“Come near me and listen to this:

“From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret;
    at the time it happens, I am there.”

And now the Sovereign Lord has sent me,
    endowed with his Spirit.

“Many men today are running on adrenaline and not anointing.” Larry Stockstill

Barry Webb points out that God’s people clearly needed something more than a change of address (i.e the return from Babylon), so it means they also needed something more than the mission of Cyrus. As we have seen previously, he could only be a ‘temporary messiah’. The way is thus prepared for ‘the Servant of the LORD’ to come to the fore again in chapter 49.

‘…the spiritual state of the exiles, which is highlighted as acute in chapter 48, is answered by the reappearance of the Servant of the LORD, at first enigmatically in 48:16, and then plainly in chapter 49.’ (‘Isaiah’, p.192).

The world needs Jesus.

Isaiah 42:1 begins like this:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.

If we are correct in seeing 48:16 as a reference to this ”servant” we note the reiteration of the point about Him being anointed by God.

As we often say, if Jesus needed the power of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfil His earthly ministry, how much more do we?

“There is no use in running before you are sent; there is no use in attempting to do God’s work without God’s power. A man working without this unction, a man working without this anointing, a man working without the Holy Ghost upon him, is losing time after all.” Dwight L. Moody