February 23, 2011
The Kingdom of God Part 1
I. A Highway----40: 3-5, 42:14-17, 43: 16-21, 49: 8-13
II. Water in the Desert----41: 17-20, 43: 19-21, 49:10, 51:3
III. The Holy Spirit-----44: 1-5
IV. Mother Zion-----54:1-17
Marxist Guerillas captured missionary, Bruce Olsen and dragged him through South American jungles, to their isolated camp, in Columbia. Day after day, month after month, he had no idea, what the next day would bring, except more suffering, from malaria and from endless rain, soaking his body. Each hour, he had to face a new and fresh guard and every few days, he faced a new trek through the jungle, to a new hide-out. Dislocated joints----no matter how painful, were no excuse, not to walk on, through the jungle, wherever his captors wanted to take him. Eventually, he taught himself, a pain-ignoring technique. He would tell himself, "I'm in pain, yes, but this pain exists only in my body and the real me, is not my body, my body is just a physical form, where my mind and my spirit dwell--and they are separate from my body, not a part of it."
Olsen wrote this, about his experience, "It may seem bizarre to some people, but the truth is, that it never once, occurred to me, that it was God's responsibility, to rescue me, miraculously, from this situation. Instead, I believed that it was my responsibility, to serve God,right where I was. So, everyday I prayed, "Father, I'm alive, and I want to use this time constructively. How can I be useful to you today? Olsen said, that, that that kind of prayer was how he started every day of his life. He said, "that he didn't believe that his prayers and his outlook should change, just because he was in the hand of Guerillas, because, he knew, that it was His God, not his captors, who would control, the outcome of the situation.
That kind of prayer was nothing new for Bruce Olsen. He had become a believer at the age of 14----- and at age19, the Lord, had called him to be a missionary, to the "stone age-Indian tribes", in South America. So, in 1961, he went to Columbia, with a one way ticket and 70 dollars, in his pocket. He was captured first, by the Motilones Tribe, and after a lot of suspicion, an arrow shot in his foot, and many barbaric feats to prove his bravery-------he led many of them to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ------as well as many other people groups, in the area. In 1989, he was kidnapped, by the Guerillas, who wanted to use him, as a bargaining tool, with the government and with the Indians. There was national outcry and 50 tribes banded together and threatened war, if Olsen wasn't released. It took 9 months to secure his freedom-----but during that time, he led more than 60, of the guerillas, to a saving faith, through prayer and bible study. And after that ordeal, from then until now, there has been a phenomenal willingness and openness, to the gospel, in that area. Countless lives have been changed, and thousands of people have accepted the Lord, as their Savior. Olsen and the many believers, that he has influenced, have built schools and clinics and agricultural centers. --------One man's obedience, over 50 years, has given Jesus and civilization, to a whole generation. Amazing!!!!!!!!
God used Isaiah's message, to teach the same lesson that Bruce Olsen understood, to Israel. But Israel didn't endure pain and discouragement like Olsen did, they lamented and groaned under their situation. But God kept giving them opportunity to know Him and to trust Him. And, He kept promising them, that He would never leave them nor forsake them and He assured them that eventually, in spite of their temporary rejection, they would inherit, all of His wonderful blessings.
Life brings pain and disappointment, as well as joy and laughter, to each of us. We have to decide before they come, how we will live through them. Do we have a special plan for trying times? that may or may not work-------- or do we pray each day, the same way that Olsen did-----that no matter what comes our way, that God is in control of it and that it is for our good, ultimately and that we need, for Him to use us, in a constructive way, for His glory and for the kingdom, in the middle of it.
We need to get into the habit of expecting God to use us. The kingdom of God is now! ------we should behave now, the same way we will behave, when Jesus comes back, to establish His kingdom. Our behavior now, should be such, that it will just extend and blossom into perfection, once we arrive in the eternal kingdom. (we have a tendency to make excuses for ourselves and our behavior now, putting off until the 2nd coming, what we should be doing today) If we're believers, our kingdom behavior should have already started and it should just get fuller, as eternity becomes a reality. Jesus lived the fullest human life that anyone has ever lived and He's our example. Life is more than a physical functioning of the body------it involves a personal relationship------full-life involves having a deep and abiding relationship with God, through Jesus, and that life begins now….
I. A Highway
This is a picture of a road being built over rugged terrain. When engineers were building the railroad through the Rocky Mts., they encountered the same obstacles that Isaiah has mentioned in this passage. Valleys had to be filled and brought up to grade and mountains had to be cut through, in order to construct a reasonably level way. Every valley, in its path, was exalted and every mountain and hill was made low. At the same time, twists and turns were straightened out and rough ground was made smooth. Only then, could the track be laid down and the railroad become workable.
When John the Baptist preached, in the Jordan valley, he identified this leveling process as a picture of repentance. It wasn't physical ground that needed to be leveled, it was the hearts and the lives, of John's listeners, that needed to be leveled. When John cried ,"Repent ye, for the kingdom of God is at hand!" it was the truth, the kingdom was already there, because Jesus was already in the world. The baptisms that John performed were not like the Christian baptisms, that we have all experienced------they didn't signify the death and resurrection of Jesus-------the baptisms that John performed were ones of repentance-------they symbolized the willingness, of the people being baptized, to put their lives in order, in preparation, for the coming of the Messiah.
The King has already come, and He is with us now, where we are, as we are, in the wilderness and the desert of our lives and He will come again and we need to be ready to receive Him. If we know Him now, then we won't be strangers, when He comes back again.
One day, in the future, God will accomplish His purpose. Every valley will be lifted up and every mountain will be made flat. Isaiah may be talking about literal, topographal changes, in this passage----but he is, also, definitely, talking about a new moral topography. He is talking about salvation and how it disrupts the landscape of the world that we live in. He is saying that lifting, and lowering and smoothing and leveling are necessary, to thrive in the kingdom of God. He is talking about depression being relieved and pride being flattened and troubled personalities being smoothed and difficult people becoming easy to get along with. Jesus, alone, can make this happen and through it, God has decreed that the glory of the Lord Jesus, will be revealed to the whole world-----we can be certain of it, because God has said it is so. His glory, can be seen everywhere right now, the problem is, not everyone looks for it or cares to see it--------but one great day, it will be admired and trembled at and delighted in, by all people.
The great sin of human beings, is that we diminish God's glory, even believers do. The truth is, we don't even really understand it. But there will come a day, when God will level, all obstacles in our path, and we will see Him for who His is, in all His majestic splendor. The glory of the Lord, is the fiery radiance of His nature, as He led the Children of Israel through the desert at night and it's the cool comfort of a cloud, as He led them in the day------it is the blazing beauty, that set Moses' face aglow, on Mt. Sinai -------and it is the sweetness of His presence as it filled the tabernacle-----God's glory is the sound of 1000 angels singing, as they lit up the sky, on the night, that the baby Jesus was born------and it is the passion that the crucified Savior, felt, as He hung on the cross for us. The glory of the Lord, is God Himself, becoming visible. It is God, bringing His presence down to us, when we least expect it. It is God giving us the true answer, to our deepest longings, Himself. We need to have the courage to welcome Him, and to let Him restructure our hearts and our lives. He is worth the upheaval.
Isaiah says, that God is like a soldier going into battle and that He's like a woman crying out, in labor. These two similes teach us,
that God's glory, is revealed to us, by His grace. God's grace is more than leniency and permissiveness and niceness. God's grace is His resolve and determination------ that He will settle for nothing less, than our eternal joy and satisfaction with Him and that He is willing to fight for our salvation, no matter how much He has to suffer for it.
We need God----we need for Him to clear the pathway for us, there is nothing we can do, in our own strength, that matters, for any purpose. We can go through our days and our routines, without once calling on Him, but that doesn't mean that we can really accomplish anything------ because, even a bind person, can get around in familiar surroundings. God wants to take us, to where we're helpless without Him. He wants us to trust Him enough, to follow Him, no matter where He leads us, even if we can't see over the next hill, or around the bend in the road, believing, that He'll take us safely home.
The intervention of God, in our lives, is ongoing. Isaiah reminded His readers about how God had led them out of Egypt and about how He had destroyed Pharaoh's army and parted the waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan River------He wanted them to remember who He had been, so that they could trust, who He was, right then---- and---- who He would be, in the future. He wanted them to believe that they could always count on Him, to move any roadblocks, that would hamper them on their path to salvation.
God wants us to understand, that the great Exodus out of Egypt, was not a one-time event; that it's a pattern. In the ways of God, the Exodus, is just a drop in the bucket-------God can repeat it, and so much more, any time He wants to. It's His standard "modus of operandi" with us, through the finished work of Jesus, on the cross. He doesn't want us, to so concentrate on His mercies ,to us, in the past, that we miss the new things, that He is doing in our lives, today. God never acts out of character, but a part of His character, is that He never runs out of new ideas. He is able, in ways that we can't even begin to imagine, to lead us on dry ground, though any Red Sea barrier that we come up against. We don't have to worry, if we will just wait and be patient and not fret, He will part the waters. And when God does this for us and we get to the other side------for just a moment----we can catch a glimpse of His true glory-and it will grip our hearts and thrill our souls. (Jim Elliot, was martyred by the Auca Indians in Equador in 1956-----he wrote this in his journal in 1951, "I walked out to the hills just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart----to gaze and glory and give oneself to God, what more could a man ask? Oh the fulness, the pleasure, the sheer excitement, of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him…")
The rough road has been smoothed out for us. We don't have to wait for something better------Jesus is it. Jesus is the great leveler. He is the embodiment of God's grace and His glory. He, is how God pours out favor on us, and, how we are bound to God, in return. From the beginning, God has given Himself to us, through covenants and formal agreements, that we can believe in, and stand on. God is not ad-libbing His way along. He has always had plan. He is not casual or offhanded, in His dealings, with us. He is a serious person, who takes us seriously, and who knows how weak we are. God knows that we could never keep up our end of the covenant, with Him, and He knows, that we need Jesus, to do it for us. So, He sent Him. Isaiah's prophetic vision, sweeps across the history of salvation. He is able to see it all, because the great Highway is straight and true. And, through his words, we can see it too------We can see God, through the the Lord Jesus, as He restores the ruins, that sin has made out of us. We can see, how He sets us free, from our self-imposed prisons and how He leads us forward, into a new way of life, where He cares for us, moment by moment and provides for us fully, and overcomes, even the slightest obstacle. And, we can see, that His salvation, gathers in the Jews, as well as multitudes of people, from all over the world, and we can rejoice, as we see history rush, toward the the great day of the Lord, when all people will serve Him together.
II. Water in the Desert
God has promised, that there will come a day, when their will be water in the desert, in places, physically, where there has never been before. This hasn't happened in it fullness yet, even though, in the 64 years, of Israel's modern existence, incredible advances have been achieved. And even though they have done wonderful things-----all their efforts have still been man-made achievements------it has been the result of sheer hard work and human diligence, and technology. God hasn't yet, miraculously created rivers and forests, in places where there is no water. But, one day He will------and the entire world will see, that it's His hand alone, that has brought it to pass------When cedars and acacias, myrtles, olives, pines, firs and boxwoods, are made to flourish, in the dry desert and pools of water lie in places that were dry and barren, it will be obvious to everybody, that God has been at work. We will see this happen when the Millennial Kingdom is put into place.
And in a spiritual sense-------our hearts and lives are dry, parched deserts. And God, has already provided the life-giving water that can satisfy our souls. He presents Himself to us as our abundant refreshment, through the sacrifice of Jesus. In John 7:37-38, Jesus said, " If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'out of the heart will flow rivers of living water.'" God's ultimate purpose in lavishing Himself upon us so richly, is so, that He will receive the glory and we will receive His mercy. God is not someone that we need to dread, in His sovereignty---He is the one, that we need to open our hearts up to and be satisfied. In the scripture-------water being poured out----is a symbol of the overflowing, life-giving, abundance of the Holy Spirit. When thirsty people, "seek water", in prayer-------God will answer them, with the only answer, in the universe, that makes sense------He gives us Himself, immediately and fully. And even though He doesn't always do it in the way that we want, or the way that we understand------He always does it, in the way that we need.
God promises us water and He doesn't promise it as a morning dew or as a light sprinkling------- He promises us pools and rivers and springs and fountains, of water. We need that much of God; and we can have that much of God! And by refreshing us, God increases the vision of his own glory. The outflowing of His grace, opens people's minds, to see, know, consider and understand, just how good, God really is. As He pours out His refreshment from heaven we are able to serve His purpose, by enjoying His abundant goodness, in the sight of the nations. That's why we should seek His outpouring and embrace the fullness of it. We can experience God and all that He has to offer, through the Holy Spirit. What a blessing! The most convincing witness, of the reality of God, in the truth-denying and truth-killing world, that we live in, is not the brilliance of man------it is the presence of God, who lives in our midst, in the person of the Holy Spirit. We can stake the quenching of our thirst, the enrichment of our lives and our eternal survival on Him.
We need to believe in the God of the scripture------we need to think of Him, treat Him and pray to Him, based on who He has revealed Himself to be, through the scripture, through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. We need to believe that the life-giving waters of the Spirit, can fill us up to overflow and that we can trust Him to uphold us and to strengthen us and to guide us and to comfort us and to teach us and to refresh us. We need to believe that He can make us invincible to the world and to the enemy. We don't have to ever believe the lies that they sling at us. We have to learn to give up on ourselves and to delight in the Lord and to recognize that He is all we need.
God is a life-giver----- If He touched Abraham and Sarah, as old and barren, as they were and was able to give them a child-----who was the beginning of a mighty nation, who was called to bless the world------why in the world, do we have so little faith, that we wind up forgetting, that He can bring something new to you and me? If we have the faith of Abraham, not the adequacy of it, but the same need of it, matched with his openness and his willingness to trust God, then the Lord will count it to us as righteousness, just like He did for Abraham and He will make our weakness, a strength. What God did for Abraham was not a solitary thing--it was the same as what He did for Moses------ it's His pattern. Romans 4:17 says that "God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." God will turn our waste places, into the Garden of Eden-----the water He pours out, will make those places, lush and green and alive. (Leonardo Da Vinci was at work for a long period of time on a great masterpiece. He had labored long to create the work of art, and it was near completion. Standing near him, was a young student, who spent much of his time with his mouth open, amazed at the the master with the brush. Just before finishing the painting, Da Vinci turned to the young student and gave him the brush and said, "Now, you finish it!" The student protested and backed away, but Da Vinci said, "Will not what I have done, inspire you, to do your best.") We, are the students of God, and He gives us everything we need, to be the best of what He desires for us to be.
III. The Holy Spirit
This passage 44:1-5, in many ways, is similar to all the other references in this book, that promise future blessing to Israel. It describes refreshment, health and prosperity, plus the promise of spiritual enlightenment.
