Isaiah 42:10-17 - A New Song for All Peoples

Let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 42.

Isaiah 42 · chapter mention

If you have a church Bible in front of you and prefer to turn there, you can go to page 638.

638, and you'll find Isaiah, chapter 42.

Isaiah 42 · chapter mention

We're going to be looking at verses 10 through 17, and I'd like to read it and then pray.

Sing a new song to the Lord.

Sing his praise from the ends of the earth.

You who go down to the sea with all that fills it.

You coast in islands with your inhabitants.

Let the desert and its city shout, the settlements where Kadar dwells cry aloud.

Let the inhabitants of Sila sing for joy.

Let them cry out from the mountaintops.

Let them give glory to the Lord and declare his praise in the coast and islands.

The Lord advances like a warrior, he stirs up his zeal like a soldier.

He shouts, he roars aloud, he prevails over his enemies.

I have kept silent from ages past.

I've been quiet and restrained myself, but now I will groan like a woman in labor, gasping breathlessly.

I will lay waste mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation.

I will turn rivers into islands and dry up marshes.

I will lead the blind by a way they did not know.

I will guide them on paths they have not known.

I will turn darkness to light in front of them and rough places into level ground.

This is what I will do for them and I will not abandon them.

They will be turned back and utterly ashamed those who trust in an idol and say to a cast image you are our gods.

Let's pray, fathers, we hear this word.

We pray that you would present yourself in all of your glory to us, so that we may take up this song, a song of praise to you, and we ask this in Christ's name, amen.

In June 1982, I was stationed in England and joined some friends of mine at a Queen concert at Milton Keyes Bowl.

It was an outdoor concert gathering together about 65,000 people.

One of the defining moments near the end of the concert was when Freddie Mercury, the lead singer for the group, walked to the front of the stage and led all of us in a song we Will, we Will Rock you.

And we sang it together.

There was no rehearsal, there was just a sea of strangers all gathered together to sing this one song, and that moment captures something that is very deeply human for all of us, across cultures and generations.

We sing together.

There's a lot of things that we sing together.

We sing at concerts, we laugh and sing at karaoke nights, military marches, national anthems, even countrywide songs.

They give us a sense of collective identity in one way or another.

Sometimes we find unity of voice in protest songs or team songs or school chants.

All of these things are expressions of unity and celebration in some way, and they awaken within us a knowledge that we're not alone.

We join our voices together, that there's something in the melody that reverberates belonging within us.

And here in Isaiah, chapter 42, isaiah taps into that impulse and the prophet doesn't call for a soloist.

Isaiah 42 · chapter mention

He invites the coastlands and the wilderness and the mountains and the sea to erupt in song.

Why?

Because a servant has come.

We looked at this last week, but I'd like for us to rehearse this a little bit and just look back and read together what Isaiah starts out with in this chapter.

He introduces the servant to us in the first four verses.

This is my servant, I strengthen him, this is my chosen one, I delight in him, I put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.

He will not cry out or shout or make his voice heard in the streets, he will not break a bruised reed and he will not put out a smoking wick.

He will faithfully bring justice.

He will not grow weak or discouraged until he's established justice on the earth, the coast and the islands will wait for his instruction.

And after introducing this servant to us, the next verses commission that servant.

This is what God, the Lord, says.

I want you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the nations, in order to open blind eyes and bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.

I am the Lord.

That is my name, and I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.

The past events have indeed happened.

Now I declare new events.

I announce them to you before they occur.

Now I declare new events.

I announce them to you before they occur.

So why this song?

From coastland to seas, to mountaintops, to deserts?

Because the servant of the Lord has come, the proclamation of this one who's going to bring God's purposes into this world, who's going to show the tender mercies of God's heart, who's going to be showing how justice is established, the one who's going to be the covenant for the people and the one who's going to restore that which is broken and lost, and so when God moves with this redemptive power, the only fitting response is a worldwide song of praise.

Believing people all over lift up their voice.

And what Freddie Mercury and Queen catalyzed in a stadium that I went to some 40 years ago, for only a few minutes Isaiah speaks about and envisions as an eternal chorus, and not just in a little stadium, but everywhere.

It's something not manufactured by men, but summoned from heaven itself, and so this morning I want us to look at this, and we're going to find it in three movements.

We're going to begin with praise and then proclamation and then promise, and we're going to notice that these three things complement and highlight the work of the servant song in the first part of Isaiah 42.

Let's begin with praise.

