jesus Christ as he speaks about this figure that he calls the servant. Go on, Isaiah. Tell them about Christ. Well, let's listen to Isaiah this evening as he does just that for us. One theme, there are many beautiful themes woven through the tapestry of Isaiah's prophecy, but one prominent theme is the theme of darkness. darkness looms throughout Isaiah. And wherever there's darkness, of course, there's a need for light to break into that darkness. It's even more the case when darkness persists and you can't shake it. I always find, well, less so now that we live here, there's a lot more light here than there is in the United Kingdom this time of year. England is a dark place in the winter. Nevertheless, these last few weeks have been dark, haven't they? I love it when we get past December the 21st, the winter solstice, the equinox, because I know that we're now moving into that part of the year when the light is going to return. It's ever so slowly. The light's going to creep back. It's just that much easier to get up. It's more daytime to get things done. I love the light, and I feel the need for that light more at this time of year than any other time. In fact, several years ago, when I was still living in England, and as many of you know, I was an elder in the Free Church of Scotland in London, I was invited along with our minister to go in December to the Isle of Lewis. Some of you don't know where Lewis is, or you'd be shaking your head. Winter vacations, where do you want to go? You want to go to Cancun? You want to go to Cabo? You want to go to somewhere that's nice and warm and relaxed? in the sunshine on the beach. Well, guess where Lewis is? Lewis is about as far north and west as you can get in Scotland. It's an island just off the western coast of Scotland. And so we flew in December in the middle of a blizzard and a windstorm from London to Inverness to Lewis because they had invited us to come to a conference, a weekend conference on evangelism. Now, there's a story there in its own right. Why on earth would you need to do evangelism on the Isle of Lewis, which is the cradle of Scottish Presbyterianism? Well, because it's not just the lack of daylight. There's a darkness and ignorance of the gospel that has crept in even there, where once there was no one who wouldn't be in church twice a day on the Lord's Day. now very few people and now there's a mosque in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and so they'd invited us to come and give a weekend conference on evangelism and I thought it was dark in London but it was really dark in Lewis and really cold it was one of those landings in a little airplane where you're not sure you're going to make it you might slide off the runway into the sea but we made it it was a beautiful island beautiful people maybe not the best time of year to go there but I was really struck when on the Lord's day we left for worship and we left at about I don't know 8 39 in the morning and it was still almost pitch black and then we came out from worship we went to an elder's home for lunch and there was a little bit of weak watery daylight and then we emerged from lunch and it was dark already even before evening service the sun set at something like 2.53 p.m. I was desperate for light, desperate to get back to even what light there was in London. That's the desperation. That's the weight of darkness that we feel in Isaiah's prophecy from the very beginning. There's a darkness that's heavy, and it's hanging upon the people, and they need light. Chapter 8, verse 22, Isaiah says, and they will look to the earth, but behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness. What's he talking about? He's talking about the fact that Assyria is coming to judge God's people and carry away the people of the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity. Darkness is coming. Destruction is looming. But again and again, Isaiah also holds out the promise of light, that light will break in to the darkness. Immediately after that verse in chapter 8, we hear in chapter 9, verse 2, the people who walked in darkness, you know this one from this time of year, don't you? You know it from the Messiah. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them a light has shown. Isaiah holds out hope, and that hope is in the form of light that will come. And again in chapter 29, verse 18, Isaiah says, in that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. When the Lord sends this light, it's going to be a light that opens the eyes of the blind. But it's not until chapter 42 our text for this evening that we really begin to understand in Isaiah how is God going to do this how is he going to shine a light into the darkness of captivity the darkness of sin the darkness of oppression how will that happen it's only in chapter 42 that we really begin to get a glimpse of how God will do this how's he going to save his people by means of a figure called the servant. The servant. It's the servant who's going to bring light into the darkness. And what's more amazing, this servant, according to Isaiah chapter 42, isn't just going to bring light for Israel, light for God's ethnic covenant people. He's going to bring light for the nations. This is a wonderful promise. When the servant comes, he will bring light for the nations, it tells us. We need to understand who this servant is and who his mission is. And that's what our text helps us with this evening. This text naturally falls into two sections. Perhaps you saw that or heard that as