It also speaks to us believers, who are already enlightened. God, through Isaiah, has gone out of His way to reassure us of His promised blessings. He has made us; He has formed us and He will help us. And it is all because of His grace! God doesn't want us to be insecure with Him. His remedy, for our abuse of His grace, is to lavish us with more grace. We can't demand anything from God because our sins discredit us and free God from all obligation to us. But, God, in His grace and in His goodness, doesn't quit on us. He just pours more of Himself out on us. After Adam and Eve had sinned in the garden, they hid, they didn't' go to God and confess their disobedience-----God came down to them. That's God's way----He comes down and makes His presence known to us. He seeks us out------He extends the hand of reconciliation and restoration to us--He always has and He always will. He pours Himself out with such generosity that we become a people who are saturated with God. We are so privileged to live, now, during the era, within His great plan for history, when the Holy Spirit is being poured out. 2000 years ago, on the Day of Pentecost, God unleashed the mighty river of the Holy Spirit upon a guilty world. And He has continued to pour out His spirit in wave after wave, of His unstinting grace. Sometimes, the tide of the spirit may ebb, but then, just when we need Him the most, God will cause Him to surge, and we will be revived and filled up, with His presence, to the overflow. God didn't send the Spirit just to make our church service fun------although there is no greater joy, than a church flooded with the Spirit------He sent the Spirit, to make us holy. He has already begun the new heaven and the new earth here among us. Hebrews 6:5 says that, "We have tasted the powers of the age to come." What greater gift could God give us----the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom-come, in out hearts, right now. "We need to live, so that other people can see a reason not to die." Under the influence of the Spirit------we can't sit and do nothing ----we have to go where God is working and serve any way that He calls us to. (The story is told of a man who prayed to God to bring new hope and new life to him after the death of his wife. He agonized in prayer and devoted himself to Bible Study and sought every way that He knew how, to get peace and direction for his life. He had almost given up when he was invited to a grief share program at his church. There he found a lot of people who were experiencing some of the same raw emotions of sorrow and loss that he was. He made him feel better to know that he wasn't alone. Then God surprised him--the man's employer began a series of mission trips to Kenya. He went on the very first one and discovered a new involvement in God's work and realized that God, could still use him to minister to others and lead them to know Him as their Savior. Then God surprised him again. He led him closer and closer to another member of the grief-share group, until it led to a new marriage commitment. This one had a 10 year old daughter attached to it. Through a new wife, a new daughter and a new mission field-------God had brought the man back to life.)
IV. Mother Zion
The test of the church's faith is not just the reading of and the obedience to, the scripture------ but it is also, the gladness that can be found in it's worship. The Gospel demands a carefree spirit. If we aren't going to hell anymore; and we stand to inherit every blessing that Almighty God can think of; and if nothing can stand in the way of our relationship with God, because of our salvation------then why in the world, are we not a joyous group of people, who sing all the time. In this passage--54:1-17 God uses 3 common images to portray the miracle of God's grace: a barren woman; an unfaithful wife being restored to her husband and a beautiful city.
Few words, in the English language, could be more important for an understanding of the Gospel, than the word surprise.
In the 1st image He brings barrenness and joy together-----much to our surprise. In Isaiah's culture, infertility marked a woman with shame. Isaiah sees the people of God as barren woman with nothing to be happy about. They had been given the opportunity to take God's message to the world, and they had rejected the opportunity. They were distraught and it was their own fault. But God invited the desolate woman to sing for joy-------which, in the eyes of the world, would seem to be a cruel thing. But He isn't rubbing it in, He is trying to get her to switch her capability for happiness, from herself to the Servant of the Lord. God want us all, to realize, that our failure to accomplish things in our own strength is real, but that our joy shouldn't die because of it. Jesus died so that we could have joy, no matter what our circumstance are-----because joy is knowing, that nothing can separate us from the the love of God, that we have in Christ Jesus. In Galations 4:21-31----Paul quotes Isaiah, in trying to explain, exactly what this means to believers. There are 2 ways that we can serve God:
1.) to draw on the energy of our own good intentions. or
2.) to rely on God's power, acting in our weakness.
Our virtue can look good, feel good, act good and talk good. But it is sterile-----it's empty---there is no power. The power of the Holy Spirit will make us fruitful and He will make us hum with power. The Gospel announces that Jesus took our failure to the cross, where the shame of it died, once and for all, forever. And He sent us His Spirit so that we will thrive forever. Isaiah was able to see God's grace spreading to the ends of the earth and He is telling us that we are barren, but that it doesn't matter anymore and that we can live in expectancy, because God's plan for His people, is more and more blessing. Real joy flows from our surprise and relief that Jesus is, what we have, sadly,failed to be. We are this barren woman and we, just like the Jews, have nothing to be proud of. But, thanks to the Lord Jesus, we don't have to hang our heads in shame, we can throw our heads back and laugh with delight, as God uses His own power, to multiply our spiritual family, beyond measure. We have to look with honesty, at our tired ideals, that never amount to very much and reject them. And then, we have to look to God's magnificent power, working for His greater glory and our richer joy and the salvation of the nations-----and we need to embrace Him. The human race is a created entity----so we aren't the ones, thank goodness, who have to save the world. God, is the Savior of the world and He is the giver of life-----and the barren woman can thrive, because the Spirit, gives her joy------because her joy is In Him, not in her circumstances.
The 2nd image of miraculous grace, is one of an unfaithful wife, who is reconciled to her husband. The amazing thing about this image is what the text doesn't say-----"the faithful city had sunk to the level of prostitution. Israel had prostituted themselves in defiance, against her husband, God. But, He, in His grace and love and mercy, looked beyond His people's guilt. In this passage, He doesn't even talk about it. He didn't emphasize His own offended honor------He expressed deep sympathy for Israel's wounded feelings. God said that He was angry and that He had a right to be, but that His anger had been assuaged, because His Servant had taken all of the unfaithful wife's guilt, away. The slate was wiped totally clean and the wife would forget all of her heartache under the deluge of God's everlasting love. The gospel is not "He loves me, He loves me not, depending on our own loveliness or goodness." The Gospel is the grace of God, a new covenant of peace with God, that brings a permanent wholeness, that we don't deserve. That's why we can enjoy God's grace without fearing that He's going to take it back. We didn't cause the grace to begin with, so we can't do anything to cause God to take it back. God's anger is real, but it will pass; God's love is real, but it will last, forever. (verse 5 also gives great comfort to widows--woman who have been forsaken by their husband because of death or because of divorce----God will come to them and be their husbands---He will do everything a bridegroom does----He will love, protect, support, comfort and provide for her---she won't feel alone anymore.)
And the 3rd image, of God's miraculous grace, is a literal place---it's a city that gleams, with brilliant jewels; a city so lavish, in its beauty, that our finite minds, cannot conceive of it. God has built the city and it is where He will live with His children forever. The resources for its dazzling appearance are endless. In this city, God will give us great material riches, but they won't matter to us at all because this city is also where He will give us great wisdom, in the place of our spiritual poverty and it is where He will give us complete security, in the place of worldly turbulence; and where He will give us perfect comfort, in place of our pitiful despair. It is where God will be our protector and our provider and our defender. And it is where He, will provide, endless peace for His children. This is the heritage of the servant of the Lord and His followers, and we should enjoy the blessing of it, even more, because its a gift that we don't deserve.
Augustine said ,"We count on God's mercy for our past mistakes; on God's love for our present needs; on God's sovereignty for our future." and He never disappoints us!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
JOY "The Servant II" February 16
February 16, 2011
The Servant 2
Isaiah 52:13- 53:12
I The Shocking Servant 52: 13-15
II The Sorrowing and Smitten Servant 53: 1-6
III The Silent Servant 53: 7-9
IV The Satisfied Servant 53: 10-12
(Ernest Gordon tells a story, in the book, Miracle on the River Kwai, about Scottish soldiers, who were forced by their Japanese captors, to labor, on a jungle railroad. Under the strain of captivity, they had degenerated into hateful, even barbaric, behavior, toward each other, and then, one afternoon, something happened, that changed everything.
At the end of the day, it was the job of the Japanese officer, in charge, to count all the pieces of equipment, to cut down on any ideas of mutiny. That day, his count showed that a shovel was missing. He became enraged and demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill every one of the prisoners, on the spot. It was very obvious that the officer meant what he said! As fear and anger, swirled in the air, around them, one man finally stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them, to do a 2nd tool check. That time, they discovered that no shovel was missing----there had been a miscount, the first time.
The word spread, like wildfire, through the whole camp. An innocent man, had been willing to give up his own life, so that no one else would have to. He was willing to sacrifice himself, in order to save, all of the others. The incident had a profound effect…..the men in the camp, began to treat each other like they were brothers.
When the victorious allies swept in, the survivors, who were, by that time, walking skeletons, lined up in front of their captors and instead of attacking them or even lashing out at them------they looked at them, with pity and compassion, and forgave them. Then they turned and walked away, with their rescuers, into the rest of their lives.)
Jesus took it upon Himself, to be the suffering servant, and He went all the way to the cross, to save the life, of any person who would believe in Him and the power of His sacrifice. By the time that He got to the cross, Isaiah tells us, that He was so scarred and ugly that His appearance was beyond appalling. And Isaiah also tells us, that in the end, Jesus will be exalted above all people and that every knee will bend and every tongue will confess His glory!
To the Roman authorities and to the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus was an insignificant and rejected rabble-rouser. To us, on this side of the cross, He is our, ever-present, Risen Savior and Lord. As the Suffering Servant, He knew human sorrow and physical pain. But His suffering had a purpose, because He bore the punishment for our sins, so that He could be the peacemaker between God and us. Every one of us has strayed from our shepherd, like sheep tend to do----but God has placed the punishment for our straying, on Jesus, and He endured it all, without any complaint. He accepted and yielded Himself, to the death penalty, even though He was totally innocent. Everything that Jesus went through, was all a part of the fulfillment of God's plan, to restore us to Himself, as His children.
The death of Jesus, as the substitute, for us, exhibits the love of the cross, more richly and more fully, more gloriously and more glowingly, than any other account of it. Martin Luther saw this and gloried in it. He wrote this to a friend, "Learn to know Christ and Him crucified. Learn to sing to Him and say, "Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours.You become what you are not, so that I might become what I was not."
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is one of the best known and most loved Messianic passages in the Bible and, it is the climax, of the Book of Isaiah. It is a call for all believers, to be a testimony, to the wonderful love, of the Lord Jesus and to the mind-boggling, generosity and power of God. It is a God-ordained challenge, to the Jews 1st, and then to the church, to proclaim the marvelous good news of the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior. And at the same time, it boldly invites all believers, to take up the cross of Jesus, in the world that we live in, and to be the suffering servant's representative, ready to sacrifice, whatever He calls us to, for the salvation of our generation.
I. The Shocking Servant: 52: 13-15
We know that in this passage of scripture that Isaiah is describing Jesus and we know that His mission into the world succeeded. We know that Jesus is highly exalted, because He was commissioned and qualified by God. Jesus knew just what to do, to achieve His purpose, and it worked. He did rise from the dead and and He was lifted up to the right hand of the Father and He does reign on high, with all power and authority, and He is coming again to dwell with us forever. Jesus, as the suffering servant is not to be pitied, He is to be worshiped. But the truth is, worship isn't generally, people's first reaction, to the cross. (when mary Kathryn and Griff were little. I think they were probably 4 and 5. It was Easter time and we were coming home from church talking about Jesus hanging on the cross. Griff said, "Mama, I would love to have seen Jesus hanging on that cross." and Mary Kathryn said, with all of her 5 year old wisdom, "Oh honey, you wouldn't have, it would have been so sad."----Griff was curious and drawn to it and Mary Kathryn was sad and uncomfortable with it.)
When we read this passage, about what theologians call, the Passion of Christ, the 1st thing that we notice about it, is the sheer horror of it. Jesus was beaten so badly and His body was abused, so beyond brutality, that people, seeing Him, would not have asked, "Is this the Promised Messiah?" they would have asked, "Is this even a human being?" But Isaiah want us to understand, with our hearts and our minds, that there was a direct correlation between the depth of Jesus' physical repulsiveness and the depth of His effectiveness, to purify us. His extreme power to cleanse us was measured by His extreme suffering.
The Holy Spirit prompted Isaiah to write with such graphic detail, about Jesus' visible, physical abuse, that it had to be an accurate account----- and Psalm 22 says "that people were so appalled at His appearance, that they turned their faces away." and Matt. Mark, Luke and John all indicate, that most of Jesus injuries, were inflicted on Him, by the priests and the scribes. They all say, that He was slapped and spit on and beaten around the face before, He was flogged, by the Roman soldiers and crowned with the crown of thorns. All of His legal and His human rights were taken away from Him, by the religious authorities, the very people, who should have recognized Him, for who He was.
It's unbelievable to think, that men who were appointed, to lead the people in worship and to teach them about God, would stoop to such barbaric cruelty, against any human being, much less the Son of God. The scripture says, that the Lord's injuries were so grave that He was physically marred, beyond recognition. One thing is certain, by the time that Jesus was nailed to the cross, He was in an unspeakable physical condition. This fact, emphasizes the miracle, of His resurrection. Any human being, subjected to such physical abuse, crucified, drained of blood and then laid, in an unheated tomb for 3 days, would not have been fit to stand, much less walk around and take command of situations, like Jesus did, after His resurrection.
The word "sprinkle" in this passage, is taken from a Hebrew word which means "to astonish." So this actually means, "As ,many as were astonished by Him, so shall He astonish many nations." This is a hard concept to understand, but theologians believe that Isaiah is referring to the rite of purification, under the Mosaic Law. The priests would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the altar and on the sacred vessels, as a symbol of sanctification. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, which symbolized, that Israel's sins, as a nation, had been forgiven and they were fit, for the presence of God, for the next year. Even the priests, themselves, had to be sprinkled with the "water of purification." And on an individual level, if a person had been cured of leprosy, a priest would sprinkle blood on Him, to show that His disease was washed away and that he was healthy and fit, to be accepted back into the community. That's what Jesus has done-----He has sprinkled His blood on multitudes, of moral lepers and made them fit to be accepted, into the presence of God, and into His family. Jesus is both our sacrifice and our High Priest-------He didn't need to be cleansed--------His blood was already pure enough and lavish enough, to atone for the sin of the world, once and for all.
Isaiah prophesied, that there would come a day, when salvation would be established forever, and when the kings and the religious authorities, of this world, who have led and who will lead, the assault against Jesus, will have their mouths shut, forever.
Sometimes when I read certain books and when I watch creative movies, I can't help but marvel, at the intellect of a person's mind and their imagination. But human imagination, as wonderful as it is, could never have come up with the solution that God did, to take away our guilt. That Jesus would judge our wicked hearts, by bearing our our sin Himself, is beyond comprehension. Even we, who love the Gospel, struggle, to grasp an understanding, of the reality of it. It is a mystery to us, that this was part of the "joy set before Him", that He wanted to cleanse the very ones, who dehumanized Him and caused Him, so much anguish and pain. His suffering is our blessing! That kind of love, fills us with speechless wonder.