In verses 10 to 12, we're called to praise, and it's in many ways a beautiful passage of Scripture, and I want to highlight a couple things here.

One is it's first of all and I want to highlight a couple things here One is it's first of all, an unprecedented song.

It's an unprecedented song, you notice, in verse 10, here sing a new song to the Lord.

Well, what's new about it, you might be asking, and there's several things that we could say that it might be, but I want to start off by saying what it isn't first.

First of all, isaiah in chapter 42 and verse 10 is not offering us a proof text to churches to be continually adding new songs to the corporate number of songs that we sing together.

He's not doing that Now.

There's nothing wrong with that.

We sang a new song this morning.

Many of us sang a song a few minutes ago that we had never sung before, and we increase that number of songs that we sing as a church slowly and methodically and purposely, year by year.

But that's not what Isaiah is talking about here.

Others say that we should sing new songs for new mercies that arise within our life, that there is a way that God has acted today that he didn't act yesterday for us personally and we should elicit from us some new praise, and that is absolutely right.

Our responses should be as equally varied as God's mercies are, and they are wonderfully new every morning.

But again, that's not what Isaiah is talking about here.

What Isaiah means when he says lift up a new song is that he's talking about singing a song that the world has never sung before A song of jubilation, a song about a servant who's come to bring redemption to this world that's been introduced and commissioned in the life of this servant.

Now, this is a song that really ought to have been sung before.

There really should have been Psalm 96, which we looked at together just a moment ago.

The people of Israel were to sing a new song to the Lord and let the whole earth sing to the Lord.

But instead of declaring the glory of the Lord, the people of Israel often went to the other nations and asked them how to sing songs to their idols, and they joined together with them in that syncretistic worship.

But here Isaiah is seeing the servant has come and instead of the people of Israel singing solos, instead of them singing syncretistically with the nations about other gods, what we find is a complement of all the world joined together in a new song that the Jew and Gentile together.

There is the message of life and redemption and forgiveness.

It's a song sung because it's a new, new message for this world, but it's also, as I've indicated, a song sung by people that have never sung the songs of Yahweh before.

As God's redemptive purposes unfold in human history through the servant who's coming, all people all over the world will take up this new song and give it voice like they've never done before.

And so in 1983, just a year after 1982, in that concert where I sang we Will Rock you with 65,000 other people, god, in His wondrous mercy, took a young airman, transformed his heart and I began to sing songs I had never sung before.

I sang.

Christ is the solid rock on which I stand, and I didn't just sing in an outdoor arena of 65,000 people.

My voice joined with a multitude all over this earth, and not just in this generation, but everyone since Christ rose from the dead.

Christ rose from the dead.

This is the wonder that we have an anthem of praise to the Messiah, not only of the Jews, but to all people.

And this is why I wanted to highlight just a little bit more this glorious song of praise.

It's not just an unprecedented song, it's a universal song, and this is the focus that these verses give to us.

This passage highlights this summons for a global celebration, an eruption of a new song from every corner that covers sea and desert and canyons and villages and mountaintops.

Now notice a few things here.

First of all, the geographic spread.

It begins with a call for the whole earth, the ends of the earth, in verse 10.

Now imagine you will, isaiah, some grand conductor, as he speaks to the orchestra of the world and he calls the whole world to lift up its voice in song.

And as the music begins, isaiah begins to move over to the wind section and he says those who go down to the sea, all that fills it.

And then he moves over to the brass section and he says the islands and their inhabitants.

And then he looks over at the percussions and asks them to sort of lift up their sound amid the symphony.

And he says the deserts and its cities.

And then he looks to the string instruments and says you who play on the mountaintops, join in the song.

But it's not just a geographic spread, it's an ethnic diversity that's here.

Notice the number of names that are listed.

He talks about Kadar, he talks about Salah, he talks about the islands.

Kadar was the nomadic Ishmaelite tribes in Arabia and their tents and their flocks took them away from the place of worship in Jerusalem.

Silah is modern-day Petra, the Edomites, the capital city of that place, entangled into the hills southeast of Jerusalem.

And then the islands Tyre and Sidon come quickly to mind when we talk about that.

But this isn't just a geographical description and it's not just an ethnic diversity.

It is something that all of them have in common.

All of them are people condemned but now invited.

And if we've been paying attention to the book of Isaiah, these names are familiar to us.