we read it. Verses 1 to 4 and verses 5 to 9. In verses 1 to 4, there's really an emphasis on the hope that the servant will bring. And then in verses 5 to 9, there's an emphasis on the light that the servant brings. Let's look first at the hope that he brings. Look at the last line of verse 4 in chapter 42. And the coastlands wait for his law. The coastlands wait. They wait expectantly. They're hoping for something. That's the sense conveyed by this verb. What the servant brings is what the coastlands want and need and are desperately hoping for. Who are the coastlands? Who are these coastlands? These are the people beyond the boundaries of ethnic Israel. This is as far as their mental map might have stretched. All the way to the coast of the Mediterranean where the Philistines, the Sea Peoples, maybe even beyond that. The coastlands represent the peoples outside Israel. And verse 4 says the coastlands are hoping for something. They're waiting expectantly for something. They're waiting for the servant's law. We'll come back to talk about what that might mean. But let's go back to verse 1. This servant, according to verse 1, is a very special person. Verse 1 says, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights. If we were working our way chapter by chapter through Isaiah, we would have already heard about this servant. It's not the first time the servant is introduced in Isaiah. In fact, in the chapter immediately preceding, we hear about him. Chapter 41, verses 8 and 9. The servant is identified there. Who is the servant in chapter 41? The servant is identified as the nation of Israel. But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, The offspring of Abraham, my friend, you whom I took from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, you are my servant. I have chosen you and not cast you off. So who is the servant in chapter 41? The servant is the nation of Israel. But in chapter 42, something happens. It becomes clearer that the servant, While the servant is the nation of Israel, a kind of corporate servant, more and more the focus is moving towards the fact that the servant is also one figure. And that becomes clearer than ever in Isaiah as we move into chapter 42. Chapter 42, verse 1, again, says, I have placed my spirit upon him. He will bring justice to the nations. This really sounds like a singular person, doesn't it how can this be how do we move from a plural servant the nation to a singular servant what does verse one say verse one says the servant is my chosen one in whom my soul is well pleased does that sound familiar to you my chosen in whom my soul is well pleased we know who this singular servant is because we have the fuller revelation of God's new testament and in the gospels it becomes crystal clear the light breaks open as to who this servant is let me give you just an example Matthew chapter 3 verse 17 we hear the father speak from heaven in the baptism of Jesus and what does he say a voice was heard from heaven saying this is my beloved son in whom I have been well pleased. And there's a variation on that phrase in almost every other gospel at the same point. Who is the one with whom the Father's soul is well pleased? It is his Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the servant. And at the end of verse 1, as we look back to Isaiah 42, this servant's mission becomes clear. What's he going to do? He will bring forth justice to the nations. This is the headline of these first four verses. Justice is repeated in verse 1, in verse 3, in verse 4. Justice here is Isaiah's way of talking about the servant's rule. How will this servant rule? How will he govern? Because this servant is a king. and he's coming to rule. And in the following verses, we learn exactly what his rule will be like as he brings his rule, as he brings justice to his people and even beyond his people. Verse 2 introduces us to this character of the servant. Every ruler, every king has a style in the way they rule, don't they? When we think about our earthly governors and rulers, we know that they often preen themselves and prepare their image usually for the cameras in a certain way but the way that they speak the way that they carry themselves the way that they rule their style gives us a window into their character doesn't it it's one of the reasons why we sometimes cry out to the lord to help us because so many of our rulers reveal by the way that they govern that their hearts are not full of justice and righteousness, but just the opposite. They're loud. They're brash. They crave the attention and the glory that comes from the world. But Isaiah says that's not the way this servant rules. That's not his style. That's not his character. What's he like? Verse 2. