Isaiah 42:1-9, What We Behold

The Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42:1-9

Isaiah chapter 42, verses 1 to 9, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, and whom my soul delights. I put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law.

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. 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 and light for the nations to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I am the Lord. That is my name. My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare before they spring forth. I tell you of them.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. We become what we behold. I like to behold football. I miss football in the offseason. Of course here, this area with so many college basketball fans, this is the peak period.

This is the tournament going on. They can hardly look away. Basketball nearly every night. It's March Madness after all. A lot of kids though like to behold athletics of some kind. A lot of people of all kinds.

Usually though in this area, particularly basketball, yearn to be the next Michael Jordan or LeBron James. Now sure it can be, I think sports can be great entertainment. It can even keep you healthy if you do it.

Just watching it doesn't keep you healthy. But it can do that for a while. But if all you do is behold athletics, physical prowess, what happens when your body ages and declines? I know a runner around here striving to make it to the Boston Marathon.

He's pushing himself and arduous track workouts, going on long-distance runs. And it was going well for a while. He was progressing. He could see his goal. He was gonna get there and then he got injured.

Couldn't run. And all that work was for nothing. And that shook him to the core. It was everything to him. He said he felt like shooting himself on the head. If you behold athletics, you might become what you behold, a great athlete.

But sooner or later, your idol, your body will let you down. For others, it's money. It's business and how to get rich in it. They behold wealth. Their life is all about money-making. And so even when they're done working, making money for the day, they can't be distracted by anything else.

And so they got to watch the business channels. You know, that's why there are those business channels for people like that. When they get home after making their money, they can sit at home and watch more ideas on how to make more money.

They have no hobbies. They have no sports they like to watch. They have no real interest if they're professed Christians and learning the Bible, serving the church or seeking after God. What will happen to them when they're old, when they've got all the money they need, but the kids are gone, whom they hardly know because they spent their life chasing dollars.

They say they're Christians, but they hardly know the faith they claim to believe. They'll die the poorest people. Others in our culture, though, you behold the relationship, right? That's the thing. That's the meaning of life, they believe, having the soul mate.

Everything must serve that goal. And so we even have churches that sell themselves as having the keys that you need for that perfect relationship. Or maybe once you've had the relationship for a while, now it's the kids.

That's what it's all about. It's the kids. That's what you, that's what you look for. Whatever is good for the kids keeps them entertained. That determines maybe where you live, what church you go to.

I wonder, though, if kids conclude, hey, you know, hey, the family goes to the church that entertains me the best. Does that mean the church and God is all about my entertainment? We become what we behold.

And if we behold a God who is all about us, all about our entertainment, is it any wonder if we become self-absorbed people? All about us. Of course, the church should say, behold God. But do they know who God is?

That they present a picture of God, hopefully from his word, but they can pick and choose verses here and there. What is the picture of God they are presenting? What is it we're supposed to be beholding?

More pernicious, I think, than churches that are just compromised with culture, with our idols, serving those idols, is a religion that sounds zealous, that claims it's insistent that God comes first, that we are to behold God, and yet then puts out a portrait of God that is wrong.

It's just distorted. Maybe a God who conveniently supports our political agenda. It's not that nice. If the church is white, their God never seems to be much interested in racism or the concerns of minorities.

Their God never seemed much interested in them before, when there was sort of institutionalized racism, segregation, and slavery. He wasn't concerned about it then, and he wants us now, very conveniently, to forget all about it.

That bringing it up now is just divisive. It's in bad taste. Their God certainly isn't doing that. He isn't bringing that up. Maybe, though, if you're more comfortable in your middle class, maybe in a church spirit, or kind of a spirituality that's dominated by people who assume that discipline is unloving and unnecessary, I guess, who spoil their kids, and so think God is their father, should be spoiling them, and so their God kind of oozes sentimentality.

You know, he's the God you can walk on the beach alone with, only two sets of footprints, only one during the bad times, because he's caring for you, or him, with that caring, of course, with that reckless love.

Or maybe it's one of those rare and becoming rarer old-time religion churches, dominated by conservative men whose idea of spirituality is an angry man in a suit and tie, thumping the Bible, a King James Version, of course, decrying abominations and heretics, which is about heretics to just about everybody, except for them, calling us to a life of grim duty.