We've heard about Kadar, we've heard about Salah, we've heard about the islands Tyre and Sidon, and so the invitation finds its greatest importance here, because this invitation to praise is a message of the good news that even those who were previously under judgment are now able to sing the song of salvation.

The sea and the mountaintops Well, isaiah has talked about both the sea and the mountaintops.

He said that Mount Zion will be the highest of the mountains among all the mountains in the world.

What was he talking about?

Well, obviously, mount Zion is not the tallest mountain in the world, but it is the highest place of praise to God, because the high places is where they would worship.

The sea the sea was emblematic of chaos and destruction.

The sea the sea was emblematic of chaos and destruction, and he says that the sea will be a place of order, a place of joy and not fear.

Tyre and Sidon the inhabitants of the coastlands In Isaiah 23,.

A pronouncement concerning Tyre.

Wail ships of Tarshish, for your haven has been destroyed.

A message of doom, but now a message of invitation.

The Edomites in Isaiah 34 and verse 5.

When my sword is drunk, it's filled in the heavens.

It will then come down on Edom and on the people I've set apart for destruction.

The people of Edom are now called to sing Kadar.

In Isaiah 21 and verse 16,.

The Lord has said this to me within one year as a hired worker counts years all of the glory of Kadar will be gone.

Those warnings have now shifted to welcome these people who were once under God's wrath are now under God's summon to joyful hope.

And then all the nations Isaiah 34, 2,.

The Lord is angry with all the nations, furious with all their enemies.

He will set them apart for destruction, giving them over to slaughter.

But now judgment is given way to grace.

Now the servant, as he's come, is opening up a global transformation.

And so, when we read all of this together, what we're reading is a new song that's envisioned, in which there will be, if I can put it this way, a doxological revolution.

There will be a whole group of people all over the world singing something that's never been sung in this world before Praise to God for his deliverance, with united voices, from deserts to seas, from stronghold to rebellion, to heights of revelation.

Every voice is summoned to cry out in praise to God because it's a hymn of new beginnings.

It's a vision of worship that's broken down geographical and ethnic and sin barriers, so that we can unite our hearts all over the world.

Jesus said to a woman in samaria who had told him he said well, we worship on this mountain and you say you must worship in jerusalem.

And he said I want you to hear something.

The day is coming and has now arrived when the Father is seeking out true worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth, and it won't be confined to this mountain or to that mountain, it's going to be all over the world.

Jesus came and he brought this prophecy song into reality.

That's why it's a new song, that's the newness of the new song.

And this is not just a geographical expression of praise, it's an eschatological expression of praise.

You go to the book of Revelation and you find in the eternal heavens, above all of the chaos of this earth, in the peaceable, joyous place of the throne, room of God, people singing and what are they singing?

I saw a vast multitude from every nation, tribe and people and language which no man could number Sorry, freddie Mercury, god's got you beat Standing before the throne and before the Lamb, and they were clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and they cried out with a loud voice Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.

This is a new song, a new song for a new era, because a servant has come.

You know, when we sing songs, we often can't sing them because we're not a part of it.

At the end of that concert, freddie Mercury led the group in another song God Save the Queen.

I didn't sing that song, but here's a song that no people, no person if they're believing in the Lord would ever feel foreign to, because this is our song, it's all of our song, and it doesn't matter where we were born, it doesn't matter what accent we have, it doesn't matter what shade our skin is, it doesn't matter what economic peg we have on the scale, it doesn't matter how educated we are, it doesn't matter a wit, it doesn't matter if we grew up worshiping idols or sitting under the sound of evangelical preaching, a believing heart, wherever it's at, joins into this song, because it's all of our songs.

We proclaim this message.

But, church, I want to say something to us.

This is not just a song of praise, it's not just music we're talking about here.

This is mission, this is our message of mission.

Jesus, before he left this world, in the ascension, said that there was going to be a proclamation about him to all the nations.

Go, therefore, teach all nations.

And so the gospel spread in Acts, chapter one.

It speaks about it from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

You see, this is not only a message that the servant brings in, a message that we sing, it's a message that we proclaim.

It's a message that we proclaim because it's mission as much as it is music, and our mission should have the lilt of song to it, a joyful heart and voice who's felt and senses the eternal forgiveness of God, singing to people under the condemnation and guilt of their sin and telling them and inviting them in see the servant.

He can make all things new and he can make you new too.

Paul, when he preached the gospel to the Gentiles, connected himself to this very, very servant song, this one and one that we'll look at in Isaiah 49.