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. This servant comes, how? He comes quietly. He comes humbly. He's content to be under the radar. He doesn't want the spotlight to be on himself. Not because he doesn't have any power. He has power. But because he doesn't need to flaunt anything. He is content to go about his mission quietly and faithfully. He doesn't hold a press conference. with all the cameras rolling to announce his arrival on the scene or his candidacy for elected office. He just goes about his mission and he lets his work speak for himself and his character. And this is exactly what we see Jesus, the servant of Isaiah, doing in the Gospels. You might keep a finger in Isaiah chapter 42, but turn to Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12. If you weren't yet convinced that the servant of Isaiah 42 is fulfilled in Jesus, Matthew will convince you in chapter 12. What's happening here? Well, Jesus has just miraculously healed a man in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. And you know what kind of reaction that gets. The Pharisees are enraged and they want to destroy Jesus because they see his great power. They see what he's doing. They see what he's claiming they see that he's acting as one who is divine and has divine authority and we pick it up in verse 15 of matthew chapter 12 it says jesus aware of this withdrew from there and many followed him and he healed them all and ordered them not to make him known this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet isaiah behold my servant whom i have chosen do you see what he's doing he quotes from isaiah chapter 42 verses 1 and following and he goes on and it's it's a it's a verbatim quote from our text in isaiah what will this what is jesus doing he will not quarrel or cry aloud nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets and so on it goes matthew quotes from isaiah 42 and he tells us jesus is the one who fulfills this prophecy jesus is the servant, who comes with great power, power to transform lives, power to heal the broken and the sick. But he comes with humility. He doesn't come to promote himself. He lets his works speak for themselves. In fact, he comes with a tender love that draws sinners to himself. He's simply there fulfilling his mission and his power and his love and his tenderness and his humility are precisely the things that draw his people to him. He doesn't have to stand up on a soapbox. The servant reveals his character in the way that he rules. He's humble, although he is powerful. What does verse 3 add to this picture if we turn back to Isaiah chapter 42? In verses 3 and 4, we learn more about the character of the servant this is this is so encouraging what does it say verse 3 a bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench he will faithfully bring forth justice as this servant king rules and establishes with his power his kingdom how does he do that? Does he steamroll over the week? Does he crush those who aren't convenient with offering him any help? No, precisely the opposite. In his humility and in his love and in his care, he is tender and he is gentle. Do you see how tender this servant is with his people? who are these bruised reeds who are the faintly burning wicks well they're bruised and broken people in Isaiah's day these were the people who were who were quailing with fear because they were about to be carried off into captivity and they knew this was God's judgment coming upon them a judgment they deserved and their light was burning low they were very weak these are people like you and I, people who have been sinned against and oppressed, but also people who have sinned. And we know it. We know our own guilt. We know that we're not just broken in a modern therapeutic kind of sense. But when we say we're broken, we mean we are rotten to the core with sin and we deserve God's judgment. We can't pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We can't make a new year's resolution to do better on our own strength that's the kind of person that verse 3 is speaking of with this language of a bruised reed a faintly burning wick someone who's come to that realization i cannot save myself i can't shake off this sin by myself i need help i can't do it lord help me and it's precisely that kind of person to whom the servant comes with tender openness and love and power. And instead of crushing them or extinguishing that flame that's so faint, he gently lifts you up and he helps put you back together. He gives you new life and he fans into flame those sparks of God's grace, which the Holy Spirit has already been working in your heart. That's who this servant is. He comes for people like you and like me and he doesn't come with anger. He doesn't come with disdain. He doesn't come to give you what you deserve. He comes to forgive you your sins. This is the servant who reveals what God's justice and rule looks like for his people it's the servant who reveals this beautiful forgiveness that we sing about when we sing those words from psalm 130 if you oh lord should mark iniquities oh lord who could stand but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared this servant doesn't let you just lie there shattered by the side of the road and pass you by he seeks you out he lifts you up he dresses you in his own beautiful righteous robes and he takes you by the arm and sets you on the way that's what this servant does in Isaiah 42 so as you look back on the year just past 2022 and look ahead to 2023 I wonder if you count yourself among those spoken of here in verses 3 and 4. Those who know their need deeply. You know that yes, the Lord's been so good to you. Yes, he's been so kind to you. But you still battle with indwelling sin. You still have relationships that are completely and utterly broken. If that's you, then this is God's promise to you from Isaiah 42 this evening that he has sent his servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to you and to help you so that 2023 will be a year for you in which you find yourself born up by the power and the gentleness and love of the servant. Run to him. Cling to him this year. Embrace this servant by faith and you will find again that he doesn't break you. He saves you. He doesn't snuff you out. He keeps you going. Verse 4 teaches us even more. It