Many people have been tortured and killed in inhumane ways, and knowing about their suffering, arouses our sympathy and moves us to compassion------but just knowing about their suffering, doesn't change our hearts and make us new people. But Jesus' suffering and death, was a moment in time, that changed the hearts of mankind, for all eternity. The gospel message is not just "Christ lived and then He died"-----that would only be an historical fact, like "George Washington lived and he died". The Gospel message is , "Christ lived, to show us the way and then He died for our sins, so that we could walk the way." You and I are as guilty of Jesus' death as Annas and Caiphas and Herod Antipas and Pilate. We plucked out Jesus beard and slapped His face and spit on Him and beat Him on the head and flogged and ridiculed Him and nailed Him to that cross,every bit as much, as they did. People are astonished when they finally understand the message of the Gospel and the beauty of the ugly brokenness of Jesus's body-----but the truth is, we can't rejoice in the good news of salvation, unless we first face, the bad news, of condemnation. Jesus didn't suffer and die because He was guilty, He suffered and died because we were guilty. ( I will never forget when I visited Rome and walked into St. Peter's Basilica, in Vatican City and burst into tears, when I saw Michalangelos's Pieta-------the sculpture of Jesus after He was taken down off the cross and was being held all broken and pitiful, in His mother's arms and Nicodemas was standing behind them. I remember being so moved by the sorrow, in the eyes of Nicodemas, and then, I remember that I almost couldn't breathe, when I realized that the face of Nicodemas was Michalangelo's own self-portrait------it made me sob. Dale cried too; we couldn't help it. There is no doubt, in my mind, that Michalangelo knew that His sin, had beaten Jesus' body and placed Him on the cross, and it brought me face to face, with the fact, that mine had too.)
II. The Sorrowing and Smitten Servant 53:1-6
The nations respond to the Suffering Servant with silence. There are no words, in the human language, that can express the depth of what we feel, when the Gospel becomes real to us. Even the people closest to Jesus had no words. They walked and talked with Him; they knew Him personally, they shared food and shelter and tears and laughter and many long conversations and still there were no words. There were a lot of people, who knew Him, as the man in their neighborhood, who made His living as a carpenter, but was, a gifted teacher of the scripture and could even perform incredible, miraculous healings. He grew up, in the full light of God's glory, but He was a mystery to those around Him.
Knowing about Him, though, didn't make belief in Him, as God's son, the Messiah, a reality. We can't really understand the enormity of it-----we just have to accept it and believe it. It took faith to see the glory of God in Jesus, of Nazareth. It still does!
"The arm of the Lord" is a phrase that carries a double meaning. It refers to God's sovereign power and it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, because He came to the earth, specifically, to carry out the Father's will.
1.) God's sovereign power----God's arm of power flies in low, under, the defensive radar,of our human prejudices and self-glory, and stirs our hearts. It wakes them up and gives us, a true glimmer, of the glory of Jesus. We can't believe the truth of the Gospel, without God's help. Because, we are so much more shallow and superficial, than we believe ourselves to be, we look on the surface of things. We, unfortunately, judge by appearances, and God, thank goodness, looks under the surface, at our hearts. He, with His strong arm of power, through the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit, prompts us to believe with our hearts, what, we could never believe with our eyes.
2.) The Lord Jesus Christ----In sending Jesus, God was stretching out His arm of power, to give us salvation. Jesus grew up before the Father, like a tender plant----He was like a root coming up, out of dry ground. From the moment of His birth, Jesus walked in the full gaze of the Father. God watched Him grow through childhood into manhood and He liked, so much, what He saw, that when Jesus began His earthly ministry------the heavens opened up, and everybody at His baptism, heard the voice of God say, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." God was so absolutely sure, of the Lord's perfect progress and ultimate victory, in His mission, that the words, that He had Isaiah speak, concerning Jesus, were in the past and the present tense, even though 7 centuries still remained till His birth.
As a child, the Lord Jesus was as tender as any baby is. He was dependent on His mother for everything. At her knee, He learned how to crawl and walk and to feed Himself. From both of His parents, He learned about life, and behavior, and manners and God. He played with His brothers and sisters----- and because He was their oldest----- I am sure, that there were times, when He had to babysit.
He was also like a root, springing up from a dry, infertile ground, because He came from such an unlikely location. He was born into poverty. He was descended from a line of royal people who had lost their royal status many years before. The whole area was a conquered jurisdiction, under Roman rule. Nobody would have expected the Savior of the world, to spring from a peasant family, from Nazareth. And Nazareth, itself, didn't have a good reputation. It was a post for Roman soldiers, with all the problems that would be associated with military towns. But God knew who Jesus was-----He knew that He was the root of Jesse---the descendant of King David and He knew that Jesus would be a tender plant, of blessing and beauty, and grace; and that He would grow up, out of the dry ground, of complacent and disbelieving Israel, specifically, and of wicked humanity, in general. To God, the Father, Jesus was precious beyond words--------but to unbelieving people, He had no form, no comeliness and no beauty. And, it didn't have a lot to do with the way He physically looked-----it had everything to do with His character.
For the most part, people couldn't see His moral beauty---because they didn't want to. We still don't want to. We don't like it, when people show us the error of our ways, by their moral behavior or by their pointing it out to us, in scripture----it makes us uncomfortable----so we do everything we can, to make ourselves feel better, by tearing them down. (A typical American family was driving home from church. Dad was fussing about the sermon being too long and sort of boring. Mom said she thought the organist played a little too loud during the second hymn that we sang. Sis, who was a music major, in college, said that the soloist sang about half a note off key during most of the song. Grandma said that she couldn't hear very well-----they were sitting in a bad place. Little Willie listened to all of this and started to fuss about the lady in the big hat who had sat in front of him, keeping him from seeing anything-------but intend, he leaned up and nudged his dad in the back of the neck and said, "But Dad, you gotta admit, it sure was a good show-----and you only had to give em a nickel.")
The Bible is silent, about what Jesus actually, looked like. But from what it does say about Him, I don't think He was physically ugly, at all. We know that He was a carpenter-----so He must have broad shoulders and fairly large muscles, because of all the lifting and heavy labor that He would have done. Luke 2:52 says that, "He grew in stature with God and man." And, we know that when He started His ministry, that crowds flocked to Him, to hear His sermons and to see and experience His miracles. So, there must have been something, physically attractive about Him, because, people are shallow and they are rarely drawn to ugly people.
But, people of lowly birth tend to be invisible to the ruling classes. So it wouldn't have really mattered what He looked like.
Great leaders are frequently affluent and blessed with useful connections. There is a usually a certain amount of pomp and flair associated with their rise to public notice. Jesus didn't have anything, of material worth, to recommend Him and He didn't know anybody of note, who could sponsor Him.
He grew up in obscurity, and it wasn't until He began to heal the sick and to speak our publicly, that anybody even really noticed Him.
Men looked at Jesus with scorn and distain, because His teaching interfered, with the lives that they loved to live. That's when men began to turn away from Him. (Isaiah 53:3) says, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hid our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not." It got to the point ,that it didn't matter how many miracles He could perform or how many gracious words that He could speak--------people only treated Him with derision and rejection. And because He was suffering in our place, He endured it all patiently. The Jewish leaders, as a whole, just could not acknowledge, that a man of such humble origin, could really support the claims, that He made about Himself-----they must have thought and discussed among themselves, "God's son, yeah right!" They ignored, the clear evidence in the scripture, of His identity, and they let prejudice overcome their logic.
It's normal for us to think that Jesus was smitten by men-------because------it was men who beat Him and spat at Him and plucked out His beard. It was men who nailed Him to the cross and mocked Him while He hung there--but the reality is, that it was actually God who did the smiting. God always knew, that the penalty for sin would only be able to be paid for, in the way that it was. He always knew that Jesus had been born, so that He could die, in our place.
Often, the physical agony of crucifixion is stressed. I could give you detailed, medical explanations, of what took place inside the Lord's body---- and it was terrible, horrific even---------but His physical suffering was nothing, compared to the spiritual suffering, that He endured. The Lord's physical suffering is not what redeemed us------we were redeemed, when God laid the sins of the world on Jesus and Jesus accepted them, in our place. The spiritual sacrifice that He made for us, was far more costly, than any physical pain, could ever be. The cup, that Jesus dreaded in the Garden of Gethsemane, was the indescribable cup, of substitution. For a few brief moments, Jesus became pure and unadulterated sin-----and when that happened, God, who cannot be where sin is, left Him. They had never been apart-----God had always been with Jesus, every moment of every day------so the agony, of being separated from His heavenly Father, was almost more than He could bear and He cried out, "My God, MY God, why have you forsaken me!" (Matt. 27:46) But God never gives us more than we can stand, and it was in that moment, that the cup was drained to the dregs, and the sacrifice was complete. It was entirely for us that Jesus suffered. We were guilty, but He took our place. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And His stripes, are what have purchased our healing.
Isaiah writes like we were at the cross, because we were. It was our guilt that required Jesus' death. (Rembrandt, like Michalangelo, knew who had taken His place on the cross------in his painting, "The Raising of the Cross", Rembrandt painted himself into the picture as one of the men, crucifying Jesus.) Isaiah did the same thing with a pen and piece of paper. He didn't just tell the story of Jesus, He told our story too. Where would we have been, that day? Would we have been cowering in an upper room, somewhere? Would we have been celebrating, with our fellow conspirators, for having averted a crisis? Would we have stood in the street yelling crucify Him? Would we have nailed the nails into His hands and feet? Would we have turned away and hung our heads in shame? Would have kneeled at His feet, and stayed with Him to the end, and then begged for His body, so that we could bury Him?
Jesus was a man of sorrows, but they weren't His sorrows. He didn't deserve them-----they were ours. In a way, that we don't understand, Jesus became our substitute. God shifted our blame onto Jesus. And Jesus willingly received it. Guilt has to be paid for. It can't be swept under the rug. We know that, just from our own life experiences. When we, or our property, are injured, even in a fender bender, someone has to answer for it, either us, or the other person. The damage and the cost don't just go away. If its going to be put right, then someone has to pay for it. That's the way it is with God------there is no way that He can turn a blind eye to the evil that is damaging His world. God confronted man's wickedness, by paying our debt Himself. He knew what it would take, to satisfy it and He did what it took. He charged the infinite weight of our debt to Jesus, and Jesus willingly, embraced it. (I have a friend who grew up with a preacher, for a daddy, who was a very wise man. When she was a little girl, probably about 5, she misbehaved in church. When the service was over and the family got into the car, her daddy told her, that she was going to get a spanking when she got home. Sure enough, when they got inside the house, he told her to follow him to the back bedroom. The whole way down the hall, she was begging him not to be spanked, "Please daddy, please daddy, no." When they got to the bedroom, he took his belt off-------and handed it to her and said, "I'm not going to spank you for your misbehavior, you're going to spank me, I'm going to take your place." This broke the little girl's heart as she said, "daddy, I can't"---- and then----- he told her the story, about another Father and His child and their love for each other and their love, for each one of us.")
The blood of Jesus, is flowing out to sinners of all kinds------taking from them, their guilt, their shame, their loss, their tears and their despair-------and He is giving them (us) a whole new life. Jesus is saying to each of us, right now, "I don't want you to bear your burden one minute longer------I want my bruising to give you peace-------I want my stripes to heal you." Sin is serious--we're all like dumb sheep, who wander away from our shepherd, through our own self-centered and self-righteous excuses. Isaiah calls it transgressions, which means rebellion against God, which is daring to cross the line that God has drawn. He also calls it iniquity, which refers to our sinful nature. In other words, we are sinners by choice and by nature. Like sheep, we are born with a nature, that prompts us to go astray and like sheep, we foolishly decide to go our own way. This means that by nature, we are born children, of sin and by choice, we become children, of disobedience. But we can take hope, because John 10:1-18 tells us that "under the law of Moses, the sheep died for the shepherd, but that under grace, the good shepherd died for the sheep." It reminds me of the song, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God, wouldst die for me…"
III. The Silent Servant 53:7-9
Jesus never complained and He never asked for mercy. Not did He threaten His tormentors or seek to escape. One of the most difficult things for us to bear, is false accusation. The desire to defend ourselves and to lash out at the accuser, is intense. We read in Matt. 26, that the chief priests, used false witnesses to accuse Jesus, but Jesus didn't justify their accusations, by engaging in rebuttals with them. He didn't' have anything to prove to the men who hated Him, and God already had a perfect knowledge of His innocence. The death of Jesus was a miscarriage of human justice, but it was also, our Lord's, clearheaded, choice. He wasn't caught in a web of events, beyond His control. He willingly laid His life down. Isaiah compared Jesus to a lamb being led to the slaughter, who is silent in front of its shearers. Jesus' death, didn't mean that He yielded to weakness, it meant that He exercised deliberate control. He was not overpowered; He chose not to fight back. Whatever came His way, from men or God; He received it, without any protest. In both His actions and His words, He died entirely in innocence, and the final indignity, was, that He was buried, not alongside martyrs and saints, but with the wicked rich.
He was illegally tried and condemned to death. In today's courts, a person can be found guilty of terrible crimes, but if it can be proven that something in the trial, was illegal, the case has to be tried again. Everything about Jesus' trial, from start to finish, was illegal, but Jesus don't get a 2nd trial. Since Jesus was crucified with criminals, as a criminal, it would have been logical for His dead body to be left unburied. That was the usual way of things, but in the Jesus' case, God had other plans. The burial of Jesus Christ is as much a part of the Gospel as His death and resurrection. His burial, is proof that He actually died. The Roman authorities would never have released His body to Nicodemas and Joseph of Arimathea, if Jesus hadn't been dead.
Jesus had done no violence and there was no question of any deceit in Him. He was perfect and totally beyond reproach. But because God so loved the world, He was pleased to bruise Jesus, for the world. God wasn't pleased, in the sense, that offering up Jesus, gave Him pleasure. It just means that it pleased Him, because it was in accordance, with His will, for Jesus' sufferings, to provide the way of salvation, for a guilty world. (Charles Swindoll says that,
"If our greatest need had been information; God would have sent us an educator.
If our greatest need had been technology; God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been money; God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure; God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness; so God sent us a Savior."
IV. The Satisfied Servant 53:10-12
Jesus conquered sin and was satisfied because He had done His job well. He wasn't embittered by it, because He knew it was God's will and that it was the only way. He didn't hang from His cross, screaming curses at His jailers, and He didn't blaspheme God, the way other victims did. This is the mystery of the cross. Not only did He offer His body for sacrifice, but even ,more importantly, he offered His soul. All the animal sacrifices in the OT, had pointed forward to this one moment, when Jesus would sacrifice Himself, body, mind and spirit, once and for all, in my place, in your place and in the place, of every person, who has ever been born.
