Thank you. Welcome to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Thanks for joining us here on Christmas Day. As we celebrate this holiday together, it's important to remember that the baby in the manger is also the servant with a mission that the prophet Isaiah sang about. We'll find out today why he didn't just come to help nice people in this world do a little better.
Let's open our Bibles to Isaiah chapter 42 We're focusing on verses 1 through 9 Hear all these years before the servant arise What is he going to be doing? Number one, opening the eyes that are blind Well, of course he gave a wonderful illustration of this By actually granting physical healing While he was in his earthly ministry The great issue, of course, was not physical blindness. Otherwise, everybody who was blind would have been made to see, because he's so compassionate and kind. If that was the issue, let's take care of it all. But it wasn't, and it isn't.
He was opening men and women's eyes, those who were blind to the truth of God. That's everybody. We're born blind to the truth of God. He was opening the eyes of those who were blind to the reality of reality, who were trying to make sense of their human existence, but somehow or another couldn't put it all together. He opens their eyes to reality.
He opens their eyes to their own blindness, to those who were blind to their blindness. That's the starting point, actually.
Some of you might have come here and wondered at the lines in the hymn that we sing from time to time, Once I was blind but believed I knew everything. Once I was blind but believed I knew everything. That's really the testimony of a person's pre-converted experience. That's why they reject Jesus. I know everything.
I know everything, and I know I don't need a Savior. I know everything, and I know that science has disproved anything on the other side of the fence. Therefore, I know everything. Do you think you know everything? Is that not the greatest megalomania?
Once I was blind, but believed I saw everything, proud on my own, yet a fool in my part, lost and alone in the company of multitudes. He opens the eyes of the blind, C.S. Lewis classically says that, doesn't he, in contrast to Einstein, with whom we opened last time. Remember, Einstein says, here we are on this planet, appearing involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay without ever knowing why we're here or what we're really doing. C.S.
Lewis, when his eyes are opened to the truth of God, says, I believe in Christianity as I believe in the rising of the sun. Not simply because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else. Christianity makes a man a better scientist. Christianity makes a wife a better wife. Christianity makes a boy a more obedient boy.
Christianity makes a lover of art an art connoisseur, someone who is able to distinguish between the good and the bad and the ugly. He opens the eyes of the blind. Secondly, you will notice, he frees captives from prison. Frees captives from prison. Remember, on one occasion he says, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
The captivity of Lady Macbeth, whom I quoted the other Sunday there, is just so classic. I mean, it's probably the great classic in all of Shakespearean literature, at least. The absolute futility of it all, as her husband is becoming increasingly disengaged from reality because his wife is driving him crazy, because she knows that she is guilty, palpably guilty, of what she has done, and her hands bear testimony to it, and the smell of blood remains on them despite all of the soaps of Arabia. And you may be here today, and you feel you've got a kind of Lady Macbeth thing going. You maybe didn't tell anybody.
But when your mind goes into neutral, you go there. And you've tried all kinds of soaps and all kinds of solutions, but you're captive to that. This servant came to unlock the handcuffs of our self-exaltation and the deification of substitute gods. And thirdly, he acts in keeping with his mission to free captives, to open blind eyes, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. What a picture, huh?
How many people have resigned themselves to their dark and disappointing existence? And despite their attempt to provide superficial smiles despite every desire to try and make the grandchildren know everything super or the people who are around us it all fine There just dark disturbing doubts We live in a dungeon of our own making. There's all kinds of dungeons, aren't there? $50 billion dungeon that this chap has just invented for himself over a period of time. I forget his name.
It begins with M, I think. You know what that kind of hedge fund is called in the parlance of finance? It's called a black box. And the reason it's referred to as a black box is because if you choose to put your money with that hedge fund, the key to it is that you're not allowed to ask where it's going or what's happening to it. It's like you put it in a black box.
is quite a fitting description. Because as soon as they made a little run on it and needed seven billion out, they discovered the black box had a huge hole in the bottom. And Mr. M had created a dungeon for himself. The entry to it marked guilty.
the surrounding walls crying out, in the way that in an earlier era the same thing happened with Richard Corey, if you remember from reading. Or if you don't remember from reading, then you remember from Paul Simon, who helped all of us who didn't want to read the stuff to have it given to us in a poetic form that would have a memorable melody line. They say that Richard Corey owned one half of this whole town. And with political connections, he spread his wealth around. He was born into society, a banker's only child.