says, although this servant helps those who are discouraged, he himself is never discouraged. He's not discouraged. He's not deterred from his mission. Although this servant is one who helps those who are faint and who falter, he himself will not grow faint. He will not falter or fail in his mission. Isaiah wants to make this clear because he uses the same words in the original Hebrew to talk about those who are weak and faltering and the servant who does not falter. And the contrast could not be greater. The servant will not fail in his mission. This servant will persevere. This servant will succeed. And notice again the last line of verse 4. The coastlands wait for his law. What are the nations, the coastlands, those nations beyond Israel waiting for? They're waiting for the law of the servant, Isaiah says. And this here, in Isaiah's prophecy, is not law in the sense that we think of it when we read the law from Exodus chapter 20. God's commandments or statutes or stipulations. Instead, the way Isaiah uses law here and even elsewhere is to speak of the teaching, the revelation that this servant will bring. That's what the nations are waiting for. They desperately need to hear the truth revealed, a message of hope revealed. And that's what the servant is going to bring, an announcement that is good news. The servant brings a rule, yes, as a king, but he also brings a revelation. And that revelation is a glorious message to the nations. And we see that even further as we move into the second section of our text, verses five to nine. The servant brings hope. He establishes justice. But really, I think at the center of this whole text and certainly the center of verses five to nine is the fact that the servant brings light. He brings light for the nations. Look at the last line of verse six. The Lord will give the servant as a light for the nations. As one very good commentator on Isaiah says, the servant steps onto the stage of world history here specifically to perform a task of revelation. Why does the servant come? He comes to bring light that's going to shine out as far as the nations are spread across this globe. Verse 5, the Lord reminds us of who he is. Who is the Lord? And this sets the framework for what the servant is going to do. The Lord is the Lord of creation. He created the heavens and stretched them out. He spread out the earth and what comes from it. The Lord is the God who made heaven and earth. The almighty God. The sovereign God. He's the Lord of creation and he's also, in our own passage here, the Lord of new creation. When the servant brings light and it breaks forth, it's the light of new creation. The servant is the one upon whom the Spirit rests. That same Spirit that hovered at the creation is the same Spirit that we know created the human body of Jesus in the womb of Mary, hovering over her at that inbreaking of the new creation with our Lord, the servant Jesus. this is the servant who brings the light of new creation he's a servant who is formed and equipped by the spirit for the mission that he has by the spirit jesus is the one who's descended from abraham he's descended from david and now he's the spirit who executes god's final mission of bringing light to the nations And he does so by living a perfectly righteous life. And verse 6 makes this clearer than it has ever been in Isaiah's prophecy. Verse 6, the Lord says something very important about the servant. To fulfill his mission, the Lord is giving the servant as a covenant, as a covenant for the people and as a light unto the nations. the servant is given by god as a covenant for israel but also as a light for the nations this is very very important isaiah is teaching us here that jesus in his person and in his work jesus sums up the substance of the covenant of grace jesus the servant is as hebrews 7 22 is going to say the guarantor of a better covenant. Jesus is the servant who comes to fulfill the covenant perfectly. Everything that Adam failed to do, everything that Israel failed to do, everything that you and I failed to do according to God's standard revealed in his law, the servant comes to do perfectly. Where the law says do this and live and we fail and deserve the penalty of death, the servant Jesus comes and he does it perfectly and he earns eternal life for his people. All of this the servant has perfectly done and that's why this servant's coming is such good news for the nations. Jesus is the same servant who bears the curse of the covenant in his death upon the cross in your place and in my place bearing in his own body God's wrath as a penalty for sin. That's what this means in verse 6 when it says that the Lord will give him as a covenant, Jesus himself, the covenant-keeping, curse-bearing mediator given for his people. And in his perfect covenantal work, this servant brings for his people all of the promised inheritance. It unlocks for us the inherited blessings that the Lord desires to give to his people. All of this is ours by faith in Jesus Christ. This is why the covenant that the servant is given as stands at the center of his mission. And what's the purpose of this covenant? Well, verse 7 tells us the purpose. to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness. The mission of the servant who's given as a covenant is to come and to bring light and life and freedom and redemption for his people. That is why this servant is sent. That is what Jesus came to accomplish. But there's even more. In verse 8, We could say verse 7 gives us the next to last greatest purpose, the