The cross was God's greatest victory ------Jesus achieved God's ancient purpose-------with His work, on the cross, Jesus has made the way for man to be at peace with God. The judge took the place of the criminal and fulfilled, the just demand, of His own Holy law. And He is satisfied. And Isaiah says that the result for Him, is that "He will see His seed". We are His seed, in the sense, that we have been born again into God's family." To the Jews, to die childless caused great grief and shame------but Jesus didn't die childless---------because of His anguish, on the cross-----He has given birth to a spiritual family that can't be counted. His offspring is beyond manmade measurement. Isaiah 12 uses a military metaphor to describe this------he says that Jesus will divide the spoils of His victory with us, as His "strong partners, in God's saving plan." The world perceives the followers of Jesus as little more than a band of fugitive, losers-------it's sad, that the world can't see, that with Jesus, as our redeemer, that we aren't losers, that we are rich beyond measure---and that we possess, already, all the wonderful things of God, that are worth possessing.
According to Isaiah, Jesus will stand back, and look at His accomplished work and the result of God's saving plan and He will compare it to the price that He had to pay for it's success----and He will be satisfied.
(Hours behind the runner in front of him, the last marathoner finally entered the Olympic stadium. By that time, the drama of the day's events was almost over and most of the spectators had gone home. The athlete's story, however was still being played out.
Limping into the arena, the Tanzanian runner grimaced with every step, his knee bleeding and bandaged from an earlier fall. His ragged appearance immediately caught the attention of the remaining crowd, who cheered him on to the finish line.'
Why did he stay in the race? What made him endure his injuries to the end.? When asked the questions later, He replied, "My country did not send me 7000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7000 miles to finish the race. And I am satisfied."(Quote Magazine, July 1991)
Right now, today, all over the world, Jesus is enjoying the satisfaction, the sheer pleasure, of bringing many lost and ungodly people into righteousness. He is actively, saving guilty people and He is treating transgressors, like they are His friends and He is sharing His victory, with His former enemies. He is making intercession, with the Father, for the very ones, who nailed Him to the cross. And He is satisfied!
The Servant 2
Isaiah 52:13- 53:12
I The Shocking Servant 52: 13-15
II The Sorrowing and Smitten Servant 53: 1-6
III The Silent Servant 53: 7-9
IV The Satisfied Servant 53: 10-12
(Ernest Gordon tells a story, in the book, Miracle on the River Kwai, about Scottish soldiers, who were forced by their Japanese captors, to labor, on a jungle railroad. Under the strain of captivity, they had degenerated into hateful, even barbaric, behavior, toward each other, and then, one afternoon, something happened, that changed everything.
At the end of the day, it was the job of the Japanese officer, in charge, to count all the pieces of equipment, to cut down on any ideas of mutiny. That day, his count showed that a shovel was missing. He became enraged and demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill every one of the prisoners, on the spot. It was very obvious that the officer meant what he said! As fear and anger, swirled in the air, around them, one man finally stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them, to do a 2nd tool check. That time, they discovered that no shovel was missing----there had been a miscount, the first time.
The word spread, like wildfire, through the whole camp. An innocent man, had been willing to give up his own life, so that no one else would have to. He was willing to sacrifice himself, in order to save, all of the others. The incident had a profound effect…..the men in the camp, began to treat each other like they were brothers.
When the victorious allies swept in, the survivors, who were, by that time, walking skeletons, lined up in front of their captors and instead of attacking them or even lashing out at them------they looked at them, with pity and compassion, and forgave them. Then they turned and walked away, with their rescuers, into the rest of their lives.)
Jesus took it upon Himself, to be the suffering servant, and He went all the way to the cross, to save the life, of any person who would believe in Him and the power of His sacrifice. By the time that He got to the cross, Isaiah tells us, that He was so scarred and ugly that His appearance was beyond appalling. And Isaiah also tells us, that in the end, Jesus will be exalted above all people and that every knee will bend and every tongue will confess His glory!
To the Roman authorities and to the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus was an insignificant and rejected rabble-rouser. To us, on this side of the cross, He is our, ever-present, Risen Savior and Lord. As the Suffering Servant, He knew human sorrow and physical pain. But His suffering had a purpose, because He bore the punishment for our sins, so that He could be the peacemaker between God and us. Every one of us has strayed from our shepherd, like sheep tend to do----but God has placed the punishment for our straying, on Jesus, and He endured it all, without any complaint. He accepted and yielded Himself, to the death penalty, even though He was totally innocent. Everything that Jesus went through, was all a part of the fulfillment of God's plan, to restore us to Himself, as His children.
The death of Jesus, as the substitute, for us, exhibits the love of the cross, more richly and more fully, more gloriously and more glowingly, than any other account of it. Martin Luther saw this and gloried in it. He wrote this to a friend, "Learn to know Christ and Him crucified. Learn to sing to Him and say, "Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours.You become what you are not, so that I might become what I was not."
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is one of the best known and most loved Messianic passages in the Bible and, it is the climax, of the Book of Isaiah. It is a call for all believers, to be a testimony, to the wonderful love, of the Lord Jesus and to the mind-boggling, generosity and power of God. It is a God-ordained challenge, to the Jews 1st, and then to the church, to proclaim the marvelous good news of the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior. And at the same time, it boldly invites all believers, to take up the cross of Jesus, in the world that we live in, and to be the suffering servant's representative, ready to sacrifice, whatever He calls us to, for the salvation of our generation.
I. The Shocking Servant: 52: 13-15
We know that in this passage of scripture that Isaiah is describing Jesus and we know that His mission into the world succeeded. We know that Jesus is highly exalted, because He was commissioned and qualified by God. Jesus knew just what to do, to achieve His purpose, and it worked. He did rise from the dead and and He was lifted up to the right hand of the Father and He does reign on high, with all power and authority, and He is coming again to dwell with us forever. Jesus, as the suffering servant is not to be pitied, He is to be worshiped. But the truth is, worship isn't generally, people's first reaction, to the cross. (when mary Kathryn and Griff were little. I think they were probably 4 and 5. It was Easter time and we were coming home from church talking about Jesus hanging on the cross. Griff said, "Mama, I would love to have seen Jesus hanging on that cross." and Mary Kathryn said, with all of her 5 year old wisdom, "Oh honey, you wouldn't have, it would have been so sad."----Griff was curious and drawn to it and Mary Kathryn was sad and uncomfortable with it.)
When we read this passage, about what theologians call, the Passion of Christ, the 1st thing that we notice about it, is the sheer horror of it. Jesus was beaten so badly and His body was abused, so beyond brutality, that people, seeing Him, would not have asked, "Is this the Promised Messiah?" they would have asked, "Is this even a human being?" But Isaiah want us to understand, with our hearts and our minds, that there was a direct correlation between the depth of Jesus' physical repulsiveness and the depth of His effectiveness, to purify us. His extreme power to cleanse us was measured by His extreme suffering.
The Holy Spirit prompted Isaiah to write with such graphic detail, about Jesus' visible, physical abuse, that it had to be an accurate account----- and Psalm 22 says "that people were so appalled at His appearance, that they turned their faces away." and Matt. Mark, Luke and John all indicate, that most of Jesus injuries, were inflicted on Him, by the priests and the scribes. They all say, that He was slapped and spit on and beaten around the face before, He was flogged, by the Roman soldiers and crowned with the crown of thorns. All of His legal and His human rights were taken away from Him, by the religious authorities, the very people, who should have recognized Him, for who He was.
It's unbelievable to think, that men who were appointed, to lead the people in worship and to teach them about God, would stoop to such barbaric cruelty, against any human being, much less the Son of God. The scripture says, that the Lord's injuries were so grave that He was physically marred, beyond recognition. One thing is certain, by the time that Jesus was nailed to the cross, He was in an unspeakable physical condition. This fact, emphasizes the miracle, of His resurrection. Any human being, subjected to such physical abuse, crucified, drained of blood and then laid, in an unheated tomb for 3 days, would not have been fit to stand, much less walk around and take command of situations, like Jesus did, after His resurrection.
The word "sprinkle" in this passage, is taken from a Hebrew word which means "to astonish." So this actually means, "As ,many as were astonished by Him, so shall He astonish many nations." This is a hard concept to understand, but theologians believe that Isaiah is referring to the rite of purification, under the Mosaic Law. The priests would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the altar and on the sacred vessels, as a symbol of sanctification. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, which symbolized, that Israel's sins, as a nation, had been forgiven and they were fit, for the presence of God, for the next year. Even the priests, themselves, had to be sprinkled with the "water of purification." And on an individual level, if a person had been cured of leprosy, a priest would sprinkle blood on Him, to show that His disease was washed away and that he was healthy and fit, to be accepted back into the community. That's what Jesus has done-----He has sprinkled His blood on multitudes, of moral lepers and made them fit to be accepted, into the presence of God, and into His family. Jesus is both our sacrifice and our High Priest-------He didn't need to be cleansed--------His blood was already pure enough and lavish enough, to atone for the sin of the world, once and for all.
Isaiah prophesied, that there would come a day, when salvation would be established forever, and when the kings and the religious authorities, of this world, who have led and who will lead, the assault against Jesus, will have their mouths shut, forever.
Sometimes when I read certain books and when I watch creative movies, I can't help but marvel, at the intellect of a person's mind and their imagination. But human imagination, as wonderful as it is, could never have come up with the solution that God did, to take away our guilt. That Jesus would judge our wicked hearts, by bearing our our sin Himself, is beyond comprehension. Even we, who love the Gospel, struggle, to grasp an understanding, of the reality of it. It is a mystery to us, that this was part of the "joy set before Him", that He wanted to cleanse the very ones, who dehumanized Him and caused Him, so much anguish and pain. His suffering is our blessing! That kind of love, fills us with speechless wonder.
Many people have been tortured and killed in inhumane ways, and knowing about their suffering, arouses our sympathy and moves us to compassion------but just knowing about their suffering, doesn't change our hearts and make us new people. But Jesus' suffering and death, was a moment in time, that changed the hearts of mankind, for all eternity. The gospel message is not just "Christ lived and then He died"-----that would only be an historical fact, like "George Washington lived and he died". The Gospel message is , "Christ lived, to show us the way and then He died for our sins, so that we could walk the way." You and I are as guilty of Jesus' death as Annas and Caiphas and Herod Antipas and Pilate. We plucked out Jesus beard and slapped His face and spit on Him and beat Him on the head and flogged and ridiculed Him and nailed Him to that cross,every bit as much, as they did. People are astonished when they finally understand the message of the Gospel and the beauty of the ugly brokenness of Jesus's body-----but the truth is, we can't rejoice in the good news of salvation, unless we first face, the bad news, of condemnation. Jesus didn't suffer and die because He was guilty, He suffered and died because we were guilty. ( I will never forget when I visited Rome and walked into St. Peter's Basilica, in Vatican City and burst into tears, when I saw Michalangelos's Pieta-------the sculpture of Jesus after He was taken down off the cross and was being held all broken and pitiful, in His mother's arms and Nicodemas was standing behind them. I remember being so moved by the sorrow, in the eyes of Nicodemas, and then, I remember that I almost couldn't breathe, when I realized that the face of Nicodemas was Michalangelo's own self-portrait------it made me sob. Dale cried too; we couldn't help it. There is no doubt, in my mind, that Michalangelo knew that His sin, had beaten Jesus' body and placed Him on the cross, and it brought me face to face, with the fact, that mine had too.)
II. The Sorrowing and Smitten Servant 53:1-6
The nations respond to the Suffering Servant with silence. There are no words, in the human language, that can express the depth of what we feel, when the Gospel becomes real to us. Even the people closest to Jesus had no words. They walked and talked with Him; they knew Him personally, they shared food and shelter and tears and laughter and many long conversations and still there were no words. There were a lot of people, who knew Him, as the man in their neighborhood, who made His living as a carpenter, but was, a gifted teacher of the scripture and could even perform incredible, miraculous healings. He grew up, in the full light of God's glory, but He was a mystery to those around Him.
Knowing about Him, though, didn't make belief in Him, as God's son, the Messiah, a reality. We can't really understand the enormity of it-----we just have to accept it and believe it. It took faith to see the glory of God in Jesus, of Nazareth. It still does!
"The arm of the Lord" is a phrase that carries a double meaning. It refers to God's sovereign power and it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, because He came to the earth, specifically, to carry out the Father's will.
1.) God's sovereign power----God's arm of power flies in low, under, the defensive radar,of our human prejudices and self-glory, and stirs our hearts. It wakes them up and gives us, a true glimmer, of the glory of Jesus. We can't believe the truth of the Gospel, without God's help. Because, we are so much more shallow and superficial, than we believe ourselves to be, we look on the surface of things. We, unfortunately, judge by appearances, and God, thank goodness, looks under the surface, at our hearts. He, with His strong arm of power, through the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit, prompts us to believe with our hearts, what, we could never believe with our eyes.
2.) The Lord Jesus Christ----In sending Jesus, God was stretching out His arm of power, to give us salvation. Jesus grew up before the Father, like a tender plant----He was like a root coming up, out of dry ground. From the moment of His birth, Jesus walked in the full gaze of the Father. God watched Him grow through childhood into manhood and He liked, so much, what He saw, that when Jesus began His earthly ministry------the heavens opened up, and everybody at His baptism, heard the voice of God say, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." God was so absolutely sure, of the Lord's perfect progress and ultimate victory, in His mission, that the words, that He had Isaiah speak, concerning Jesus, were in the past and the present tense, even though 7 centuries still remained till His birth.
As a child, the Lord Jesus was as tender as any baby is. He was dependent on His mother for everything. At her knee, He learned how to crawl and walk and to feed Himself. From both of His parents, He learned about life, and behavior, and manners and God. He played with His brothers and sisters----- and because He was their oldest----- I am sure, that there were times, when He had to babysit.
He was also like a root, springing up from a dry, infertile ground, because He came from such an unlikely location. He was born into poverty. He was descended from a line of royal people who had lost their royal status many years before. The whole area was a conquered jurisdiction, under Roman rule. Nobody would have expected the Savior of the world, to spring from a peasant family, from Nazareth. And Nazareth, itself, didn't have a good reputation. It was a post for Roman soldiers, with all the problems that would be associated with military towns. But God knew who Jesus was-----He knew that He was the root of Jesse---the descendant of King David and He knew that Jesus would be a tender plant, of blessing and beauty, and grace; and that He would grow up, out of the dry ground, of complacent and disbelieving Israel, specifically, and of wicked humanity, in general. To God, the Father, Jesus was precious beyond words--------but to unbelieving people, He had no form, no comeliness and no beauty. And, it didn't have a lot to do with the way He physically looked-----it had everything to do with His character.