Do your duty. You don't have to like it, you just do it. They say, look to God, look at Jesus, but do they really know who he is? We become what we behold, and we're shown here whom to behold, in three major parts.

Behold the Servant Who Is Upheld, Chosen, and Spirit-Filled

First, look at him. Second, look at me. And finally, look at this. First, look at him. That's how the passage just literally begins. Behold, sometimes you read that word, kind of think it's a throwaway word, doesn't really mean anything.

No, it means what it says. Behold, look at this, look at my servant. Now, that's surprising, at least to some. To the Bible thumpers denouncing everyone different from them, it's kind of surprising, because they often the types that don't don't care about their servants.

But I think others today think they understand this. Behold my servant. But they really don't. They see, behold my servant, and are reassured that that is just the God they want, a servant God, a God who serves them.

Jesus said, I came not to be served, but to serve. And they think, yeah, that's great. He serves me. He serves me by giving me all the things I want, the relationship I want, the business I want, the money I want, the family I want, and the church I want.

And if that obnoxious preacher doesn't stop talking about those biblical passages that annoy me, make me look bad, I'll go find another church that will serve me. The narcissistic culture today, filling people's heads with the idea that they deserve every good thing that comes to them, that God is there serving them to give them all the good things they want, to look to themselves as the standard of right and wrong.

That culture churns out people who think the servant of the Lord is their servant. Kind of like Narcissus. You know that the myth of Narcissus fell in love with himself. He saw his reflection in the water one day, and he just fell in love with himself, and he spent his rest of his life staring at himself.

So like Narcissus, staring at his reflection in the water. They're beholding themselves when they see servant of the Lord. They're beholding themselves. They look at the Bible. They're looking for themselves, and they see that reflection that's really themselves, serving them, and they call that reflection God.

But this servant is the servant of the Lord. Behold him. Look at him, and look at seven facets of him. Isaiah describes seven things about the servant of the Lord. First, the Lord upholds him. Behold, he upholds him.

In verse 1, literally that means the Lord grips him fast. He's holding on to him. He preserves him. He sustains him. Now we might think then that that's a promise of great success. Right? If you were a problem, wouldn't that be great?

God will always sustain you, will hold on to you. Well, that means you would think I'm always gonna win. Here I'm gonna be the servant. He'll always win. I'll always profit. He'll be successful. Be healthy.

I'll be a victorious life of wealth and ease for him, for me. We're all in this together. Isn't that great? We're upheld. I mean, if you were promised to be always be upheld, you might think that means you'll never fall.

You're never going down. He's holding you up. But he was upheld. The servant was upheld through humiliation. He went down to earth. He was upheld through that. He went down to wash the disciples' feet.

He was upheld through that. He went down to death. He was upheld through that. Down into the tomb. He was upheld by the Father through all that. When we look to the true Jesus, the servant of the Lord, we look at one who was willing to go through death and burial because he knew he would be upheld through it.

So we can believe, if he upholds us, if he upholds us also, that he will hold us fast through death, too. That at the end, at the judgment, even though we've sinned and we deserve condemnation, we can believe that the Father will uphold us, that he will hold us as right with him because the servant who served us took our guilt and gave us his righteousness.

Second, the servant whom we behold is the chosen one. Notice that. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen. That is, it means, another way of saying that is the elect, my elect. Now Calvinists are supposed to love talking about the elect.

That is, the people whom God has predestined to be saved, whom he has chosen to save. The salvation doesn't rely on our choice. Ultimately, we do choose, but we choose because we're chosen. On our election, election is another word for choice, but on God's.

But our being elect depends on the capital E, elect. First Christ is the elect. He's the chosen one. And we become one of the elect, one of the chosen, if God decides to look at us in him, in the elect.

That's why the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, we were chosen in him before the foundation of the world. That is, we were chosen because the Father looks at us in him, in the chosen.

Look at who he beholds. He beholds, he beholds the chosen. And if he sees us in him, then we're chosen. Since he's the one chosen, we get chosen too, if we're in him. But instead, but first, I should say, instead of looking at ourselves, thinking we can stand on our own, we can be beheld by ourselves.

No, like, no, but instead of looking at ourselves like narcissistic people, we look at Christ. He's the chosen one. The Father chose him because in verse, he says in verse 1, notice what he says about him.

My chosen, in whom my soul delights. My soul here means, Father speaking, my person, and that is he personally, Father saying he personally delights, takes joy in, gets pleasure from the servant. That's why he beholds him.