penultimate purpose. But the ultimate purpose really emerges in verse 8. The mission of the servant is to glorify the Lord. The servant does what no other person could do. The servant does what no idol could do. The servant does what no Israelite could do. The servant does what you can't do and I can't do. And in so doing, in accomplishing this work of redemption, the servant gives glory to the Lord. Jesus said, I've come to do my Father's will. I've come to glorify my Father. And that's precisely what he did in his life and death for the salvation of sinners. Jesus glorifies his Father. And in verse 9, we're told that this servant's mission to save sinners, to glorify his Father, it really is good news it really is look at verse 9 behold the former things have come to pass and the new things i now declare before they spring forth i tell you of them i declare i tell i i announce them to you this verse is full of verbs of proclamation verbs of of gospel announcement and it's an announcement of the new creational grace that God works through the mission of the servant. It's an announcement that's not just for Israel, it's for all the nations. Isaiah 42 teaches us that the servant brings hope, the servant brings light, and it teaches us that the servant's mission is good news. It's an announcement for us and for the nations. And I want to just pause here this evening. I don't know all of you as I look out this evening. I know that some of you are visiting. And I know that we've had many visitors in recent weeks. And that's a wonderful thing to see new faces. But I also don't know for a fact that each and every one of you here has already embraced this message of good news for yourself. And so I want to make sure to be as clear as I possibly can this evening that if you are one who know yourself to be a sinner before God, you feel yourself broken and humbled and helpless before Him. In the language of verse 3, you are crushed. You're burning so low you're about to go out. Then this is a great promise for you this evening, To take hold by faith of the servant Jesus Christ whom God offers for the salvation of sinners. But I know that many of you here this evening, most of you here this evening, have already put your faith and trust in Christ. And so, for you, I want to exhort you to do two things as we finish. Thing number one, I want you to embrace afresh this wonderful offer of salvation and light and life that God gives to you in the servant. And I want you to do so as you enter, as you step across the threshold of this new year, 2023. That you would make this the year when in repentance and faith you go again and again and again to the servant that the Lord has given as a covenant for you. to the one who gently and tenderly picks you up and forgives your sins and gives you everything that you need to live the Christian life. That's the first thing I want you to do this evening and in the year ahead is to embrace the servant by faith. But I want to exhort you to do a second thing as we close this evening. There's something really interesting here. Who is the servant, we said. Well, in chapter 41, the servant was corporate Israel. in chapter 42 it narrows to become a singular person and by the time we get to the new testament we see very clearly who that person is it's jesus there's an interesting dynamic there isn't there between a group as the servant and a single person as the servant well in the new testament guess what else happens after jesus completes the work of redemption and his perfect life and death on the cross and resurrection and ascension, what does he do? What's the whole book of Acts about in the New Testament? It's about how Jesus, by his Spirit, sends out his church and the announcement of the good news to the nations, to the ends of the earth. And guess what we read in Acts chapter 13, Verse, let me check this, verse 47, that's it. In Acts chapter 13, verse 47, Paul and Barnabas, two of those first missionaries taking the gospel all around the Mediterranean world to the nations, they call themselves the servants of the Lord. And they do so by quoting from Isaiah chapter 42, verse 6. It's very interesting, isn't it? Now, of course, Paul and Barnabas knew they did not work redemption in themselves. They didn't save sinners by their own perfect obedience or their atoning death. Nevertheless, looking at what Christ had done and the fact that he sent them and commissioned them, they said, we too are the servants to take this message about the servant, capital S, to the nations. It was their task, and it was the early church's task, and it is our task also to be servants who take this wonderful message to the nations. This is something very easy for me to do and to persuade my congregation, Mission Vida Nueva, of, because it's there in our very name. We are Mission New Life, New Life Mission. That's the name of our congregation. For those of you who don't know, I'm associate pastor of a small PCA Spanish language church here in Escondido that many of you so generously support in many ways. We are New Life Mission, and we're doing just that. We're trying to do just that. Take this mission of the servant and the message of the servant to the nations. And I learned something really interesting recently as I did a little bit of demographic research. Maybe you knew this. there are something like 3.2 million people in San Diego County. And of those, 25% speak mainly or only Spanish in our own county here. That's remarkable to me. I knew it was a lot, but I didn't know