In Isaiah 49, in verse 6, the Lord speaks to the servant and says it's not enough for you to be my servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel.

I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.

That's Isaiah 49.6.

Simeon, in Luke, chapter 2, when he spoke about the baby Jesus, said this is a light of revelation to the nations.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And then, when Paul, in Acts, chapter 13, took up the voice of the gospel and began to proclaim it to people that weren't Jewish, to speak it to the Gentiles, he said about himself I have made you a light to the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

You see, this movement is pivotal.

Why are we still here?

So that others could join the chorus, so people might see our glad celebration of God in Christ bringing us life and forgiveness, so that they could feel and sense and understand, through our testimony and our praise, that they too could be a part of this global movement of life.

The servant has come and he's bringing praise around this world.

And as the day dawned on this Sunday, as it awakened for each of the passing movements around this globe, people in every, every time zone, began to lift up their hearts.

And we're just simply a part of that great wave, aren't we?

Well, this praise turns to proclamation in verse 13.

The Lord advances like a warrior, he stirs up his zeal like a soldier.

He shouts, he roars aloud, he prevails over his enemies, and I'm sure this could have been a great deal of comfort to those who were surrounded by their enemies.

Isaiah speaking to his generation, isaiah speaking about a future generation that would be captive in Babylon.

And so to hear the message that the Lord is advancing like a warrior, that he's stirring up his zeal like a man of war, well, they've trembled under the iron of Assyrian Babylon, and boy wouldn't it be great if Assyrian Babylon could tremble under the iron of the Lord.

And boy wouldn't it be great if Assyria and Babylon could tremble under the iron of the Lord.

But the Lord is warring, not for conquest, not for dominance, but for justice and redemption.

He's not risen like a warrior.

He's risen like a warrior Because of imperial hunger.

He's risen as a warrior with redemptive purpose, and this is why he sent his servant To reveal the tender mercies of God, to establish justice and make people right in this world, in order to be a covenant for the people, in order to restore that which is broken and wrong.

You see, he's marching mightily as a warrior, not in order to squash people, but to save them.

He shouts, yes, he roars, but remember he's also the same servant that verse 2 says he will not cry out or shout aloud in the streets.

And this is the wondrous paradox of God's power.

He makes light of the powers of this world in the establishment of his weakest moment.

When the rulers of this world had crucified the Lord Jesus on the cross, they sat there with smug face, thinking they had won.

They sat there with smug face, thinking they had won, but they had just nailed their doom Because God wasn't finished, because in Jesus' weakest moment, death, he destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

And through death he's made dead people alive.

And in his death he came and took up his life and demonstrated his power over death itself.

The true king has risen not to crush but to redeem, and his roar is a shout of deliverance.

And it will prevail.

It will prevail, as Isaiah here speaks about in this proclamation.

It's a promise.

Whatever rises up against the servant in that generation, in the day of Christ himself or in our generation, it will not overcome, it will not prevail.

Be it idolatry or injustice or nationalistic fervor or the domineering of a dictator, they will not prevail.

They will not overcome the purposes of God to bring redemption to people all over the world.

And so, as believers, we don't have to cower in fear when this world is filled with iniquity.

We don't have to hole up and wait and just say come now, lord Jesus, quit.

It's really horrible here, no, we stand as sheep led to a slaughter, yes, but in everything we're more than conquerors, through him who loved us, because his victory is not dependent on favorable conditions.

His victory is dependent upon his very character to keep His promise.

And he will.

And that leads us to the last section.

Here, this song of praise, the statement of proclamation by Isaiah himself, is now God adds His voice, god adds a voice of promise in verses 14 to 17.

I have kept silent from ages past.

I have been quiet and restrained myself, but now I will groan like a woman in labor, gasping breathlessly.

I will groan like a woman in labor gasping breathlessly.

Royals had the privilege of being in rooms where those sounds have echoed all four walls and even beyond.

As a labor and delivery nurse, I've had the opportunity twice to go into those rooms and heard my own wife make her cries.

And if I told her, like look, you're being a little loud, I'm not sure I would have been in the room very much longer.

She couldn't help but make a voice when the time came.

And here the Lord uses that as a metaphor about silence and yet shouting.

2000 BC thereabouts.

Think about that.

4000 years ago, god speaks to one man, one solitary soul on this earth, and he says to him I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.

And from that point in time, 4,000 years ago, there were little episodes of revelation and understanding of the peoples who began to see God at work among the children of this man, abraham.

