For the Wounded
March 14, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Isaiah 42:1-9
1 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.
2 He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
3 a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
4 He will not grow faint or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his law.
5 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:
6 “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,
7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
8 I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols.
9 Behold, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
I tell you of them.”
For the five weeks leading to Easter, we’re dipping into passages from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. We’re doing this to teach through the new tagline for our church, which says this: “Our church exists to see the weak, wounded, and wayward enjoy the living Jesus.” When I say it’s new, it’s so new many of you might not have heard us say it before, and the rest of you might have only heard it for the first time last week. So here we are. But how did we get here?
The statement “our church exists to see the weak, wounded, and wayward enjoy the living Jesus” came out of nine months of thinking and praying among the leaders of our church, both staff and volunteer pastors. For nine months, as we prayerfully thought about the mission that the Bible calls all churches to and what our church has been uniquely called to do, this statement is where we landed. And I’ll tell you this: I’m not a huge vision-mission-tagline guy, but when I saw on paper that statement—that our church exists to see the weak, wounded, and wayward enjoy the living Jesus—it was the first time I felt like I could say, “Yeah, that right there—that statement—is what I’m trying to do as I preach.” The statement was like a tuning fork brought near to my heart, causing passions for ministry and preaching to reverberate. I hope over these next five weeks, it does the same for you.
The first word in our passage this morning is “Behold” (Isa. 42:1). It’s a command to slow down and look up. Through the prophet Isaiah, it’s as though God tells us to put our phones down and listen to him with our face. God wants us to know that the joy of the living Jesus is for the wounded. It’s for us.
The Needs of the Wounded
I’ve been competing in sports for the last thirty years—sometimes at the recreational level, sometimes at the competitive level, and most recently only as a dad who’s trying to beat the version of me last the previous week. Over this time, I’ve learned a little about injuries. I’ve become a decent amateur judge of how long a certain injury might keep an athlete sidelined. I have a decent sense of how long it takes for a lightly sprained ankle to heal (four weeks, not four months) and how long it takes for broken ribs to heal (four months, not four weeks).
But how long does it take to heal from various kinds of abuse? If your former church treated you badly, and you show up here, is that like a five-month injury? If you go through the trauma of divorce or widowhood, is that like a five-year injury? I suppose the answer is, It depends.
Over the last decade of pastoral ministry, I’ve learned that while I can sort of guess how long a sport’s injury might need to heal, my guess about the time needed to heal from abuse was always too short. I’ll say it differently. When I was a younger pastor, I’d find myself looking at the spiritual equivalent of a broken arm and thinking, “Yeah, that will heal in a week or two,” when in reality it takes far longer to recover.
The book of Isaiah does not treat the wounds of God’s people lightly. God does not treat the wounds of his people lightly (cf. Jer. 6:14).
We don’t know the exact circumstances around Isaiah’s prophesy in chapter 42. Isaiah was in ministry a long time, and many of the passages are not dated, like ours, so it can be difficult to say specifically what was happening. But the first verse of the first chapter of the book gives us more context for the whole book. We read this in Isaiah 1:1,
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
These kings tell a story; they give insights into the social and spiritual milieu in which they inhabited. Just as the mention of Washington or Lincoln or Nixon or Trump bring certain images to mind, the mention of these kings should bring images to mind. This list of kings also tells us that Isaiah had a long ministry, some sixty years from 740 BC to at least 681 BC (“the year King Uzziah died” in 6:1 to the death of Sennacherib in mentioned in 37:38). A lot happened during those years. There were a few times of prosperity and peace but, on the whole, there was turmoil, especially amongst the surrounding nations. For example, around 721 BC—so more or less in the middle of his ministry—the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and taken into exile.
I say all of this to point out that the people of God were wounded; to use the words of the passage, they were bruised and smoldering. Their light—which was supposed to be this burning and shining torch that the nations could see, and the nations would walk in the light as it streamed from Israel—well, that light, it was almost extinguished. It barely flickered. There were just embers left. Inside the nation there was infighting and idolatry, and outside there were wars and rumors of wars and massive cultural shifts.
And it’s into this context, a wounded context, that a promise is whispered to Isaiah. Look with me at what is said in 42:3 about the coming Messiah:
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench . . .
Growing up, I had some friends who had a small lake near their backyard. And I remember playing with what we called cattails that grew along the edges, or what this passage calls reeds. You see reeds throughout Wildwood, if you’ve ever walked that path around the lake. In the winter, reeds dry out becoming hollow and brittle. The tops get fuzzy, at least when they are, what I’ll call, ripe. We’d break off the end of a reed and throw them in the air, and fuzz would fly everywhere like a dandelion, and they’d hit the ground or the rocks. Tim and Dan, and I would play with these reeds as if they were exploding grenades. And we’d use the reeds as swords. But you know what would happen to these reeds, these swords and grenades as we would play with them? They would break. They’re just not all that strong. They became flimsy, especially when they got a little crack in them, or, you might say, especially when they got bruised. Once that happens, it’s easy to know what to do next: you throw it away and get a new one. You start over. You don’t worry about it. It’s just not strong enough. Besides, there are a thousand more where this one came from.
There are many ways to become bruised. Many of us have read or at least heard about the evil abuse done by Ravi Zacharias. He was, so we thought, a respectable Christian teacher. It turns out, he used his fame and power for sexual abuse. We’re all aware at least vaguely of this same abuse in the Catholic church, abuse that even took place here in Harrisburg. An article from last February in the New York Times said that the Harrisburg diocese declared bankruptcy “to seek protection from creditors as it faces tens of millions of dollars in outstanding claims from people who were sexually abused by clergy members.” Sexual abuse is not merely an issue in the Catholic church. Two years ago the Houston Chronicle reported on issues of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest protestant denomination in the world. And perhaps some of you followed the reporting by Julie Roys in World Magazine about Harvest church and the abuse of leadership by their former lead pastor James McDonald.
And on and on we could go, perhaps with some cases hitting closer to home. I think of a ministry friend of mine who, along with other staff, addressed with pointed questions the verbal and emotional abuse of one of the leaders of a large church. The staff was dismissed and forced to sign an NDA, a “non-disclosure agreement.” In other words, they told my friend to take money and not talk about it. He was newly married and had bought a home. It all happened so fast. There are many ways to become bruised.
Some of you were exposed to pornography at an early age. Others grew up with a belligerent father, and now every time a man raises his voice, you become disproportionally afraid. Some of you have loved ones who have committed suicide. Perhaps your local business was steamrolled by a larger corporation. Some of you suffer with chronic illness. And all of us, to one degree or another, struggled with aspects of the last year related to Covid. There are many ways to become bruised.
One of my sisters is adopted; she was actually, before her adoption, my cousin. When she was a baby, while she slept in her crib, her mother was murdered in the room next door. I think I was about ten when we adopted her, and for a time I member being afraid at night. There are many ways to become bruised.
My friend Chris Thomas, an Australian pastor, recently wrote in an article these words about his adopted son: “My son’s brain was irreparably damaged due to exposure to alcohol in his mother’s womb. In the place where he was being knit together, a place that is designed to hide the vulnerable from harm, he could not escape the poison his mother drank in attempt to hide from her own pain. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder means that as his body adapts to the teenage years, his brain lags far behind.” There are many ways to become bruised.
Some of you are listening, and, to be candid, you’re a tuff guy who thinks all this talk of bruising and being wounded is not for you. Maybe. But a few of you might also need to be asked this question: If you are so tuff, why does everyone in your life—everyone at your work, everyone at your home—have to treat you with mittens? If you’re so tuff, why does your family need to walk on eggshells around you? It might be because you’re wounded, not tuff. To protect yourself you’ve become a snapping turtle; you can’t let anyone see your soft side or know your heart. There are many ways to become bruised.
In fact, in Romans 8, we read that not only people but all creation groans under the futility that creation has been subjected to because of sin (Rom. 8:22).
What is God to do with wounded people like us? Should he just throw us away? If you have a plastic grocery bag from Giant or Target that bag gets a rip in it, you don’t save it. You don’t try and fix a plastic grocery bag. You throw it away and get a new one. There are a billion other grocery bags. Don’t waste time duct-taping an old, ruined bag.
Well, our savior is not like that.
The Strength of Our Healer
In Isaiah 42 we read about the strong compassion of our healer. You see, when Isaiah writes that a bruised reed he will not break, it’s not that he can’t break the reed. He could break us; our savior is strong. We are like wounded hummingbirds in the open paw of a lion. God could crush us with no effort. Or he can set us down underneath him and protect us while we heal, which is what he does. Look again at vv. 1 and 6,
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. . . . 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 . . .