If you delight something, you like to look at it. You have a beautiful painting on your wall. You just love it. You behold it. Something you find beautiful, you behold it. Father delights in the chosen, the servant, and he beholds him.

The Father chose the servant for the same reason we choose what we choose. Why don't we choose something? Because we delight in it. We like it, whatever it is. Watch it, watching March Madness. That's because you delight in it.

We eat our favorite food. Hopefully you don't, you know, filet mignon. I love it. I delight in that, right? I don't do it, I don't eat it because it's my duty and I gotta do it. Gotta eat this steak. No, we delight in it.

We delight in our favorite drink. We delight in watching our favorite movie or singing our favorite song. It's just delightful. Or being with a friend, it's delightful. Or being with your spouse, it's delightful.

We choose, not because it's a grim duty that we must perform. Oh, I gotta spend some time with her today. Horrible. No, it's delightful. I get to do it. That's what we find delightful about it. But we personally find him or her or it, whatever it is, delightful.

Our soul takes delight. Personally, we get joy from that person or thing or activity. And that's what the Father is saying here about the Son. In him, my soul, myself personally, I delight in him. The Father finds the servant delightful and so chooses him and thus chooses all of us who he sees in him.

That's why in Ephesians 1, he predestines us because of, remember the phrase, his good pleasure. He enjoys it. He takes delight in saving his people. And he enjoys the servant and all of us he looks at as in him.

So we behold God. Who's the God we behold? We behold him. Delighting. He's the happy, delighted king. And we behold the servant as delightful. Well, third, the Father says about the servant, we should look to, I put my spirit on him.

The Lord Jesus began his ministry, remember, in a synagogue, quoting Isaiah. Another passage from Isaiah chapter 61. I think that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Jesus did his ministry in the power of the Spirit.

Now, how much more then do we need the power of the Spirit? How much more should we be praying to be filled with the Spirit? If the perfect Son of God relied on the power of the Spirit, we imperfect sinners certainly need him.

To walk in the Spirit, not in our own power, our own determination, willing ourselves to live right. No, it's not first more willpower that we need, but more spirit power. We need the Spirit in order to not live in the flesh, as relying on our own corrupt natures.

Here the Father says to the Son, I put my spirit on him. We behold the servant as not a man of grim duty, and is determined to do what he has to do. No, we behold the servant as a man filled with, and propelled by, moved along by the Spirit.

Well, the fruit of that will be forthing, or to behold, that he will bring forth justice to the nations. He's the justice bringer. He brings justice to, you notice, and he particularly brings justice to the nations, which means the Gentiles, to us.

Here it is in the Old Testament, not just to Israel, it's to all the kinds of nations of the world. The servant is empowered by the Spirit so that we non-Israelites, who weren't given the law, wasn't given to us on Mount Sinai, it was given to Israel.

But now we can all learn God's ways. We can know God's justice. Here, in this passage, justice means just basically, broadly, God's ways. Not simply His judgments, like His decrees, like in a law book, you know, free the slaves, that kind of thing, includes that, but it's His kingdom, His rule, the kind of life that issues from Him being in charge.

He makes things just, or right, setting things right. So the servant of the Lord brings God's kingdom on earth, to the nations again, to all kinds of people, the nations like Ethiopia, like China, like America.

The servant of the Lord is bringing justice to the nations so that we can seek it first, seek first the kingdom of God, to be ruled by God, so that our lives are now organized by His rule, His ways. God's servant brings God's kingdom, and now we can live in it.

We who were far off from Israel, where God ruled, can live under His rule. That's justice. The judge decreeing His judgments, and now us living according to those decrees, like love your neighbor as yourself.

Well, that pretty much destroys slavery, doesn't it? Unless you want to be a slave, which I don't know who does, and racism and all that. It's His justice. Three times here we're told that the, three times that word occurs here, justice.

The servant brings justice. That's for emphasis, that's important to Him. Justice, the kingdom of God, and so we behold the servant. It's not our menial slave to give us the money or the relationship or the family or the health that we've always wanted.

We behold him as the judge decreeing justice, the King bringing His rule. Oh, fifth, in verse 2, behold the servant who will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. He's peaceful.