For the most part, people couldn't see His moral beauty---because they didn't want to. We still don't want to. We don't like it, when people show us the error of our ways, by their moral behavior or by their pointing it out to us, in scripture----it makes us uncomfortable----so we do everything we can, to make ourselves feel better, by tearing them down. (A typical American family was driving home from church. Dad was fussing about the sermon being too long and sort of boring. Mom said she thought the organist played a little too loud during the second hymn that we sang. Sis, who was a music major, in college, said that the soloist sang about half a note off key during most of the song. Grandma said that she couldn't hear very well-----they were sitting in a bad place. Little Willie listened to all of this and started to fuss about the lady in the big hat who had sat in front of him, keeping him from seeing anything-------but intend, he leaned up and nudged his dad in the back of the neck and said, "But Dad, you gotta admit, it sure was a good show-----and you only had to give em a nickel.")
The Bible is silent, about what Jesus actually, looked like. But from what it does say about Him, I don't think He was physically ugly, at all. We know that He was a carpenter-----so He must have broad shoulders and fairly large muscles, because of all the lifting and heavy labor that He would have done. Luke 2:52 says that, "He grew in stature with God and man." And, we know that when He started His ministry, that crowds flocked to Him, to hear His sermons and to see and experience His miracles. So, there must have been something, physically attractive about Him, because, people are shallow and they are rarely drawn to ugly people.
But, people of lowly birth tend to be invisible to the ruling classes. So it wouldn't have really mattered what He looked like.
Great leaders are frequently affluent and blessed with useful connections. There is a usually a certain amount of pomp and flair associated with their rise to public notice. Jesus didn't have anything, of material worth, to recommend Him and He didn't know anybody of note, who could sponsor Him.
He grew up in obscurity, and it wasn't until He began to heal the sick and to speak our publicly, that anybody even really noticed Him.
Men looked at Jesus with scorn and distain, because His teaching interfered, with the lives that they loved to live. That's when men began to turn away from Him. (Isaiah 53:3) says, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hid our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not." It got to the point ,that it didn't matter how many miracles He could perform or how many gracious words that He could speak--------people only treated Him with derision and rejection. And because He was suffering in our place, He endured it all patiently. The Jewish leaders, as a whole, just could not acknowledge, that a man of such humble origin, could really support the claims, that He made about Himself-----they must have thought and discussed among themselves, "God's son, yeah right!" They ignored, the clear evidence in the scripture, of His identity, and they let prejudice overcome their logic.
It's normal for us to think that Jesus was smitten by men-------because------it was men who beat Him and spat at Him and plucked out His beard. It was men who nailed Him to the cross and mocked Him while He hung there--but the reality is, that it was actually God who did the smiting. God always knew, that the penalty for sin would only be able to be paid for, in the way that it was. He always knew that Jesus had been born, so that He could die, in our place.
Often, the physical agony of crucifixion is stressed. I could give you detailed, medical explanations, of what took place inside the Lord's body---- and it was terrible, horrific even---------but His physical suffering was nothing, compared to the spiritual suffering, that He endured. The Lord's physical suffering is not what redeemed us------we were redeemed, when God laid the sins of the world on Jesus and Jesus accepted them, in our place. The spiritual sacrifice that He made for us, was far more costly, than any physical pain, could ever be. The cup, that Jesus dreaded in the Garden of Gethsemane, was the indescribable cup, of substitution. For a few brief moments, Jesus became pure and unadulterated sin-----and when that happened, God, who cannot be where sin is, left Him. They had never been apart-----God had always been with Jesus, every moment of every day------so the agony, of being separated from His heavenly Father, was almost more than He could bear and He cried out, "My God, MY God, why have you forsaken me!" (Matt. 27:46) But God never gives us more than we can stand, and it was in that moment, that the cup was drained to the dregs, and the sacrifice was complete. It was entirely for us that Jesus suffered. We were guilty, but He took our place. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And His stripes, are what have purchased our healing.
Isaiah writes like we were at the cross, because we were. It was our guilt that required Jesus' death. (Rembrandt, like Michalangelo, knew who had taken His place on the cross------in his painting, "The Raising of the Cross", Rembrandt painted himself into the picture as one of the men, crucifying Jesus.) Isaiah did the same thing with a pen and piece of paper. He didn't just tell the story of Jesus, He told our story too. Where would we have been, that day? Would we have been cowering in an upper room, somewhere? Would we have been celebrating, with our fellow conspirators, for having averted a crisis? Would we have stood in the street yelling crucify Him? Would we have nailed the nails into His hands and feet? Would we have turned away and hung our heads in shame? Would have kneeled at His feet, and stayed with Him to the end, and then begged for His body, so that we could bury Him?
Jesus was a man of sorrows, but they weren't His sorrows. He didn't deserve them-----they were ours. In a way, that we don't understand, Jesus became our substitute. God shifted our blame onto Jesus. And Jesus willingly received it. Guilt has to be paid for. It can't be swept under the rug. We know that, just from our own life experiences. When we, or our property, are injured, even in a fender bender, someone has to answer for it, either us, or the other person. The damage and the cost don't just go away. If its going to be put right, then someone has to pay for it. That's the way it is with God------there is no way that He can turn a blind eye to the evil that is damaging His world. God confronted man's wickedness, by paying our debt Himself. He knew what it would take, to satisfy it and He did what it took. He charged the infinite weight of our debt to Jesus, and Jesus willingly, embraced it. (I have a friend who grew up with a preacher, for a daddy, who was a very wise man. When she was a little girl, probably about 5, she misbehaved in church. When the service was over and the family got into the car, her daddy told her, that she was going to get a spanking when she got home. Sure enough, when they got inside the house, he told her to follow him to the back bedroom. The whole way down the hall, she was begging him not to be spanked, "Please daddy, please daddy, no." When they got to the bedroom, he took his belt off-------and handed it to her and said, "I'm not going to spank you for your misbehavior, you're going to spank me, I'm going to take your place." This broke the little girl's heart as she said, "daddy, I can't"---- and then----- he told her the story, about another Father and His child and their love for each other and their love, for each one of us.")
The blood of Jesus, is flowing out to sinners of all kinds------taking from them, their guilt, their shame, their loss, their tears and their despair-------and He is giving them (us) a whole new life. Jesus is saying to each of us, right now, "I don't want you to bear your burden one minute longer------I want my bruising to give you peace-------I want my stripes to heal you." Sin is serious--we're all like dumb sheep, who wander away from our shepherd, through our own self-centered and self-righteous excuses. Isaiah calls it transgressions, which means rebellion against God, which is daring to cross the line that God has drawn. He also calls it iniquity, which refers to our sinful nature. In other words, we are sinners by choice and by nature. Like sheep, we are born with a nature, that prompts us to go astray and like sheep, we foolishly decide to go our own way. This means that by nature, we are born children, of sin and by choice, we become children, of disobedience. But we can take hope, because John 10:1-18 tells us that "under the law of Moses, the sheep died for the shepherd, but that under grace, the good shepherd died for the sheep." It reminds me of the song, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God, wouldst die for me…"
III. The Silent Servant 53:7-9
Jesus never complained and He never asked for mercy. Not did He threaten His tormentors or seek to escape. One of the most difficult things for us to bear, is false accusation. The desire to defend ourselves and to lash out at the accuser, is intense. We read in Matt. 26, that the chief priests, used false witnesses to accuse Jesus, but Jesus didn't justify their accusations, by engaging in rebuttals with them. He didn't' have anything to prove to the men who hated Him, and God already had a perfect knowledge of His innocence. The death of Jesus was a miscarriage of human justice, but it was also, our Lord's, clearheaded, choice. He wasn't caught in a web of events, beyond His control. He willingly laid His life down. Isaiah compared Jesus to a lamb being led to the slaughter, who is silent in front of its shearers. Jesus' death, didn't mean that He yielded to weakness, it meant that He exercised deliberate control. He was not overpowered; He chose not to fight back. Whatever came His way, from men or God; He received it, without any protest. In both His actions and His words, He died entirely in innocence, and the final indignity, was, that He was buried, not alongside martyrs and saints, but with the wicked rich.
He was illegally tried and condemned to death. In today's courts, a person can be found guilty of terrible crimes, but if it can be proven that something in the trial, was illegal, the case has to be tried again. Everything about Jesus' trial, from start to finish, was illegal, but Jesus don't get a 2nd trial. Since Jesus was crucified with criminals, as a criminal, it would have been logical for His dead body to be left unburied. That was the usual way of things, but in the Jesus' case, God had other plans. The burial of Jesus Christ is as much a part of the Gospel as His death and resurrection. His burial, is proof that He actually died. The Roman authorities would never have released His body to Nicodemas and Joseph of Arimathea, if Jesus hadn't been dead.
Jesus had done no violence and there was no question of any deceit in Him. He was perfect and totally beyond reproach. But because God so loved the world, He was pleased to bruise Jesus, for the world. God wasn't pleased, in the sense, that offering up Jesus, gave Him pleasure. It just means that it pleased Him, because it was in accordance, with His will, for Jesus' sufferings, to provide the way of salvation, for a guilty world. (Charles Swindoll says that,
"If our greatest need had been information; God would have sent us an educator.
If our greatest need had been technology; God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been money; God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure; God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness; so God sent us a Savior."
IV. The Satisfied Servant 53:10-12
Jesus conquered sin and was satisfied because He had done His job well. He wasn't embittered by it, because He knew it was God's will and that it was the only way. He didn't hang from His cross, screaming curses at His jailers, and He didn't blaspheme God, the way other victims did. This is the mystery of the cross. Not only did He offer His body for sacrifice, but even ,more importantly, he offered His soul. All the animal sacrifices in the OT, had pointed forward to this one moment, when Jesus would sacrifice Himself, body, mind and spirit, once and for all, in my place, in your place and in the place, of every person, who has ever been born.
The cross was God's greatest victory ------Jesus achieved God's ancient purpose-------with His work, on the cross, Jesus has made the way for man to be at peace with God. The judge took the place of the criminal and fulfilled, the just demand, of His own Holy law. And He is satisfied. And Isaiah says that the result for Him, is that "He will see His seed". We are His seed, in the sense, that we have been born again into God's family." To the Jews, to die childless caused great grief and shame------but Jesus didn't die childless---------because of His anguish, on the cross-----He has given birth to a spiritual family that can't be counted. His offspring is beyond manmade measurement. Isaiah 12 uses a military metaphor to describe this------he says that Jesus will divide the spoils of His victory with us, as His "strong partners, in God's saving plan." The world perceives the followers of Jesus as little more than a band of fugitive, losers-------it's sad, that the world can't see, that with Jesus, as our redeemer, that we aren't losers, that we are rich beyond measure---and that we possess, already, all the wonderful things of God, that are worth possessing.
According to Isaiah, Jesus will stand back, and look at His accomplished work and the result of God's saving plan and He will compare it to the price that He had to pay for it's success----and He will be satisfied.
(Hours behind the runner in front of him, the last marathoner finally entered the Olympic stadium. By that time, the drama of the day's events was almost over and most of the spectators had gone home. The athlete's story, however was still being played out.
Limping into the arena, the Tanzanian runner grimaced with every step, his knee bleeding and bandaged from an earlier fall. His ragged appearance immediately caught the attention of the remaining crowd, who cheered him on to the finish line.'
Why did he stay in the race? What made him endure his injuries to the end.? When asked the questions later, He replied, "My country did not send me 7000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7000 miles to finish the race. And I am satisfied."(Quote Magazine, July 1991)
Right now, today, all over the world, Jesus is enjoying the satisfaction, the sheer pleasure, of bringing many lost and ungodly people into righteousness. He is actively, saving guilty people and He is treating transgressors, like they are His friends and He is sharing His victory, with His former enemies. He is making intercession, with the Father, for the very ones, who nailed Him to the cross. And He is satisfied!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
JOY "The Servant I" February 9
February 9, 2011
The Servant I
Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-11
I His Character and Qualifications 42:1-9
II His Mission 49:1-7
III His Obedience 50:4-11
(There are 4 portions of scripture that are titled "the servant songs", in the book of Isaiah, which refer to the future coming of God's
Servant, the Messiah.
3 of which, we've studied for the past 2 weeks------
42:1-9 describes the qualifications and the character of the Servant that God will empower to do His work.
49: 1-6 describes how the nation of Israel failed miserably, to do their job of taking God to the nations-----but how Jesus, the Servant Messiah would not fail---He would do the job for them----He would be a light to the Gentiles-----He would be their salvation and He would light their way, through a fallen world.
50:4-11 describes Jesus as the obedient Servant, who is willing to endure humiliation and persecution, (not so much for the sake of us) but for the sake of the Father.
The 4th one we will study next week-------
52:13 -53:12 describes how the Suffering Servant would take on the sins of the whole world.)
God's ways are not our ways. God's thoughts are not our thoughts. He is constantly surprising us by the way that He chooses to operate in our world, for His own purposes. He is God, the creator and sustainer and sovereign of all things! How else, could a God who seemed to have been defeated by the earth's mighty armies, whose people controlled no land and no temple, and no government, dare, to claim to be, the world's only true God? It must have seemed to Isaiah's world, that there was no way that you could believe the promises, of that kind of God. But the hope of Israel wasn't supposed to be dependent on what they could see with their eyes or even what they experienced, at the hands of the world------their hope, was supposed to be dependent on believing, that God was the God of their forefathers and that He had always kept the promises that He'd made to them----and--- that He loved to use unlikely sources and unlikely methods, to make sure, that His will, will always be done, for the best interests of His children.
Believers, on this side of the cross, face the same kind, of skepticism, when we try to take Jesus to the world, and explain Him to it. We expect people to believe that a Galilean carpenter knew more about God, than any other person who has ever lived. We expect people to recognize the living presence, of a man who died and was resurrected over 2000 years ago. We expect them to believe that "the carpenter-turned-resurrected Lord" is God, and that He chose to clothe Himself, with the created body of a human being, so that He could meet us, at our own level of understanding, in order to save us. Plus, we expect them to believe, that He is currently in heaven, but that He left His Spirit, on the earth, to live in our hearts, to teach us and guide us and rebuke us and comfort us, until He comes back again, to establish His eternal kingdom-------and---- we expect them to believe, that the destiny, of every single person who has ever or will ever, live, depends on how they respond to the man, Jesus.
It sounds like a fantastic fairy tale, doesn't it? But the truth is, it's more real than anything we can see or hear, or smell or touch, in the temporal world, that we live in. If we pay attention to what Isaiah has said about the Servant/Messiah, we can't help but believe, without a doubt, that God is who He says He is, because Jesus, is who Isaiah says He is. Jesus came to earth to show us the face of God. We can know God, if we know Jesus.We can believe the truth of it all, because everything that Isaiah prophesied about Jesus, before He was born, all came true, 700 years later, just like he said it would.
