Himself cannot say 'My' and 'I' without some adjunct.  Consequently we

observe that He calls the Messiah His 'Servant', His 'Beloved'.  Moreover,

God had chosen Him, and put His Spirit upon Him, and in Him His soul was well

pleased.  The battle therefore may be the Lord's, yet the Lord has

condescended to use instruments.  Victory possibly could be achieved without

the use of any agency; we say 'possibly', but inasmuch as we know it never

will, and that the Lord always adopts the best method in His great work, the

conviction grows upon us that somehow God desires the fellowship of lesser

agents, even earthen vessels.  Of course at the moment we remind ourselves

that this 'Servant', this 'Beloved', is no less than the Lord of glory

Himself, yet, at the same time, we also remember that the very fact that He

'took upon Him the form of a servant' shows that He stands before us as 'The

Man Christ Jesus'.

To be assured of victory we must be in the Lord's service, for all

other service will either distract attention, use up precious time and

material, and defeat our very ends by turning in upon self.  We can only be

called 'beloved' as we are accepted in Him Who bears that title.  If, as His

servants, it can be said that His soul is well pleased in us, victory is

assured.  If He puts His spirit upon us, who can withstand us, or rob us of

the victory?

From the larger context we learn that there is an overcoming spirit

even in the hour of apparent defeat (Matt. 12:28 -30), and now we can add the

lessons just learned from the opening words of the quotation from Isaiah.

Before we consider the judgment that will be shown to the Gentiles or

which would be sent forth unto victory, let us pause to notice some very

unusual qualities for a conqueror that are given in Matthew 12:19,20,

'He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear His voice in

the streets.  A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall

He not quench'.

Judged from the standard of the world, these qualities belong to peaceable

days, to quiet, homely gentleness.  Human conquest is achieved on stricken

fields.  The human victor must strive, bruised reeds are broken, smoking flax

must be quenched.  Homes, and heart too, must be ruthlessly sacrificed to the

great idea; any timidity, any 'meekness' would be but an indication of

'weakness'.  Such are the elements of the world.

'He shall not strive'.  Unless we are careful to distinguish things

that differ, we shall probably make a mistake, and a mistake at the beginning

may have disastrous consequences.  'To strive for the mastery' is a

Scriptural phrase (1 Cor. 9:25), but the word alludes to the Greek athletic

contest.  This is not the word used in Matthew 12.  The word there employed

is erizo and in that form occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.  As He

Who becomes the crowned Victor does not strive, we must spare no pains to

discover what this striving is that we must avoid.  Accordingly we search the

Scriptures and find that the cognate words eris and eritheia occur a

sufficient number of times to enable us to form a fair idea of the essential

kind of strife that is to be avoided.

Eris.  Here are the occurrences with just enough of the context to give

the background:

'Full of envy, murder, debate, deceit' (Rom. 1:29).