He's not an angry young man pouring out vitriolic denunciations of everything and everyone, you know, screaming heretic and abomination all the time. He will have a passion in opposing evil, and sometimes there's a place, time and place, that strong words need to be used.

But he has a passion opposing evil, sure, telling the truth, but he is able to control that passion and mix it with compassion for those who are deceived by that evil. He can use strong terms in a calm voice.

Now, the angry Bible-thumper in the suit might call him a compromiser for not being as rash, as inflammatory, as harsh as he is, but the servant is no compromiser. He's just in control of himself, and he understands what we heard in Sunday school, that if you're in a graveyard speaking to the dead, raising your voice doesn't help, right?

People are dead in their sins. God may use the truth to bring them life, but increasing the volume of the truth doesn't really help the truth get through. He's peaceful. Just this past week, I saw someone scolding or condemning, however you want to put it, Timothy Keller, Pastor Timothy Keller.

He's a Presbyterian church in Manhattan, a fateful pastor, the evangelical pastor there. And Tim Keller made some comment that homosexuality, I forgot, it was put in a very mild way, but it was like, homosexuality is not helping you reach your full potential, something like that.

It was exactly the words, but it was put in a mild way. And this person was just scolding, he's a compromiser for putting it like that. And, you know, I think, don't you understand he's trying to, he's trying to appeal to these people, that you're not getting your full life.

By living this way, and by putting it in a mild way, by being calm about it, he's probably more likely to be listened to. You understand? Now screaming, it's an abomination and you're going to hell, that's probably not gonna, that's true, if they don't repent, but it's probably not gonna win them, right?

You understand the difference? And Timothy Keller, I think, was being right. He's appealing to these people in a peaceful way. Here the servant is calling to lost sheep. He's not screaming at them, he's calling them, come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

He's inviting them to peace. Behold, how the servant calls the sheep, peacefully. Six, in verse three, I've run out of fingers, when we get over five, a bruised reed will not break, a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.

He is, he is meek and gentle. He calls, come to me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. So if you're bruised, you're like a stalk of reed or maybe bamboo, it's normally stiff enough that you could perhaps make it into a walking stick.

You could put your weight on it, you could lean on it, but if it's bruised, if it's just bent just a little bit, that's an indentation, a little crease, and it will collapse on you as soon as you put any weight on it.

So first, as soon as it's still planted, you let it grow out, let it heal until it's strong again. So if you're bruised, he will let you heal first. He won't break you. Sure, we may have only a little faith.

We think we can't obey perfectly yet, take up our cross, deny ourselves, seek first the kingdom. Not yet. We feel weak and broken, maybe guilty that we're not doing everything we know we should be doing so far.

We fail to pray like we think we should, to seek, to give, to serve. If we put all the expectations and just condemn you for your failures to live up to perfectly full maturity, now you're afraid that will crush you.

Well, that's why he won't do that quite yet. He'll let you grow until you're strong enough to hold up under the weight of the cross he calls you to carry. Behold him caring for you, not with a reckless love, but with a gentle one.

He's understanding your bruises, your weaknesses, your anxieties. He's not crushing you. We have some faith. We're wanting to do better, to have more of a desire to read his Word, to serve, to grow. But we feel weak, tired.

Faith is so small. Maybe when confronted with what we should be, a disciple sacrificing it all, maybe you wonder whether you have any faith at all. You wonder, since you don't feel like you're on fire for God like you should be, whether you have any fire at all.

But you have a spark. Something is smoldering. You probably wouldn't be here if not for that. The servant won't smother that smoldering wick by dumping heavy loads on it. He will first gently fan it into flame and then set the whole world, beginning with your life, on fire, ablaze with that love for him.

Behold the servant. He's not blowing you out as long as there's still a flicker. The servant expects us to give his people the benefit of the doubt. If they say they're believers, we believe them. We don't load them down with a burden of rules that crushes them.

We don't blow them out because they're not yet a full flame. That's why we accept people's confession of faith. We don't pronounce them spiritually dead just because they're maybe they're immature. They're still not serving or giving or seeking the Lord like they should.

We teach, we preach, we encourage, we challenge, and we give them time. We give the benefit of the doubt. But if eventually they do something that removes all doubt, then we recognize that they aren't just bruised.

They are broken. They aren't just smoldering. They're just there's no flame because there's there's no fire. There's nothing there. They're cold and dead. There are those. But until then, like the servant, we give the benefit of the doubt.