If we know what the NT says about the life of Jesus and we go back to compare it to what Isaiah says about the "Servant"----------we can't help but be amazed and moved by, the hand and heart and mind of God, because of how much He loves His children. He loved Israel so much, that He basically told them every detail of what was going to happen-------they didn't have to miss it------but they did, because they were blinded by their own self-worth and self-absorption.
We're His children too, and I don't want us to be blinded by self-worth and self-achievement and self-absorption. I don't want us to miss, what He's laid out in scripture, for us to know. I want us to have our hearts and our minds and our ears and our hands, wide-open. I want us to be able to see our Savior and recognize Him as our God, so that we can ask Him to come into our hearts and to change us, to be like Him-------so that we can listen and understand, what it is, that He wants us to do----which is to take His love, to every single person, who crosses our path, every single day of our lives, in the most minute of ways.
Servants Unaware:
{Ina Mae Brooks-----"When I was a child, polio paralyzed my legs. Neighbors insisted that God crippled children like me as a punishment for their parent's sins. My mother refused to believe in such a God. Then Pastor Cooper came to call. "You can visit", Mother warned, "but you mustn't mention God or Jesus in this house." The year that I was bedfast, Pastor Cooper read stories to me, played dolls and colored with me. Without uttering Jesus' name, Coop, as I called him, became our friend. When I grew stronger, Mother took me to church. Using understanding and love, Coop introduced to Jesus Christ."
Sandy Lu------"My brother, Richard, is a first year medical student who often studies late at the campus library in downtown Dallas. Even if he's not ready to go home yet, he voluntarily and cheerfully walks one of his fellow classmates to her car to make sure she is safe. Then he often returns to the library and continues studying. God is using this simple act to soften his classmate's heart toward Christ. She is going on a medical mission trip with the university's student fellowship this spring----in part because of my brother's servant heart."
Sarah McCoy-----"Early last year, my fiance' was hit by a driver and left paralyzed in a wheelchair. We continued with our wedding plans, but once married we faced the challenge of juggling home, school and medical responsibilities as well as new jobs. I began to feel overwhelmed by all that I needed to accomplish in one day. A lady, at work, asked if she could help us by doing our laundry. When I protested that it was a huge chore, she told me that when she and her husband were newly married and struggling, a woman had faithfully done their laundry for a year. When she asked the woman how she could repay her, she said, "Someday, return the favor for another newly married young couple so that I can be a living testimony of God's care and provision."}
Jesus was a servant to the world, not because He loves us, even though He does, not because we deserve it, because we certainly don't--------Jesus was a servant because He loves God and wanted to please Him, with His obedience. The lesson for us, in this, is there is no way that we can ever please everybody, so our focus should be on pleasing God. When we are moved to serve someone, we should do it out of love and obedience for the Lord------for no other reason-----just to please Him. And just like it is with the Lord, people won't always love what we do for them and they won't always appreciate what we tell them about Jesus, but we should do it anyway, because the person we want to please, is God. We can't control another person's behavior or their understanding----but we can control ours----so we are supposed to do, what we know is the right thing to do, because it is what the Lord is calling us to, regardless of how we are received. Philippians 2:3-7 says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look, not only, to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who being, in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but made Himself, nothing, taking the very nature of a servant."
I. His Character and Qualifications: 42:1-9
There could only be one candidate for the role of the Servant/Messiah. Only the Lord Jesus could qualify. He was the servant "in whom God's soul delights!" He was the perfect servant, in the sense that He came to do, only, the Father's will. As the eternal Word of God, who spoke the world into existence, He was One, with the Father. Then, He became a man, and as a man, He lived the kind of life that nobody else has ever lived. He fulfilled the will of God perfectly and completely. If He had committed even one sin, then He would have had to die for that sin, but, as it was, He was able to die for the sins of others, because He had none of His own. In His humanity, Jesus was obedient in every way. Even in the garden of Gethsemenee, that last night, before his crucifixion in Matt. 26:42 He prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."
Jesus is God's gracious alternative to our idols. God wants Him to be our delight, as He is His. He is such a gentleman, that when He walked on this earth He wouldn't break a bruised reed or quench a faintly burning wick. He went about His Father's business in a quiet and gentle way. He gave suffering people their lives back and He didn't use His success with them to take advantage of them or to promote Himself (There is an old publication of, The History of the World, that was written in 1600. When you read about the days of the roman Empire and Caesar Augustus, you see that it says, "In his days, there was born in Bethlehem of Judea, that goodly gentleman, Jesus Christ.) This sounds funny in modern day vernacular, but it shouldn't-------because what is a gentleman, if not a gracious and gentle man, and Jesus was that. The Holy Spirit is also a gentleman------He never forces us to do anything that we don't want to do. He always lets us make the choice for our behavior. He lets us exert our free will, even when He knows, that He'll wind up having to clean up our mess. He wants us to choose what will please God, but He wants it to be our conscious decision to do it, not His coercion.
The servant is God's chosen one; God takes great delight in Him and upholds Him; He brings justice to the nations because He is gracious and merciful; His power comes from God; He will succeed; He is faithful, lasting and enduring; He is meek and mild; He is the creator of the heavens and the earth; God has given Him the right, to grant salvation, to anyone who will believe; He is the light in the darkness; He will free the prisoners; He will give sight to the blind, physically and spiritually.
The key word in Isaiah 42 is "justice". In this passage, the word means more than just legal correctness. It means to make things right and balanced. The word that God used in Exodus 26:30, when He gave Moses, the plan for the tabernacle, has the same meaning. JUst like He had a blueprint for the tabernacle, God has a blueprint for human existence. God knows how human beings and human society can be, at their best. God knows how to make us happy and fulfilled. And through His Servant, Jesus, He brought the plan down from heaven to give us another chance to get it right. This word, "justice", includes within it's meaning, all our longings and desires for a better life and a better world. It is a world where there are no slums, no poverty, no oppression, no illiteracy, no pollution, no murder, no deaths, and basically no heartache or misery of any kind.
"Injustice" is the opposite word to "justice" and it is more than a political platform------it is a spiritual evil, because it denies God. And society has made such an overwhelming mess, of our world, that it is beyond our powers of correction. We are supposed to work for a better world, but we have to realize, that in the whole pitiful length of human history, we have never once, created a society that's the way that we would really like for it to be. We have had flashes of brilliance, here and there, but they never last, because inevitably, selfish desires, self-indulgence and pride rear their ugly heads and children wind up begging in the streets and old people start shivering in the cold and people have to learn how to live with filthy water to drink and a lack of food to eat. Our only hope for salvation----- for us and for the world, rests in the Servant of God----the quiet healer who has the power to renew the human heart and reconstruct civilization, not by bullying us, but by enduring His own suffering; and not by imposing demands on us, but by absorbing our sins and our miseries into Himself and erasing them once and for all, on the cross. God's reputation as God, stands on the success of Jesus and Jesus proves that God is God, as He delivers us from darkness and opens our eyes to the Lord's great glory.
II. His Mission 49:1-7
The call of the Servant was divine, because it came from God----- and He had a 2-fold commission from God:
1.) He was to gather disobedient Israel, who had turned away from God, and bring them back to Him.
2.) He was to bring salvation to all nations on earth (the Gentiles) (Us)
Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity and in this passage, He is looking forward to His miraculous birth into the human race. The words "womb" and "mother", which Isaiah uses, refer to His humanity and they emphasize the fact that God, the Father, would recognize Him in His human form. "His mouth, like a sharp sword" refers to the power that His words would have during His earthly ministry and the power that His written word would have, on every generation, in every age---power to convict and comfort and encourage and strengthen. "In the shadow of His hand, He has hidden me" paints a picture of the Lord Jesus being guarded during His ministry, protected by His heavenly Father. It is true that He suffered and died, but that wasn't because of overwhelming mob violence---His arrest and subsequent suffering, were totally controlled, voluntary acts, on His part, that were fulfilling the purpose that He came here for. Until the moment came, for Him to deliberately submit Himself to the Roman authorities-----nobody could touch Him because He was guarded by the Father's power. "and a polished shaft; in His quiver, He has hidden me" refers to His mission. Jesus was an arrow in the Father's hand-----God's promise of Him, as the means of salvation, had been a mystery even to the prophets, until the time was right for Him to be revealed! He was not an ordinary arrow-----He was straight and polished, made out of precious metal and guaranteed, to fly straight to His target.
He had all of God's authority behind Him, so that He could accomplish His work, perfectly. The Lord prepared Him to speak with authority------and His words were designed to pierce the conscience of sinners and bring them to repentance. We know, thanks to the NT, that Jesus is the Servant and that His words came straight from the mouth of God. It's no wonder that everyone; His disciples and His enemies, were amazed by the words that He spoke; whether they liked them or not. His word's always garnered a reaction; they just didn't always get understanding or obedience. God's Word, will change the heart of a person, if that person will listen to Him. If we will go to the scripture to seek comfort and guidance and direction and wisdom, and obey it, we will never be sorry. Unfortunately, we try to find the Lord in too many other things and we miss the joy and peace that He wants to give us. I know that our disinterest grieves His heart.
When Jesus was here, there was times when His heart was grieved then, too; times when He experienced lonely, discouragement, because people wouldn't listen to Him, in spite of the fact that He had come to earth under God's authority. During His earthly ministry, there was almost universal misunderstanding, even among the 12 disciples, concerning Him, His teaching and His work. He had to die and be resurrected, before, even those closest to Him, understood, just a fraction of His Mission and its purpose. The religious leaders strongly opposed Him and the multitudes, often followed Him just for the physical benefits that they received from Him, while ignoring His saving message---and to top it off, the people that He did help, didn't always thank Him.
Crowds heard Him preach but only a handful committed themselves to Him---and even they forsook Him and fled and hid when the going got rough. All throughout the Gospels, Jesus faced rejection and unbelief and prejudice. His heart had to have been broken over and over again, because even His closest companions couldn't grasp His Words and their importance. And He was God, He knew that one of them would betray Him in the end. But He wasn't disillusioned; He knew, before the world was even created, just exactly how things were going to be and that they would be necessary to bring about the Father's will. And He did it anyway. That is amazing love---and we can't even begin to comprehend it.
To think, that even Jesus, could feel a sense of despondency is startling to us. We know that He succeeded in everything that He did----we know that His victory on the cross has been the world's greatest blessing, but we also know, that Israel, the nation, has yet to receive Him. John 1:11 says, "He came to His own and His own received Him not" and Luke13:34 says that He wept over Jerusalem and cried, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you; how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not" and in the Talmud (Commentary on scriptures) and other Jewish writings, Jesus is described as the "leper" and the "hanged one" and "the one whom the nation abhorreth". They just could not understand who He was. Peter says in Acts 3:17, "that if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." But they didn't know. They couldn't see HIm.
The rejection that Jesus experienced, at the time of His earthly ministry, could appear like His work was in vain. But that would be a total lie----He lived and worked by faith, in strict obedience to God the Father. Isaiah 49:4 says, "Yet what is due me, is in the Lord's hands, and my reward is with my God." Even His death, on the cross, so heinous to the world and so precious but almost inconceivable, to believers, was the greatest victory that the world has ever known, up to the present time. The antidote for the Lord's despondency was to keep His focus on God and the work that He had sent Him here to do. When a person is discouraged they look backward to what has or hasn't been. But Jesus teaches us to look forward, to what is promised and to trust, what we know to be true! One day, Jesus will not only see Israel regathered and converted, but He will draw to Himself, a multitude of believers too numerous to count, from every part of the world. Hebrews 12:2 says, "who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame." He kept His eyes on the prize----the joy that was set before Him, enabled Him to endure rejection and ridicule and to face the cross. He knew that His future and ours was going to be one of glory-----so He did what He had to do.
The Jewish nation was called to glorify God and to be a light to the nations----but they failed in their mission, as a nation. That's why the Messiah is called Israel----He came and did the work that Israel was supposed to do. Matthew, Luke and Paul, all tell us, that Jesus came to minister to the Jews, 1st, and then to the Gentiles. When the Lord returned to heaven----- He did leave behind a believing remnant of Jews, who did carry on His work. We must never forget that salvation has come to us, through the Jews---- the Bible is a Jewish book; Jesus was Jewish, the 1st believers and the 1st missionaries were Jews-------the Gentiles would never have heard the Gospel, had it not been brought to them by Jews. When you think about it that way, we can see how it makes sense that Isaiah called Jesus, by the name of Israel. We should make it a part of our prayer life to pray for the Jews to come to know Him before the Tribulation. I think that is a responsibility that we have to the Lord, to pray for the people who gave us Jesus.
After His resurrection and in the fullness of time----the final victory at Armageddon will come and His kingdom will be established, forever, "and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord." Phil. 2:11----and all along the way-----from then until then------even heathens, kings and princes, will honor His majesty and will authenticate the rightness and validity and the necessity, of His mission.
The story is told of Queen Victoria:
(Toward the end of her life, Queen Victoria once publicly stated, "I am a firm believer in the 2nd Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I have sometimes thought that He has permitted me to reign so long, that perhaps I will never lay down my crown, until I lay it down at His feet, when He comes again." (she reigned almost 64 years)
Another story is told about Queen Victoria:
(Every summer she was in the habit of going to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. While she was there, she would stroll around every day, visiting the Highland women in their cottages and they became unlikely friends. One summer, at the end of her stay, she went to say goodbye, to one of the ladies, who was very elderly. The older lady said to her, "Well, Your Majesty, I may never see you on this earth again, may I ask your gracious Majesty a question? Queen Victoria said "yes, as many as you like."Well, she said, "will Your Majesty meet me in heaven?" The Queen said "yes, through the all-availing blood of Jesus.") There is no doubt in my mind that Queen Victoria knew Jesus as her Savior.
III His Obedience: 50:4-11
God challenged His people in Isaiah 50 to prove that He was unfaithful as a husband or a father. The picture of Israel the nation, as the wife of God, is a theme throughout the Old Testament. The "marriage" took place when the Israelites accepted God's covenant with them, at Mt. Sinai. As part of the covenant, Exodus 20:3 says, "You shall have no other gods before me."Unfortunately, they broke their side of the covenant, because they couldn't stop, worshiping idols.
The best way to deal with sin is to admit it to ourselves and then, to confess it to the Lord, so that there will be forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration, in our relationship with Him. God wanted Israel to accept the responsibility for their sin. But they either couldn't see their sin or they didn't want to see it. God didn't reject them and send them into exile and He had enough power to keep them from having to go into exile. They had to go into exile because of their choices. Their sins of unbelief, disobedience and disregard, for God's power, took them there. God didn't prevent it because He cannot let sin go unpunished------He could have prevented it, but He didn't, because, in the long run-------they were going to receive a greater benefit from it.