He had everything a man could want—power, grace, and style. But he lived in a dungeon, and he brought his own life to a sorry, horrible end. And this servant, this servant, is the one who releases people from their dungeons. You see how different it is from the sort of notion of Christianity, that Christianity is about this Jesus who came to help those who are doing pretty well just to do a little bit better? To help these nice people, these sort of religious people, these people who are interested in God and everything else just to have a little encouragement as they're going on their way.
No, it's not that at all. No. It's that Jesus comes to fulfill a mission—the blind, the imprisoned, those who live in a dungeon. And the great thing about this is that the story of the servant is not a story about what we must do in order that we might be accepted by God, but it is a story of what he has done making it possible. That he's the one who comes down into the dungeon, into our enslavement, into our blindness, and he says, you're the ones who failed, you're the ones who broke the law, and you are entirely unable to rectify or remedy your condition.
But I save sinners. I open blind eyes. I release captives. I bring light into the dungeon. and I have done everything required for you.
And in turning to me in simple faith and childlike trust, you may see, you may be free, and the sunshine may flood your dungeon. In fact, he's so committed to it, you will notice, that he says in verse 13 that he marches out onto the field of battle in order to achieve this, and that in verse 14, he suffers like a woman in labor in order that he might accomplish his purpose.
So we find that God speaks, revealing his person, his power, and his purpose. The servant acts in dependence upon God's Spirit, in keeping with his character, in accord with his mission, and finally, the reader responds. Notice the responses that are provided for us here. Number one, joyful song. Sing to the Lord a new song.
In other words, this is the song of the redeemed. This is not just any song. This is a song that is addressed to the Lord. This Lord, who in distinction from all the helpless idols, is able to bring to pass what he has promised.
Now, that's the kind of Lord to whom we ought to sing. The one who is able to accomplish his purposes. And it is in his prophecy, I think, from memory, that we read the words, that his word goes out, and it will accomplish that which he has purposed for us. And this song is all over the place. You will notice in the desert they're singing, the towns are raising their voices, the little settlements and villages where Kedar lives, they're rejoicing.
The people are singing for joy.
Some of them are up on the mountaintop singing, Others are down on the sea singing. The islands, the extremities of the earth, are all singing. They're all in joyful song. That joyful song is representative of their heartfelt praise. And in the awareness that praise belongs to him alone, verse 10, and not to idols, they adore him for who he is.
All the earth bows down, and all the earth sings praise to him. But that's not the only response. You will notice in verse 17, and with this we close, jumping forward to there. But he says, Despite all of this, those who trust in idols, those who say to images, You are our gods, will be turned back in utter shame.
Now don let miss this loved ones Don let play the game now at this point Don let try and sequester ourselves saying well I don have any images and I haven bowed down to anything. Remember what we said at the beginning. We sin by affording to someone or something the devotion that is due to God alone. That someone, that something could be our wife, our husband, our children, our job, whatever it might be. And if that is our choice, then in the end, we will face absolute, utter, total devastation and desolation.
That's what the Bible says. Put it in context. The servant says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. If you will come to me, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.
Take the responsibilities that I lay upon you, the privileges that I afford you. Let them be the constraining influence of your life. Live in obedience to me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will promise find rest for your souls.
Because let me tell you, says the servant, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Now, it is against that backdrop that you then read verse 17. But those who trust in idols, who say to images, you are our gods, will be turned back in utter shame. In other words, we could know something of God's tender, pursuing love, and yet still cling to idols. And in doing so, eventually, in the long run, the tragedy of our choice will run its course. I think I'll finish with two quotes from C.S.
Lewis, since it is officially C.S. Lewis month. Both of these are not thrown in to fill in the final two moments, but purposefully. Here is C.S. Lewis writing in The Weight of Glory.
And what he's talking about is the fact that the desires that we have for stuff, for substitute gods, are not actually so phenomenally strong, they are actually pathetically weak. Listen to how he puts it. If we consider the unblushing promises of reward, the promises in the Gospels. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink, sex, and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us.
We're like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. Far too easily pleased. Money. Ambition.
Health. Sexual fulfillment. Far too easily pleased. because none of these things, if they serve as the object of our devotion, can grant us freedom and enjoyment and fulfillment.
