08/23/2026 - "Gentleness" (Isaiah 42:1-4)

You can watch the sermon here.

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Scripture: Isaiah 42:1-4

But here is my servant, the one I uphold; my chosen, who brings me delight.

I’ve put my spirit upon him; he will bring justice to the nations.

He won’t cry out or shout aloud or make his voice heard in public.

He won’t break a bruised reed; he won’t extinguish a faint wick, but he will surely bring justice.

He won’t be extinguished or broken until he has established justice in the land.

The coastlands await his teaching.

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I grew up in a military family. Both of my grandfathers were officers in the Air Force; one of them as an air traffic controller, while the other was a pilot and electronics expert. My dad and mom were both Air Force brats who later became officers themselves. They actually met while they were deployed to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of Operation: Desert Storm, and to this day they joke that they’re one of the only couples they know that met while wearing the exact same outfit. And while my dad separated from the Air Force when he married my mom, my mom didn’t separate until she was seven months pregnant with me.

So I avoided actually being an Air Force brat myself by about three months.

But the military lifestyle still ended up creeping into my life in small ways even though I wasn’t raised directly in it. For example, whenever my parents needed to communicate in front of my brother and I without us figuring out what they meant, they didn’t just spell the words. They used the military phonetic alphabet so we couldn’t even tell what they were spelling. Our digital clocks growing up were also set to 24 hour clocks, also known as military time. And to this day I have my phone set to military time because that’s just what I was used to growing up.

And we all have this, habits we take from our families of origin into our lives. We can assume that they’re normal and believe that they’re the best way to do things, because that’s what we were raised with. Sometimes, like with me using military time, we hold onto them because they bring us comfort and connection to how we were raised, and it doesn’t hurt anything or anyone.

And sometimes they’re habits we stop once we’re out in the world, like the fact that I do not make my bed using hospital corners because who actually has time for that?

But as we go through life our beliefs and assumptions and habits become challenged. We learn, we grow, we change our minds, and we should become more intentional about what we hold onto and what we choose to let go. That includes our faith, our beliefs about God and the universe and humanity and so much more.

Our passage today comes from a span of time when the faith and beliefs and habits of the Hebrew people were getting challenged like they’d never had been before. While the book of Isaiah is often attributed to just the prophet Isaiah, some scholars think the book was actually written in stages over the course of three hundred years by prophets in the same school of thought. This is because there seems to be three distinct sections to the book - pre-exile, exile, and post-exile. The first thirty-nine chapters include prophecies about the kingdom of Judah being conquered by Babylon and sent into exile.

But then we have an almost 150 year time skip in chapter 40, because the language changes from future tense to present tense. In chapters 40-55, including our passage today, the prophesied exile is happening. The language has shifted from warnings and calls to repentance to lament and mourning for the situation that the people of Judah find themselves in.

A situation that, according to Scripture, was entirely of their own making because they weren’t following God.

Growing up, the lessons I learned the best tended to come with natural consequences of whatever I’d done or hadn’t done.

For instance, in college, putting off doing an assignment until the last minute often resulted in all nighters that got me a worse grade, and a following day of exhaustion and over-caffeination. I’m not gonna say how long it took me to actually learn that lesson, but I promise I did eventually learn it.

And the Hebrew people are learning an incredibly difficult lesson in their exile in Babylon, one that will stick with them. When the Hebrew people covenanted at Sinai to follow God, they also covenanted to create the type of culture and society that reflected God’s values.

God’s values of care for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the vulnerable, and laws that were meant to keep people from taking advantage of one another.

But they broke that covenant not only by not worshipping God, but also in not creating the culture of protection and care for the poor and vulnerable that God wanted them to live out. Instead they were following gods like Molech, who was often associated with child sacrifice.

So what were the consequences of them choosing to follow the gods of other kingdoms and people groups when they’d covenanted to follow God? They became the subjects of those kingdoms and were forcibly assimilated into those cultures.

They got what they wanted. God gave them what they wanted.

And it ended up costing them.

Because of this betrayal of the covenant, we might expect to hear some condemnatory language from God in the prophecies written here. Harsh monologues about how angry God is, how this is their punishment for messing up, and that they deserve it.