The Puritan Richard Sibbes wrote, the best men are severe to themselves, tender over others. In Christ, we behold a servant who is tender to us. Seventh, he will be faithful. He will be determined. He will continue at his mission until he's fulfilled his mission, faithfully.

But notice here in the last sentence in verse 3, because it's sort of attached verse 3 and verse 4 kind of go together, that last sentence anyway, that it is by being tender, by being tender, kind of person we just saw, right, he doesn't crush bruised reeds and put out flickering candles.

By doing that, he will faithfully bring forth justice. So the seventh thing, his faithfulness, his determination is, is how he's, now I should put it the other way, his, his gentleness is how he is faithfully doing his mission, the seventh thing.

Now, you know, by being tender, he will faithfully bring forth justice. And that seems kind of bizarre if you think about it. There's two things attached together. Tenderness, bringing justice, because we normally think of some of the justice can be blunt and hard.

A judge decreeing, the judge decrees justice where there's injustice. That's kind of blunt, maybe severe, maybe stern. Slamming the gavel pronounces guilty when it's the just thing to do against injustice.

A kingdom coming against rebels, you know, that's an invasion, that's violent. And in a way that's true. God's rule overturns this world. His kingdom destroys those who resist. But the means, the instruments that he uses to bring his rule, his tools to implement his justice, the weapons of his kingdom are still small voices, gentle words, not angry insults.

The good news of the gospel, not the imposition of rules, the spirit giving people new hearts that love him, not the use of man's power, you know, force laws that compel people to do what they should do.

Behold, that's how the servant will faithfully, notice that word faithfully, faithfully, that is he won't give up when it gets hard. And you think of the past history of the 2000 years, there've been some times where it looks like his mission is it's got a lot of resistance.

It's gotten hard and people quit on him. They choose superstition. They choose coercion instead of his ways. But it says he will not grow faint or be discouraged when the gospel is replaced with works.

He's not going to give up on these people. They're not listening when people desert him, when his so-called people care more about just us than justice, when they start breaking bruised reeds and blowing out flickering candles with their legalism.

He will start a reformation or bring a great awakening. He will send the gospel to new nations. They won't be saddled with the burden of bad cultural habits. He's in it for the long haul. He's been doing it for 2 ,000 years now and he's continuing to do it.

By tenderness and meekness, he will bring justice, the kingdom of God to the earth. Notice that again, by the way, the theme here to the whole earth, not just Israel. And he'll continue to do that till this is how long he will be faithful.

This is how long he will be undeterred by our failures, how long he will continue to gently bring his revolutionary kingdom on earth. He'll keep doing it until he has established justice in the earth.

That's how long he'll do it until he's succeeded. And it's in the earth. It's not just Israel, it's not just the Messiah of that nation, but he says that the coastlands, the furthest distant lands, Isaiah sitting in Israel writing that, the coastlands, the furthest places of the earth away, Australia, China, America, wherever is furthest from Isaiah, the people there in those furthest away places, wait, he says, they waiting for his law, for his teachings, to love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, to seek first the kingdom of God.

The servant will bring justice, his rule, his righteousness over all the earth, every nation in Ethiopia and China or the USA. Behold, the servant who is meek and lowly of heart, calling his sheep from every nation, we become what we behold.

Have we been beholding him? Upheld, delightful, spirit filled, doer of justice, meek and gentle, faithful and not discouraged even over the long haul. Are we beholding him? First, it's look at him. And now in verses 5 to 7, the Lord says, look at me.

First, the Lord was speaking to us about the servant. And now in verses 5 to 7, he's speaking to the servant about himself. Become like what we behold. And now, behold our God. Thus says God in verse 5.

Literally, it's the God. In Hebrew, just doesn't have to be that way, but here it is. The God, for emphasis. Not any, it's the God, it's not the idols that they've been beholding. The athletics or the money or the booming business, the relationship.

He is the Lord, Yahweh, that's his name, who created the heavens. That is the universe with all the stars and galaxies, says he stretched them out. The universe is expanding currently 46 billion light-years wide.

That's a long expense. Imagine, it's like it stretched out, the comparison is like to a tent. You set it up, right? And then you stretch it out. Here, the universe is like that. God has set it up and he's been stretching it out.