Now, remember that C.S. Lewis turned his back on any notion of God when he was probably about 12, brought up in a very nice religious establishment, going to the Anglican church, and eventually he describes in Surprised by Joy, he describes in the early chapters there of how he used to get dizzy the longer the liturgy went, and eventually one day he said, I'm totally fed up with this, and I will have none of it, no more at all. And out he stepped in life, determined to explain life entirely without any notion of a creator God to whom he was accountable. And the story of Surprised by Joy is ultimately the story of his conversion. And his story ends in this way.
You might picture me alone in my room in Magdalene—that's Magdalene College, Oxford—night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. It's an amazing statement. This is not C.S. Lewis, who says, oh, I'd love to know God. I'm just sitting in my room waiting on God coming so I can know God.
No. He says, I don't want to know God. I don't like him creeping up on me in this way, and I actually don't want to meet him. But that which I had greatly feared had at last come upon me. And in the Trinity term of 1929, I gave in.
And some of you here need to give in. That's the bridge for you. You just need to bow down. Give in. Give up.
I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing—listen—the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet But who can adequately adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking struggling resentful and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape The words compel entrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them. But properly understood, they plumb the depth of the divine mercy.
Now, here is an award-winning sentence with which to conclude. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation. His compulsion is our liberation. You see, what God does is he flies in under the radar. He flies in under the radar of our attempts to create our own little universe that is devoid of him and removed from him.
He comes in under the radar. Why? Because he loves saving people. Why? Because he wants to come and show us that even when life has plunged us in its deepest pit, we find the Savior there.
God who speaks, revealing his person and his power and his purpose. The servant who acts in dependence upon God, in keeping with his character, in accord with his mission. The response of the listener—a joyful song, a heartfelt cry, or utter shame and total desolation. Father, we bow down before you. You are a great God, and there is no other.
And we pray that you will open our eyes that are blind to you, that you will set us free from our enslavements, that you will come into the dungeon that so easily can become ours and shine the beauty and light of your servant upon us, so that we might be able to say with Simeon, My eyes have seen your salvation, a light that lightens up we who are Gentiles, and the glory that shines on your people, Israel. Help us then so to go out into the week bearing testimony to the fact that Christianity is not a dead-end street, that there is a hope that reaches beyond even the immediacy of our circumstances. Otherwise, how do we make sense of the deaths this week? How do we deal with the onset of illness, all of our cancers, all of our debilitating motor neuron diseases, all of the things that clamor and crush and choke us because all that will be is not now yet.
So then fill us with your hope, we pray for Jesus' sake. Amen. We're listening to a message today titled Here is My Servant on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg and Alistair is here with a special word for you today. Thanks, Bob. Here on this Christmas Day, we celebrate the infinite becoming an infant.
It is a staggering thought. The God of eternity appeared in the person of the Son to live in his own creation without ceasing to be God. The fullness of God contained in a human body. He who fashioned the cosmos came to save the people in it. In this truth, we have hope and we rejoice.
From all of us here at Truth for Life, we wish you a blessed Christmas and the joy and peace that is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we celebrate Christmas, I just want to mention, if you don't routinely attend a local church, you'll find that being part of the body of Christ on a regular basis has great benefits. but it's important to make sure you attend a church where scripture is taught, where the gospel is central, and where Christ is glorified. If you'd like to find out more about what to look for in a local church, visit our website, read an article written by Alistair, titled Alistair Begg on Finding a Church. Simply search truthforlife.org slash find.
And don't forget if you're traveling over the holidays and don't want to miss Truth for Life's daily program, or perhaps you'd like to introduce your family and friends to Alistair's teaching. You can find the time and call letters where the program can be heard on a local radio station by visiting truthforlife.org slash station finder. Just key in the zip code or the city, even a local landmark. You'll find a list of stations in your area that broadcast Truth for Life.
Now, our offices are closed today. While our team celebrates this very special day with our families, You can still request the monthly resources or shop in our online store or make a year-end donation securely online when you visit truthforlife.org. We'll be back in the office on Monday, December 29th. I'm Bob Lepine, and along with Alistair and everyone here at Truth for Life, we want to wish you and your loved ones a day of great joy as you celebrate the good news of our Lord and Savior's birth. And you know, many people believe Jesus came to reward good people and punish bad people.
But the Bible teaches something very different. Tomorrow we'll find out how rewards and punishments are truly assessed. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living. you