But that’s not what we get. Instead this section opens in chapter 40 verse 1 saying:

“Comfort, comfort my people! Says your God. Speak compassionately to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her compulsory service has ended, that her penalty has been paid…”

The laments and mourning and pain from their time in exile are framed by a hope that it’s coming to an end, and that there is someone coming to rescue them. And for those of us who are Christian, we see a double meaning in these verses, like our passage today from Isaiah 42. We see one meaning of the exile coming to an end, and one foretelling the arrival of Jesus Christ on earth.

When somebody says the name “Jesus,” what do you picture?

Is it an image that your mind has made up after years of Sunday School lessons?

Is it a painting or sculpture or another artistic depiction of Christ?

What is Jesus doing in your mind’s eye?

Is he a little baby in a manger?

Is he teaching the crowds?

Is he healing people?

Is he on the cross?

Is he leaving an empty tomb?

Or is he just smiling?

We all have different ideas and conceptions of who Jesus is; parts of his life and ministry that we relate to more than others. They come from our life experience, our beliefs and assumptions that we’ve been taught throughout our lives, either by Sunday School teachers and our parents, or by friends and spouses, or through our own reading.

And the Old Testament prophets describe Jesus in many ways, but most of them are descriptions like the one in our passage today. Someone who is gentle enough not to even bruise fragile reeds that need reinforcement, or extinguish weak candles that just need a little more help to burn bright. Someone who is kind, who brings forth justice with gentleness and care for those who have been hurt, and for those who have committed the harm. And if you look at Jesus’s life and ministry in the four Gospels, he does live out that kindness and gentleness, all the way until his crucifixion and resurrection. I think it’s often easier for us to think of Jesus as gentle and kind than it is to think of God as being gentle and kind.

We can see Jesus’s actions on earth as the gentle, tender actions that they are; his healing of the sick, his care for the poor and outcast, and calling children to come to him so he can bless them.

What we often associate with God is punishment, judgement, and a love that can quickly turn into wrath if we do or say the wrong thing.

Even if these are beliefs that we’ve interrogated and let go of, it can still show up in a tightening in our chest or the sinking of our stomachs when we realize we’ve messed up. Because we can think that we’re deserving of God’s wrath for the tiniest of infractions.

Because beliefs and habits and assumptions are hard to break.

And many of us grew up in churches and cultures that affirmed and reaffirmed that wrath.

I think we often forget that Jesus is how God chose to come to earth to dwell among us.

God could’ve chosen to come to earth as a warrior heaven-bent on righteous judgement, or a king instituting laws and demanding absolute obedience and perfection from all of God’s subjects.

But that’s not what God did. Instead, God came to earth as a baby, the son of a carpenter, who grew up into a kind rabbi who taught love, compassion, and justice with a soft voice and gentle hands.

The gentleness we see in Jesus is the same gentleness that exists in God.

Because Jesus is Immanuel, God with us.

One of the most famous Psalms, Psalm 23, describes God as a shepherd tending their flock, us, and gently caring for us both in life’s everyday moments and in crisis.

And it’s that same gentleness that God meets us with when we mess up, when we have to live with the consequences of ours or other’s actions.

That doesn’t mean we won’t be spared from the consequences of our actions - that’s a lack of accountability, not gentleness.

But it does mean that God isn’t out to get us for every single little mistake we make. Because God is not a drill sergeant in the military, scrutinizing us 24/7 for the smallest infractions so they can make us do a hundred push-ups in the mud.

God is the gentle voice that wouldn’t bruise a reed or extinguish a dim flame.

So the next time you feel like God is mad at you for a mistake you made or something that you did, take a deep breath. Instead of imagining God being angry with you, try imagining God pulling you into a hug while softly telling you that everything’s going to be okay. That you may have messed up, that you may have done something wrong, but it’s not the end of the world. There may be consequences you have to live with, but that doesn’t mean God has abandoned you because of what you’ve done.

God is still there, gently reminding you that there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God.

No matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, nothing can separate you from the love of God.