In contrast to Israel's disobedience, Jesus was the most obedient person who has ever lived. He was the obedient Servant who was willing to endure humiliation and persecution, for the sake of God, the Father. Jesus was committed to doing God's will, knowing full well, that it meant that He would have to go to the cross.The evidence of His obedience was clear, in both His public and His private prayers, and in the declaration of His dependance on God, as He yielded to Him. In Isaiah 50: 4-5, Jesus acknowledged that "God had given Him an instructed tongue and ears to listen, like one being taught, and that He had not been rebellious and He had not drawn back."
Why do we have ears on the outside of our heads? Why are they not on the inside? The answer is simple--we aren't supposed to listen to ourselves-----we're supposed to listen to the voice of the Lord. I wonder how much of the the misery and heartache and fear that we experience in this world, stems, from our almost religious, devotion to our own thoughts and feelings and ideas. We spend so much of our time in a universe of our own thoughts, we need to realize ,that the quality of that environment matters. We need that inner, personal world to be influenced by the Gospel. I wonder how many of us, have our ears open, to the in-flowing of God's voice, and how many of us understand, what it means, to really listen to Him. The scripture tells us, "He who has ears, let him hear"--so our ears must be a more important part of our anatomy, than we realize.( Sometime in the 80s, Malcolm Muggeridge (British journalist, satirist, media personality (and during war time), soldier and spy) posed the question to his audience, during one of his London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity-----"What if we had found the Dead Sea Videos instead of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Would the difference have mattered to anybody? Would it matter if biblical faith had been handed down to us in images instead of words? Does the camera make the same impact as the pen?" Muggeridge argued that the camera deceives us----that, it makes us think that we're seeing reality, when the truth is what we're seeing doesn't have any depth or substance. Muggeridge went on to say, that "the Christian faith came to us in words, not images and that he thought, that the passage, in the 1st chapter, of the Gospel, according to St. John---"the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth"---was one of the most beautiful, profound things ever written----- and that, if it had come to us in images instead of words, it would not have lived as it has."
God interacts with us, meaningfully, through words-----words that illuminate; words that last and words that untangle our confusion. If His way of getting through to us, is with words, then we need to learn, what it means to listen.
The nation of Israel had a hearing problem. But the servant of the Lord, Jesus, was a wonderful listener. His ear was always open and ready to hear what God had to say. In this passage, Isaiah is telling us, that we all need to get a hearing checkup. He wants us to retune our ears, so that we can not only hear, what the Lord is saying, but we can understand Him, too. (I have a hearing loss. I have a hard time understanding the person right beside me, if there is a lot of extraneous noise, unless I listen very carefully. Sunday, Lizzie and I were coming home from a horseshow at VT. We were in the mountains so my ears were stopped up, to begin with-----the radio was on-----Lizzie's roommate was in the back seat with her phone and Lizzie was in the front with hers------I thought that Lizzie said to me, "Wanna go sing in Rockville?" I thought, "what did she just say" so I asked her to repeat it, which she did and I heard her say the same thing, and I thought, where is she talking about? so I asked her to repeat herself again-----and then, that time I didn't just hear, but I understood, what she was saying-----what she actually said, was, "Wouldn't it stink if those rocks fell?" It was funny and we laughed our heads off, but it is the perfect illustration, of how we listen to the Lord----- way too often-----we listen to so many other noises and voices, that aren't able to hear the voice, of the one person, who is the closest to us.)
Only the Lord's Servant can open our ears to hear what God is saying. And then once we know that He is talking to us, our understanding of what He is saying, pivots, on how bravely we are willing to listen and obey the Servant's words. Isaiah presents the Messiah to us, as a well-taught disciple, a learned person, a scholar who has devoted Himself to the study of the Lord's word-----a man who is well-schooled in the ways of God. Jesus isn't just loving; He is wise enough to know just how, to help weak people. When everyone else fails us------whether we are weary with sin, weary with service or just weary with life, He alone, can sustain us with just a word.
Isaiah testified to the Servant's obedience, as he described various aspects of His ministry, which we are called to emulate:
1.) His ministry was sustaining----- which requires more thought and more self-control and more love and more insight than a condemning ministry. A finger-pointing, judgmental ministry is easy. Moralism is a sin that we are all guilty of. (tell the story of the 2 girls and the word "damn")
It takes divine wisdom to understand God's grace in a new way, so that we can offer Jesus to people, by sustaining them, when they are weary.
2.) His ministry was one of suffering-----It was with an open ear, that Jesus became obedient to the point of death. His suffering was not a secondary result of His commitment. He chose the way of His suffering. He gave His back to the ones who struck Him and He offered His cheeks to the ones who pulled out His beard. He walked into opposition, with His eyes wide open, and His ears fully tuned. There was no place that Jesus wouldn't go and there was nothing that He wouldn't do, to care for weary people, with the truth of God's grace. Even those who thought that they loved God, were threatened by Jesus' radical words and teaching, and they tormented Jesus for it. In this fallen world, the servant had to suffer, there was no other way-----and if we listen to Him with the openness of heart, that He calls us to,we'll share in that suffering----but we will also share in more glory, than we can even begin to comprehend. ( One of the reasons, that we see widespread breakdowns in wisdom and integrity, even among believers, is because we have forgotten, that God calls us to follow the Lord into suffering. Jesus was not rebellious and He didn't turn away-------when we turn away from God, during hardship, instead of turning toward Him-we are rebelling against Him and we are diminishing our ability, to offer His comfort, to others, who are hurting. Jesus knew that obedience to God is always a winning move. That is what kept Him going all the way to the cross, one step at a time. Others misjudged Him,but God helped Him; and because God didn't help His enemies, who seemed so powerful, they wound up disappearing, like a garment that moths have eaten. The victories and defeats of this life, are not at all what they seem. In the experience of Jesus which is the paradigm(pattern) for us------His faith was vindicated by an unexpected, but unstoppable resurrection-------and in His dazzling, immortal body, forever scared, but forever alive, Jesus Christ will never suffer again. And because of Him, our suffering will be limited to the confines of this world, too.
3.) His ministry would be a light in the darkness-----There are 2 kinds of darkness------one is the darkness of disbelief and separation from God and Jesus is the light, that will dispel that darkness-----but there is also the darkness, that we believers will often find ourselves in----a darkness that can be disorienting and perplexing and indefinite. Jesus found Himself there, when His family scorned Him; He found Himself there when the religious leaders ridiculed Him; He found Himself there when He prayed for God to take the cup of the cross, away from Him and He didn't; He found Himself there when He was arrested; He found Himself there when His disciples scattered; He found Himself there when He was beaten and He had to carry His own cross; He found Himself there as He looked down on His mother, as she watched Him die and He found Himself there, as all the sin of the world,--- was heaped on His shoulders-------but----- the way that He walked through all of those things, that was when His light was the brightest.
We need to remember that when we find ourselves there, in the darkness, that it doesn't mean that we are being disobedient-it means that God is trying to teach us that faith, can offset the darkness and that darkness is what faith is for-----because it is in the darkness, that we will fully trust the Lord for every-thing.
Listening to Jesus, instead of to ourselves, is the only way to live. No one likes darkness---and there are so many lights out there for us to live by. People light their own fires-they strive to live by their own ideas . They wonder why we should listen to Jesus, when there are plausible and certainly, easier ways to live--but Proverbs 16:25 gives the answer and it is this ,"There is a way that seems right to man, but its end, is the way to death."
When nothing else, in our experience, makes sense; when we have no visible path forward and everything seems to be closing in around us------we need to focus on what we know to be true about the character of God and we need keep walking forward, in His will------ (ancient people put a candle in the toe of their upturned shoe, to illuminate their path, one step at a time) and that's all we need to do too, because when we can't see God's hand, we have to trust His heart, one small step at a time, with whatever amount of light, that He's given us----and----- we need to remind ourselves again and again, of the promises of the Gospel. It's amazing-----just one word from God, will stabilize our panicky hearts. And, in this one simple, but profound way, our lives will be a light to the world, of what a good Savior our God is.
The Servant I
Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-11
I His Character and Qualifications 42:1-9
II His Mission 49:1-7
III His Obedience 50:4-11
(There are 4 portions of scripture that are titled "the servant songs", in the book of Isaiah, which refer to the future coming of God's
Servant, the Messiah.
3 of which, we've studied for the past 2 weeks------
42:1-9 describes the qualifications and the character of the Servant that God will empower to do His work.
49: 1-6 describes how the nation of Israel failed miserably, to do their job of taking God to the nations-----but how Jesus, the Servant Messiah would not fail---He would do the job for them----He would be a light to the Gentiles-----He would be their salvation and He would light their way, through a fallen world.
50:4-11 describes Jesus as the obedient Servant, who is willing to endure humiliation and persecution, (not so much for the sake of us) but for the sake of the Father.
The 4th one we will study next week-------
52:13 -53:12 describes how the Suffering Servant would take on the sins of the whole world.)
God's ways are not our ways. God's thoughts are not our thoughts. He is constantly surprising us by the way that He chooses to operate in our world, for His own purposes. He is God, the creator and sustainer and sovereign of all things! How else, could a God who seemed to have been defeated by the earth's mighty armies, whose people controlled no land and no temple, and no government, dare, to claim to be, the world's only true God? It must have seemed to Isaiah's world, that there was no way that you could believe the promises, of that kind of God. But the hope of Israel wasn't supposed to be dependent on what they could see with their eyes or even what they experienced, at the hands of the world------their hope, was supposed to be dependent on believing, that God was the God of their forefathers and that He had always kept the promises that He'd made to them----and--- that He loved to use unlikely sources and unlikely methods, to make sure, that His will, will always be done, for the best interests of His children.
Believers, on this side of the cross, face the same kind, of skepticism, when we try to take Jesus to the world, and explain Him to it. We expect people to believe that a Galilean carpenter knew more about God, than any other person who has ever lived. We expect people to recognize the living presence, of a man who died and was resurrected over 2000 years ago. We expect them to believe that "the carpenter-turned-resurrected Lord" is God, and that He chose to clothe Himself, with the created body of a human being, so that He could meet us, at our own level of understanding, in order to save us. Plus, we expect them to believe, that He is currently in heaven, but that He left His Spirit, on the earth, to live in our hearts, to teach us and guide us and rebuke us and comfort us, until He comes back again, to establish His eternal kingdom-------and---- we expect them to believe, that the destiny, of every single person who has ever or will ever, live, depends on how they respond to the man, Jesus.
It sounds like a fantastic fairy tale, doesn't it? But the truth is, it's more real than anything we can see or hear, or smell or touch, in the temporal world, that we live in. If we pay attention to what Isaiah has said about the Servant/Messiah, we can't help but believe, without a doubt, that God is who He says He is, because Jesus, is who Isaiah says He is. Jesus came to earth to show us the face of God. We can know God, if we know Jesus.We can believe the truth of it all, because everything that Isaiah prophesied about Jesus, before He was born, all came true, 700 years later, just like he said it would.
If we know what the NT says about the life of Jesus and we go back to compare it to what Isaiah says about the "Servant"----------we can't help but be amazed and moved by, the hand and heart and mind of God, because of how much He loves His children. He loved Israel so much, that He basically told them every detail of what was going to happen-------they didn't have to miss it------but they did, because they were blinded by their own self-worth and self-absorption.
We're His children too, and I don't want us to be blinded by self-worth and self-achievement and self-absorption. I don't want us to miss, what He's laid out in scripture, for us to know. I want us to have our hearts and our minds and our ears and our hands, wide-open. I want us to be able to see our Savior and recognize Him as our God, so that we can ask Him to come into our hearts and to change us, to be like Him-------so that we can listen and understand, what it is, that He wants us to do----which is to take His love, to every single person, who crosses our path, every single day of our lives, in the most minute of ways.
Servants Unaware:
{Ina Mae Brooks-----"When I was a child, polio paralyzed my legs. Neighbors insisted that God crippled children like me as a punishment for their parent's sins. My mother refused to believe in such a God. Then Pastor Cooper came to call. "You can visit", Mother warned, "but you mustn't mention God or Jesus in this house." The year that I was bedfast, Pastor Cooper read stories to me, played dolls and colored with me. Without uttering Jesus' name, Coop, as I called him, became our friend. When I grew stronger, Mother took me to church. Using understanding and love, Coop introduced to Jesus Christ."
Sandy Lu------"My brother, Richard, is a first year medical student who often studies late at the campus library in downtown Dallas. Even if he's not ready to go home yet, he voluntarily and cheerfully walks one of his fellow classmates to her car to make sure she is safe. Then he often returns to the library and continues studying. God is using this simple act to soften his classmate's heart toward Christ. She is going on a medical mission trip with the university's student fellowship this spring----in part because of my brother's servant heart."
Sarah McCoy-----"Early last year, my fiance' was hit by a driver and left paralyzed in a wheelchair. We continued with our wedding plans, but once married we faced the challenge of juggling home, school and medical responsibilities as well as new jobs. I began to feel overwhelmed by all that I needed to accomplish in one day. A lady, at work, asked if she could help us by doing our laundry. When I protested that it was a huge chore, she told me that when she and her husband were newly married and struggling, a woman had faithfully done their laundry for a year. When she asked the woman how she could repay her, she said, "Someday, return the favor for another newly married young couple so that I can be a living testimony of God's care and provision."}
Jesus was a servant to the world, not because He loves us, even though He does, not because we deserve it, because we certainly don't--------Jesus was a servant because He loves God and wanted to please Him, with His obedience. The lesson for us, in this, is there is no way that we can ever please everybody, so our focus should be on pleasing God. When we are moved to serve someone, we should do it out of love and obedience for the Lord------for no other reason-----just to please Him. And just like it is with the Lord, people won't always love what we do for them and they won't always appreciate what we tell them about Jesus, but we should do it anyway, because the person we want to please, is God. We can't control another person's behavior or their understanding----but we can control ours----so we are supposed to do, what we know is the right thing to do, because it is what the Lord is calling us to, regardless of how we are received. Philippians 2:3-7 says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look, not only, to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who being, in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but made Himself, nothing, taking the very nature of a servant."
I. His Character and Qualifications: 42:1-9
There could only be one candidate for the role of the Servant/Messiah. Only the Lord Jesus could qualify. He was the servant "in whom God's soul delights!" He was the perfect servant, in the sense that He came to do, only, the Father's will. As the eternal Word of God, who spoke the world into existence, He was One, with the Father. Then, He became a man, and as a man, He lived the kind of life that nobody else has ever lived. He fulfilled the will of God perfectly and completely. If He had committed even one sin, then He would have had to die for that sin, but, as it was, He was able to die for the sins of others, because He had none of His own. In His humanity, Jesus was obedient in every way. Even in the garden of Gethsemenee, that last night, before his crucifixion in Matt. 26:42 He prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."