There was a movement here or there, an awakening by a Pharaoh, a discovery by a Rahab, an understanding by a Ruth, pockets here and pockets there, but still the voice was quiet to the nations, most of them gone on in their ignorance, continuing to worship the idols that they had done, thinking little of the people of Israel, largely because of the way they acted.

The voice of revelation was quiet as generations of people came and left, as they stumbled through time and entered into eternity.

But God's restraint wasn't indifference, it was preparation purpose.

And the labor pains would soon come when the eruption of this action of God would unveil itself, of this action of God would unveil itself.

And so, in the book of Galatians, when the time came to completion, god sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that they might receive the adoption as sons.

The time has come for God to shout.

The time has come for God to shout.

The time has come for him to say the birthing is happening, the awakening is here.

The nations are to hear.

The people waited.

They waited in hope for the day would come when there would be one who could fully, fully represent the purposes of God in this world, the one who could declare, fully, embody even the very tender mercies and heart of God, the one who could be and bring justice, the one who himself would be a covenant, keeping promise for the people, the one who would be able to restore that which is broken.

And so when Jesus came into this world, he was all of that.

And now the song is awakening and the chorus is rising and the symphony is here, because the orchestra is now playing, and it's playing in the mountaintops and the valleys and the coastlands and the deserts, and it's playing with these people and those, because all of us can now sing a song of redemption, because this servant has come, and he comes with the threads of thought of a new exodus, and not just the people of Israel from the clutches of Egypt, but from those who are ensnangled in the domain of darkness, into the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, this one who's delivered us from the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who's now working in the children of disobedience, those of us who have been willing captives, carrying out our fleshly desires and the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, by nature children of wrath, who now can say by the grace of God, we're children of the living God.

This is why he says I'll lead the blind by a way they did not know.

I will guide them on paths they've not known.

I will turn darkness to light in front of them, in rough places, into level ground.

Is God leading you into new places of light?

Is he directing your steps into new wonders of his mercy and grace?

Are you still plodding through life thinking that you'll get by by your own ingenuity or perhaps luck or circumstance?

Here the Lord says that he will take you and he'll bring you into unfamiliar places, but he'll be alongside you all the way Paul used this metaphor in 2 Corinthians.

For our gospel is veiled.

It's veiled to those who are perishing In their case.

The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

We're not proclaiming ourselves, but Jesus is Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

For God said let light shine out of darkness.

Has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

This is all good news, but we have to look at the passage one more time, because the promises of God come with a very deep and important and vital sense of reality Verse 15.

I will lay waste mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation.

I will turn rivers into islands and dry up their marshes verse 17 they will be turned back and utterly ashamed those who trust in an idol and say to a cast image you are our gods.

When the servant comes, he's going to expose humanity.

We're all going to be divided into two groups.

We're not going to be divided up into our geographical settlements, our ethnic identity.

We're going to be left into two groups.

Those who were once blind but are now led to light by God are those who continue to persist in that darkness and will be left to face the consequences of their refusal.

The scriptures tell us here that in the face of God's advance, any false hope will fail and it will crumble and it will come under judgment.

But Isaiah invites us to lay down these lesser and false hopes and to come to the one who promises us all of this.

And so this song, this song sings because the servant moves and Isaiah, chapter 42, verses 10 to 17, takes us into a breathtaking movement of God with global praise, and it swells with Isaiah's proclamation of how God is going to act and prevail.

Isaiah 42:10–17

And then it lands with God himself joining voice with unshakable promise.

And when the servant comes, his coming may, yes, be quiet in the beginning, but it won't stay that way.

It's going to reverberate all around the world, so that those in the deserts and the mountaintops and the islands and the seas will know it, because when the servant comes, the silence will begin to sing and the stillness will begin to roar and the blindness will find itself in glorious heavenly light.

You see, this is not just prophetic poetry, it's gospel, it's a message of good news, it's a movement of God's redemptive purposes, and whenever this servant moves in hearts, praise breaks out.

We can't help but sing, and so I want to make an appeal to each of us in several different ways.

Perhaps you're here this morning, and this is the first time you've ever heard this message before this invitation to a song that you've never sung before, there was a day when I sat in a pew and I heard someone speak, just as I'm doing right now, and for the very first time in my life, something awakened within my heart to move toward God instead of away from him, and to understand something about him that I needed, because I had a realization in my heart that I was a sinner like I had never understood it before and I needed to know if there was any hope for me, because I knew God was God and I wasn't, and he was a judge and I wouldn't be able to stand before him with any excuse that would prevail.