46 billion light-years wide. That's a long arm span to be able to stretch that wide, isn't it? And it's still expanding. It's still being stretched out. And he's the one expanding it. He spread out the earth.

He's planned the continents and the oceans. He gave breath that is life in the body and he gave spirit. So there were more than just bodies to all his people, every one of us human beings who walk around here on earth.

Behold our God. I am the Lord, the I am. I have called you. And we'll see here, we'll see soon that he's speaking, he's speaking to the servant first, not not first to us. We get to overhear. This is amazing because we're overhearing in this passage, verses 5 to 7.

We're overhearing the father speak to the son. Right here in verse 6. And here's what he says. I have called you, father to the son, in righteousness. He called him to his mission. Not only is it the mission, the calling of the son to be the servant, not only is that right, what he came to do, it's what makes us right, makes us righteous before God.

I will take you again to the father, to the son. I will take you by the hand and keep you. Remember, the servant is upheld by the Lord. That was the first thing he described. And here is again, I'm sustaining you.

He's kept, he's preserved. The father says to the son, that's how he lived. That's how the son lived perfectly and died and came back to life because the Lord held him by the hand and walked him through all that.

The Lord says to the servant, I will give you as a covenant for the people. Strange wording, isn't it? That is, he is the one who makes it possible for his people to have a relationship with God, a covenant.

A covenant is what defines that relationship. It describes it. It says who is in it, right? Us, hopefully, and the God. The covenant describes that. And what he did to make that relationship possible here, the servant himself is the covenant.

He's in it. And if we're in him, we're in it. And he, what he did is what makes it possible because it's in him that we are in a relationship with God. He made that relationship possible by his blood.

This is the new covenant in my blood, he said. And he is at the end of verse six, a light for the nations. Think about Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Here it is again. Here it is beforehand, actually.

Again, the nations, the world, the Gentiles, us Africans, Europeans, Americans, Chinese. He's the light of the world. The servant is to be a light that reveals God. We're in darkness. We couldn't see God because we didn't have the light.

And then he turned on the light so we can behold him. And he is that light for all kinds of people. He'll be a light in verse seven who opens the eyes of the blind so we can see. The servant, he says here in this passage, brings out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness.

That was us. As the hymn puts it, long my spirit, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin in nature's night. Your eye, the servant's light, diffused a quickening that is a life-giving ray. I woke the dungeon filled with light.

My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. The servant makes it possible for us to behold our God. He turns on the light for us. So now if you've been set free, stop looking at athletics for life or money or business or the relationship.

The Lord Will Not Share His Glory

Look at me, says God. Finally, look at this. In verses eight to nine, I am the Lord. The I am. That is my name and my glory. That is my weightiness. My glory. That which makes him special to be looked to, to be beheld more than whatever it is, you know, the sports, whatever you can do with your body, however much money you can make, whatever business empire or family that you can build.

That which makes him worth beholding his glory. He gives to no other. This is in verses eight and nine. He's a share his glory with anything else, with any of those other things that we might behold, that we might look to besides God.

You know, we think we have God, but we can have a little of the other things. No, he doesn't share. He doesn't share glory. It's not like a Chinese temple. Have you ever been in a Chinese temple? There could often be a lot of gods, and they're kind of sharing space.

Might have various gods and thousands of ancestors, and they each kind of share space. And you can pick and choose which one you like. But the Lord says, no, I'm not going to be there. I'm going to be a part of your temple, and you share me with other gods.

No, he demands to be the only one sharing no glory with anything or anyone else. He's not just our number one God, right? 51 of our affection. No, it's not just our favorite God. Even I like God more than I like basketball, but I have not like that.

Even ahead of basketball during March Madness or even ahead of wealth of the relationship. But they get a place too. We get to serve them some too. No, he demands to be absolute, to be your only God. And if you enjoy sports or you know, you're you make money or you have relationships, you can do all those things.

But you do them. You do all things. You do it all. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you do it for the glory of God. Because he doesn't share his glory with anything else. But here's an interesting thing, I think.

The Lord says here that he doesn't share his glory with any other, you know, no other idols, whether the literal, you know, the kitchen gods or the ancestral tablets or the little Buddhas or the figurative or the figurative idols people have today.

Our money, sports, relationships that we seek more than him. No, he tolerates no rivals to his glory, right? That's what he says. I share my glory with no others. And yet, think of this passage. He spent most of this passage glorifying the servant.