how many. And so one of the things I exhorted our congregation to do a few weeks ago as we considered this text was, we've got to take this message out. What an opportunity with our neighbors with the community how do we bring them in and how do we get this message out to them we want to get the gospel right the covenant keeping curse bearing work of our savior for sinners but we want to get the gospel out so that sinners can be saved from all the nations and so we're thinking and praying about that in this year as a congregation how do we take that mission to the Spanish-speaking nations here in San Diego County. But perhaps in God's providence, my wife brought this home today after the morning service, the new Sharon Care. And as we were flipping through this this afternoon, I thought, this is an even better application than the one I had planned. What do you find as you look through these pages? Lots and lots of opportunities to give in financial ways or to pray for those that this church supports who are doing just this, taking the mission of the servant, the mission about the servant, out to the nations. Just think of some of the missionaries who are represented here or other reports that we get when people are back and telling us about the work. Think of Mike Brown in Milan in Italy, a nation that is darker than Scotland even now, spiritually. Think of Bill Green in Costa Rica and the work that he has done so faithfully over decades. Think of those who maybe aren't supported formally as missionaries, but whom this church has loved and invested in over the years, even since we've been here, the brief two and a half, three years that our family's been apart here. You remember Ching Jun and Zuhui. This morning we heard about Zuhui and the statistics that Pastor Contreras read out. Well, what are they doing? Having studied at Westminster Seminary here in town, he's gone now to Yale, and we've immunized him, don't worry, against other things that happen at Yale. And he's then planning to try to go back to China. This brother, who is one of the top artificial intelligence scientists who gave all that up and walked away from it to come and train to be a gospel missionary, gospel, want to take the gospel back to the nation of China. And you have helped invest in him. Think of Qingjun. Think of the Japan visit that many of you are going to make later in this year, in August. Some of you know Peter and Lauren Chin have visited Japan. The seminary as well. We're sending a team of students at the end of March. And those two teams from the seminary and from this church are going to converge on a lot of the same missionaries. So Mark Bocanegra is the name of a missionary who's been working faithfully in Tokyo to plant a church there in a neighborhood that it only takes him some 20 minutes to walk around and he's got there tens of millions of people who need to hear this message about the servant, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see what I'm exhorting us to do this evening? One of the ways that we can consider responding to this text from Isaiah 42 is yes, to embrace the servant by faith, but then to take that message about the servant and do whatever it is the Lord has given us to do to support that message, to go out to the nations. So maybe that means that you talk with your family tonight, this week, and you think, all right, who in the Sharon care can we commit to this month? maybe next month as well, to be praying for as we do family worship around the table. Maybe you subscribe to an email newsletter and you can commit to praying for a missionary. Maybe the Lord has blessed you with resources and you can continue to give. Maybe you can give even more generously to support the work of the gospel going out in the coming year. There are numerous ways that we can each respond with gratitude to the fact that the Lord has saved us from our sins and granted us righteousness all because of the work of his servant, son, Jesus Christ, which we see so clearly in this text. Brothers and sisters, I promise I'll close now. Even more than I wanted, I was desperate for light that December in Scotland. The people around us here in San Diego County, in Mexico, in Japan, in Italy, desperately need to hear this message, the message that the coastlands are waiting eagerly for, hoping for, the message that brings light and life through Jesus Christ. They don't have any hope without it. They have only darkness, the darkness of sin and misery, unless this gospel message goes out. This is very good news that we have here in Isaiah 42. Thanks be to God for giving us such a servant, such a Savior as we have received. Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this precious text. We thank you even more for the Savior to whom it points us. And we are humbled as we consider what we are and what you have done for us despite our sin and our brokenness. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us in the coming year by your grace, by your mercy, by your power, by your spirit to embrace your servant more and more by faith. And Lord, we pray too that this congregation who has been so faithful and so generous in many decades past, that we would continue to seek to send those and support those who are taking this message of light in the gospel to the nations. And we ask that the gospel would run and run and run, not for any merit or anything that we deserve, but only because of your grace and only for your glory. Lord, how we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.