Perhaps you're here in that same position.

Hear these words the servant has come to take the blind and lead them to light, to take those who are lost and lead them down a pathway.

And he promises not to do it for any other reason, but because he wants to.

You see, he's not over here saying the only way you can come to me is if you possess light.

He grants it, he gives it.

So what do you need to do?

Realize that you're in darkness, realize your path is wandering, realize you are in disobedience, and turn to the one who is life and light and say be my Lord and Savior.

May this servant, jesus Christ, be my life.

Perhaps you've been coming to church for a long time.

Maybe you grew up in this church, maybe you're still growing up in this church, but there's a difference between being familiar with church life, and even familiar with preaching, and understanding the newness of life in Jesus Christ.

You might know the lyrics of the songs of Zion.

You might know the rituals, you might know the language, but does your heart know the Savior?

You see, false hopes will not prevail before the Holy God.

He will bring down those who still cling to idols.

So if you're trusting in tradition or trusting in achievement, so if you're trusting in tradition or trusting in achievement, or trusting in moral behavior, or trusting in simply being around the church itself, it won't do it for you.

Instead, hear the warming, wrapping embrace of grace that's here.

That's here Again.

I want to point out for us that this song is tied to the servant's movement, and our movement is tied to the servant's movement, and our song is to be joined together with those around the world, because this is meant to be a global proclamation of praise.

This is a message of divine compassion and love and mercy, and if the Lord is going to stand and roar, we need to speak.

If he's going to lead, we must step out into those places, because the mission of the gospel is not an option.

It's the very heartbeat of God himself.

It's right here.

And so we're not here to build safe sanctuaries for ourself, but we are to step out and to carry the victorious song of grace in every place around this world, and it's something we do together, sending people like Kevin and Sarah out on the other side of the world, chad or Emily or others.

It's also something we do.

We sing the song of grace among a dying people that we work with and live among and meet or even live with in our home.

But I also want to say something to those of us who are perhaps weary, feeling the silence of heaven, the neglect of hope, discouraged, perhaps.

Listen to what the Lord says here.

Discouraged, perhaps, listen to what the Lord says here.

I have kept silent from ages past and I've been quiet, restrained myself, but now I will groan.

God's silences are not God's desertions.

The quietness of revelation over the course of thousands of years was not God's neglect of this world, but God's preparation for a crescendo of grace.

And if that's something on a global scale, you better believe it's something on a personal level as well.

There are things in our life that we don't understand, seasons that seem to be long, full of waiting and wanting and weariness.

We groan for that day.

But the scriptures tell us that this is an experience of life in the complex of this world, in which the new creation is interjected but the old is still here.

And so we live in the midst of this tension of the already, but the not yet.

But the scriptures tell us that the day is going to come, when there's going to be a revealing of the revelation of the sons of God, in which the whole creation is going to feel a liberation from that captivity, and all who wait and long and hope for that day will sing the song of victory as well.

So yes, we wait, and yes it's weary, and yes it feels at times like silence.

But just as the world waited for the coming of the servant in its first revelation, so the world still waits in anticipation for that coming day of the full revelation of Jesus Christ himself.

And when that revelation comes, the new heaven and the new earth will come ablaze with life and light and all of these things.

As Paul said, I consider the sufferings of this present time to not be worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed within us.

So if you're here this morning, waiting, weary, wounded, so if you're here this morning, waiting, weary, wounded, just wait with hope.

You're not forgotten.

The Lord will again cry out with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise and we will be caught up together with him to meet the Lord in the air.

Let's pray, father, may our voice join together now in song to you.

I pray, father, that this might be for some in this room the first time they've sang from the heart a song of salvation, because you've awakened them in this moment to first time they've sang from the heart a song of salvation, because you've awakened them in this moment to turn to the Savior, to flee from sin and to flee to Christ, to turn away from those things that they've held as dear and precious in order to have Christ in him alone.

Pray, father, that you might be able to cause the weary to be strengthened with an understanding of your glorious promise and to sing with greater voice in this next song than they sang in the previous ones we've lifted.

And, lord, I pray that as we exit this place in just a few moments, may we leave with a song in our heart that strengthens our steps and reverberates with redemption, so that others might see and understand and look and wonder and ask what is the hope that resides within you, and may we, with reverence and gentleness, speak of Christ, our Savior, the servant who's come, and we pray this in Christ's name Amen.