This Messiah is no ordinary person. The Messiah is in a special relationship with the Lord. Behold the five statements about their relationship. The Lord considers the Messiah his servant. The Lord upholds the Messiah. The Lord chooses the Messiah. The Lord delights in the Messiah. The Lord puts his Spirit upon the Messiah. This Messiah is no ordinary person. Our healer is both gentle and strong. And in his strength, he brings justice to distant nations without getting tired of being gracious. Look at v. 4.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged, / till he has established justice in the earth; / and the coastlands wait for his law. (v. 4)
Those words about justice and law probably don’t communicate to you what they should. We hear “law,” and we think of the commands of God, the shoulds and should nots. But what is described here is a just society. It’s saying that war-torn villages will have peace. It’s saying no more sex trafficking. It’s saying the Messiah will bring a day when you don’t have to lock your door at night.
I’ve told many of you how excited I was for jury duty. My day in court finally came last week. I showed up at 8 am thinking I was the “second alternate.” I was not an alternate. I made the jury. And after seven hours of testimony, everyone left the room but us twelve jurors, and they made me the foreman. And through nearly four hours of intense deliberation, I lead a diverse group of strangers to the unanimous decision to do, what we all believed, was the right thing. Then I read the guilty statement six times to a room of fifty people while a man stared at me until he put his head down.
I came home twelve hours after I arrived at the courthouse, thankful for the way God had used me, but I also came home exhausted. I woke up the next day with one of the largest emotional letdowns I’ve ever had. I was sad and depressed. It took everything out of me.
And then I read again v. 4, and I smile. “He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth.” Our savior has the strength we don’t have. That’s a good thing. That’s what makes him our savior.
Conclusion
I mentioned sports injuries at the start of the sermon. While injuries are usually not the fault of the person who becomes injured, the person does have a responsibility in their recovery. A lightly strained hamstring might heal in six weeks if you treat it right. But it might not heal properly if you don’t do your part as an athlete. I assume there are parallels to other kinds of bruising. When a doctor prescribes treatment for you, that’s not busywork. When a physical therapist says to do something every day for twenty minutes, that’s not to hurt you, but to help you.
Because the living Jesus loves you and wants to restore your joy, he also wants to see you reading his Word every day, praying to him, and belonging in meaningful ways to Christian community. I’ll say that again. Because the living Jesus loves you and wants to restore your joy, he also wants to see you reading his Word every day, praying to him, and belonging in meaningful ways to Christian community. He wants you to participate in your healing. And for some, you might need Christian counseling. If so, there is no shame in that. For others, you feel like your heart hurts so bad, that the only thing you can do is come to church and just sit here. You only mouth the words as we sing so people don’t notice. Please know: that’s okay. A bruised reed he will not break. Jesus can make us whole again because he was wounded for us. Later in the book of Isaiah we come to chapter 53, which Pastor David will teach on Good Friday. We read that
[Jesus] was pierced for our transgressions; / he was crushed for our iniquities . . . / and with his wounds we are healed. (Isa. 53:4).
God loves you so much, he wants to make you whole again. And whatever healing is left undone in this life, will be perfected in the next. We have a wonderful savior.
I’ll invite the music team back up as we pray . . .
[1] Daniel Sillman and Kate Shellnutt, “Ravi Zacharias Hid Hundreds of Pictures of Women, Abuse During Massages, and a Rape Allegation, Christianity Today,” February 11, 2021, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/ravi-zacharias-rzim-investigation-sexual-abuse-sexting-rape.html.
[2] Michael Levenson, “Pennsylvania Diocese, Facing More Abuse Claims, Files for Bankruptcy,” New York Times, February 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/pennsylvania-church-sexual-abuse-victims.html.
[3] Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, “Abuse of Faith,” Houston Chronicle, February 10, 2019, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/Southern-Baptist-sexual-abuse-spreads-as-leaders-13588038.php.
[4] Julie Roys, “Hard times at Harvest,” World Magazine, December 13, 2018, https://world.wng.org/2018/12/hard_times_at_harvest.
[5] Christ Thomas, “Hide and Seek,” The Ploughman’s Rest, March 11, 2021, https://ploughmansrest.com/blog/2021/3/11/hide-and-seek.
