Our world is sorely in need of hope. There are multiple wars being waged that we can read about every day. There are a multitude of other skirmishes going on around the world that we don’t hear about, unless we go looking for them. We hear political opponents slandering one another nearly every day and it does not matter which side of the aisle you want to look at.

As we walk around our neighborhood or our jobs or even our churches, we hear people complaining about one thing of another. High prices. Someone offending another. Disagreements among people. And the complaint is always about someone else, pointing out that it is “their” fault. The “their” is sometimes specific and sometimes generic.

Well, we have hope, if we will hold on to it. God promised some eight hundred years before Jesus was born that he was providing our hope. In chapter 12, Matthew quotes from Isaiah, though it is a compilation of Isaiah 42:1-6 and 49:6. The full quote is in Matthew 12:18-21. The importance of this quote is to remind the Jews of the first century that God made the promise and Jesus fulfilled it. It is just as important for us today to remember that.

We see, in today’s passage, that God calls his Servant his beloved and that he is well pleased with Him. These are the same words we see in Matthew 3:17, which is the baptism of Jesus narrative. In the next line we see that God says he will put his Spirit on his Servant. In Matthew 3:16, it is recorded that the Spirit of God descended on Jesus as He came up out of the water as He was baptized. There is no denying that Isaiah was prophesying about the coming of Jesus.

The good news comes in the fourth line. God says Jesus will proclaim justice for the gentiles. A gentile is anyone who is not Jewish. The justice Jesus proclaims is the justice of God. It is the hope we have. God’s justice is Jesus going to the cross so we may be forgiven and have the hope of eternal life spent with him. It is not human justice. It is God’s merciful justice. For human justice would demand we be punished, but God’s justice is that Jesus took on the punishment we deserve.

Our hope is not only based on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It is also based on the promise God made eight hundred years earlier. God’s plan is far reaching and far beyond our understanding. Yet, our hope in his promises is a hope based on truth and an unbreakable foundation. The world needs to hear about this hope. The world needs to believe in this hope. We need to tell as many as we can about the hope we have in Jesus.

 

Matthew 12:18

Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, 

my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. 

I will put my Spirit upon him, 

and he will proclaim justice to the gentiles.