Jesus is God's gracious alternative to our idols. God wants Him to be our delight, as He is His. He is such a gentleman, that when He walked on this earth He wouldn't break a bruised reed or quench a faintly burning wick. He went about His Father's business in a quiet and gentle way. He gave suffering people their lives back and He didn't use His success with them to take advantage of them or to promote Himself (There is an old publication of, The History of the World, that was written in 1600. When you read about the days of the roman Empire and Caesar Augustus, you see that it says, "In his days, there was born in Bethlehem of Judea, that goodly gentleman, Jesus Christ.) This sounds funny in modern day vernacular, but it shouldn't-------because what is a gentleman, if not a gracious and gentle man, and Jesus was that. The Holy Spirit is also a gentleman------He never forces us to do anything that we don't want to do. He always lets us make the choice for our behavior. He lets us exert our free will, even when He knows, that He'll wind up having to clean up our mess. He wants us to choose what will please God, but He wants it to be our conscious decision to do it, not His coercion.
The servant is God's chosen one; God takes great delight in Him and upholds Him; He brings justice to the nations because He is gracious and merciful; His power comes from God; He will succeed; He is faithful, lasting and enduring; He is meek and mild; He is the creator of the heavens and the earth; God has given Him the right, to grant salvation, to anyone who will believe; He is the light in the darkness; He will free the prisoners; He will give sight to the blind, physically and spiritually.
The key word in Isaiah 42 is "justice". In this passage, the word means more than just legal correctness. It means to make things right and balanced. The word that God used in Exodus 26:30, when He gave Moses, the plan for the tabernacle, has the same meaning. JUst like He had a blueprint for the tabernacle, God has a blueprint for human existence. God knows how human beings and human society can be, at their best. God knows how to make us happy and fulfilled. And through His Servant, Jesus, He brought the plan down from heaven to give us another chance to get it right. This word, "justice", includes within it's meaning, all our longings and desires for a better life and a better world. It is a world where there are no slums, no poverty, no oppression, no illiteracy, no pollution, no murder, no deaths, and basically no heartache or misery of any kind.
"Injustice" is the opposite word to "justice" and it is more than a political platform------it is a spiritual evil, because it denies God. And society has made such an overwhelming mess, of our world, that it is beyond our powers of correction. We are supposed to work for a better world, but we have to realize, that in the whole pitiful length of human history, we have never once, created a society that's the way that we would really like for it to be. We have had flashes of brilliance, here and there, but they never last, because inevitably, selfish desires, self-indulgence and pride rear their ugly heads and children wind up begging in the streets and old people start shivering in the cold and people have to learn how to live with filthy water to drink and a lack of food to eat. Our only hope for salvation----- for us and for the world, rests in the Servant of God----the quiet healer who has the power to renew the human heart and reconstruct civilization, not by bullying us, but by enduring His own suffering; and not by imposing demands on us, but by absorbing our sins and our miseries into Himself and erasing them once and for all, on the cross. God's reputation as God, stands on the success of Jesus and Jesus proves that God is God, as He delivers us from darkness and opens our eyes to the Lord's great glory.
II. His Mission 49:1-7
The call of the Servant was divine, because it came from God----- and He had a 2-fold commission from God:
1.) He was to gather disobedient Israel, who had turned away from God, and bring them back to Him.
2.) He was to bring salvation to all nations on earth (the Gentiles) (Us)
Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity and in this passage, He is looking forward to His miraculous birth into the human race. The words "womb" and "mother", which Isaiah uses, refer to His humanity and they emphasize the fact that God, the Father, would recognize Him in His human form. "His mouth, like a sharp sword" refers to the power that His words would have during His earthly ministry and the power that His written word would have, on every generation, in every age---power to convict and comfort and encourage and strengthen. "In the shadow of His hand, He has hidden me" paints a picture of the Lord Jesus being guarded during His ministry, protected by His heavenly Father. It is true that He suffered and died, but that wasn't because of overwhelming mob violence---His arrest and subsequent suffering, were totally controlled, voluntary acts, on His part, that were fulfilling the purpose that He came here for. Until the moment came, for Him to deliberately submit Himself to the Roman authorities-----nobody could touch Him because He was guarded by the Father's power. "and a polished shaft; in His quiver, He has hidden me" refers to His mission. Jesus was an arrow in the Father's hand-----God's promise of Him, as the means of salvation, had been a mystery even to the prophets, until the time was right for Him to be revealed! He was not an ordinary arrow-----He was straight and polished, made out of precious metal and guaranteed, to fly straight to His target.
He had all of God's authority behind Him, so that He could accomplish His work, perfectly. The Lord prepared Him to speak with authority------and His words were designed to pierce the conscience of sinners and bring them to repentance. We know, thanks to the NT, that Jesus is the Servant and that His words came straight from the mouth of God. It's no wonder that everyone; His disciples and His enemies, were amazed by the words that He spoke; whether they liked them or not. His word's always garnered a reaction; they just didn't always get understanding or obedience. God's Word, will change the heart of a person, if that person will listen to Him. If we will go to the scripture to seek comfort and guidance and direction and wisdom, and obey it, we will never be sorry. Unfortunately, we try to find the Lord in too many other things and we miss the joy and peace that He wants to give us. I know that our disinterest grieves His heart.
When Jesus was here, there was times when His heart was grieved then, too; times when He experienced lonely, discouragement, because people wouldn't listen to Him, in spite of the fact that He had come to earth under God's authority. During His earthly ministry, there was almost universal misunderstanding, even among the 12 disciples, concerning Him, His teaching and His work. He had to die and be resurrected, before, even those closest to Him, understood, just a fraction of His Mission and its purpose. The religious leaders strongly opposed Him and the multitudes, often followed Him just for the physical benefits that they received from Him, while ignoring His saving message---and to top it off, the people that He did help, didn't always thank Him.
Crowds heard Him preach but only a handful committed themselves to Him---and even they forsook Him and fled and hid when the going got rough. All throughout the Gospels, Jesus faced rejection and unbelief and prejudice. His heart had to have been broken over and over again, because even His closest companions couldn't grasp His Words and their importance. And He was God, He knew that one of them would betray Him in the end. But He wasn't disillusioned; He knew, before the world was even created, just exactly how things were going to be and that they would be necessary to bring about the Father's will. And He did it anyway. That is amazing love---and we can't even begin to comprehend it.
To think, that even Jesus, could feel a sense of despondency is startling to us. We know that He succeeded in everything that He did----we know that His victory on the cross has been the world's greatest blessing, but we also know, that Israel, the nation, has yet to receive Him. John 1:11 says, "He came to His own and His own received Him not" and Luke13:34 says that He wept over Jerusalem and cried, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you; how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not" and in the Talmud (Commentary on scriptures) and other Jewish writings, Jesus is described as the "leper" and the "hanged one" and "the one whom the nation abhorreth". They just could not understand who He was. Peter says in Acts 3:17, "that if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." But they didn't know. They couldn't see HIm.
The rejection that Jesus experienced, at the time of His earthly ministry, could appear like His work was in vain. But that would be a total lie----He lived and worked by faith, in strict obedience to God the Father. Isaiah 49:4 says, "Yet what is due me, is in the Lord's hands, and my reward is with my God." Even His death, on the cross, so heinous to the world and so precious but almost inconceivable, to believers, was the greatest victory that the world has ever known, up to the present time. The antidote for the Lord's despondency was to keep His focus on God and the work that He had sent Him here to do. When a person is discouraged they look backward to what has or hasn't been. But Jesus teaches us to look forward, to what is promised and to trust, what we know to be true! One day, Jesus will not only see Israel regathered and converted, but He will draw to Himself, a multitude of believers too numerous to count, from every part of the world. Hebrews 12:2 says, "who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame." He kept His eyes on the prize----the joy that was set before Him, enabled Him to endure rejection and ridicule and to face the cross. He knew that His future and ours was going to be one of glory-----so He did what He had to do.
The Jewish nation was called to glorify God and to be a light to the nations----but they failed in their mission, as a nation. That's why the Messiah is called Israel----He came and did the work that Israel was supposed to do. Matthew, Luke and Paul, all tell us, that Jesus came to minister to the Jews, 1st, and then to the Gentiles. When the Lord returned to heaven----- He did leave behind a believing remnant of Jews, who did carry on His work. We must never forget that salvation has come to us, through the Jews---- the Bible is a Jewish book; Jesus was Jewish, the 1st believers and the 1st missionaries were Jews-------the Gentiles would never have heard the Gospel, had it not been brought to them by Jews. When you think about it that way, we can see how it makes sense that Isaiah called Jesus, by the name of Israel. We should make it a part of our prayer life to pray for the Jews to come to know Him before the Tribulation. I think that is a responsibility that we have to the Lord, to pray for the people who gave us Jesus.
After His resurrection and in the fullness of time----the final victory at Armageddon will come and His kingdom will be established, forever, "and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord." Phil. 2:11----and all along the way-----from then until then------even heathens, kings and princes, will honor His majesty and will authenticate the rightness and validity and the necessity, of His mission.
The story is told of Queen Victoria:
(Toward the end of her life, Queen Victoria once publicly stated, "I am a firm believer in the 2nd Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I have sometimes thought that He has permitted me to reign so long, that perhaps I will never lay down my crown, until I lay it down at His feet, when He comes again." (she reigned almost 64 years)
Another story is told about Queen Victoria:
(Every summer she was in the habit of going to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. While she was there, she would stroll around every day, visiting the Highland women in their cottages and they became unlikely friends. One summer, at the end of her stay, she went to say goodbye, to one of the ladies, who was very elderly. The older lady said to her, "Well, Your Majesty, I may never see you on this earth again, may I ask your gracious Majesty a question? Queen Victoria said "yes, as many as you like."Well, she said, "will Your Majesty meet me in heaven?" The Queen said "yes, through the all-availing blood of Jesus.") There is no doubt in my mind that Queen Victoria knew Jesus as her Savior.
III His Obedience: 50:4-11
God challenged His people in Isaiah 50 to prove that He was unfaithful as a husband or a father. The picture of Israel the nation, as the wife of God, is a theme throughout the Old Testament. The "marriage" took place when the Israelites accepted God's covenant with them, at Mt. Sinai. As part of the covenant, Exodus 20:3 says, "You shall have no other gods before me."Unfortunately, they broke their side of the covenant, because they couldn't stop, worshiping idols.
The best way to deal with sin is to admit it to ourselves and then, to confess it to the Lord, so that there will be forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration, in our relationship with Him. God wanted Israel to accept the responsibility for their sin. But they either couldn't see their sin or they didn't want to see it. God didn't reject them and send them into exile and He had enough power to keep them from having to go into exile. They had to go into exile because of their choices. Their sins of unbelief, disobedience and disregard, for God's power, took them there. God didn't prevent it because He cannot let sin go unpunished------He could have prevented it, but He didn't, because, in the long run-------they were going to receive a greater benefit from it.
In contrast to Israel's disobedience, Jesus was the most obedient person who has ever lived. He was the obedient Servant who was willing to endure humiliation and persecution, for the sake of God, the Father. Jesus was committed to doing God's will, knowing full well, that it meant that He would have to go to the cross.The evidence of His obedience was clear, in both His public and His private prayers, and in the declaration of His dependance on God, as He yielded to Him. In Isaiah 50: 4-5, Jesus acknowledged that "God had given Him an instructed tongue and ears to listen, like one being taught, and that He had not been rebellious and He had not drawn back."
Why do we have ears on the outside of our heads? Why are they not on the inside? The answer is simple--we aren't supposed to listen to ourselves-----we're supposed to listen to the voice of the Lord. I wonder how much of the the misery and heartache and fear that we experience in this world, stems, from our almost religious, devotion to our own thoughts and feelings and ideas. We spend so much of our time in a universe of our own thoughts, we need to realize ,that the quality of that environment matters. We need that inner, personal world to be influenced by the Gospel. I wonder how many of us, have our ears open, to the in-flowing of God's voice, and how many of us understand, what it means, to really listen to Him. The scripture tells us, "He who has ears, let him hear"--so our ears must be a more important part of our anatomy, than we realize.( Sometime in the 80s, Malcolm Muggeridge (British journalist, satirist, media personality (and during war time), soldier and spy) posed the question to his audience, during one of his London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity-----"What if we had found the Dead Sea Videos instead of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Would the difference have mattered to anybody? Would it matter if biblical faith had been handed down to us in images instead of words? Does the camera make the same impact as the pen?" Muggeridge argued that the camera deceives us----that, it makes us think that we're seeing reality, when the truth is what we're seeing doesn't have any depth or substance. Muggeridge went on to say, that "the Christian faith came to us in words, not images and that he thought, that the passage, in the 1st chapter, of the Gospel, according to St. John---"the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth"---was one of the most beautiful, profound things ever written----- and that, if it had come to us in images instead of words, it would not have lived as it has."
God interacts with us, meaningfully, through words-----words that illuminate; words that last and words that untangle our confusion. If His way of getting through to us, is with words, then we need to learn, what it means to listen.
The nation of Israel had a hearing problem. But the servant of the Lord, Jesus, was a wonderful listener. His ear was always open and ready to hear what God had to say. In this passage, Isaiah is telling us, that we all need to get a hearing checkup. He wants us to retune our ears, so that we can not only hear, what the Lord is saying, but we can understand Him, too. (I have a hearing loss. I have a hard time understanding the person right beside me, if there is a lot of extraneous noise, unless I listen very carefully. Sunday, Lizzie and I were coming home from a horseshow at VT. We were in the mountains so my ears were stopped up, to begin with-----the radio was on-----Lizzie's roommate was in the back seat with her phone and Lizzie was in the front with hers------I thought that Lizzie said to me, "Wanna go sing in Rockville?" I thought, "what did she just say" so I asked her to repeat it, which she did and I heard her say the same thing, and I thought, where is she talking about? so I asked her to repeat herself again-----and then, that time I didn't just hear, but I understood, what she was saying-----what she actually said, was, "Wouldn't it stink if those rocks fell?" It was funny and we laughed our heads off, but it is the perfect illustration, of how we listen to the Lord----- way too often-----we listen to so many other noises and voices, that aren't able to hear the voice, of the one person, who is the closest to us.)
Only the Lord's Servant can open our ears to hear what God is saying. And then once we know that He is talking to us, our understanding of what He is saying, pivots, on how bravely we are willing to listen and obey the Servant's words. Isaiah presents the Messiah to us, as a well-taught disciple, a learned person, a scholar who has devoted Himself to the study of the Lord's word-----a man who is well-schooled in the ways of God. Jesus isn't just loving; He is wise enough to know just how, to help weak people. When everyone else fails us------whether we are weary with sin, weary with service or just weary with life, He alone, can sustain us with just a word.
Isaiah testified to the Servant's obedience, as he described various aspects of His ministry, which we are called to emulate:
1.) His ministry was sustaining----- which requires more thought and more self-control and more love and more insight than a condemning ministry. A finger-pointing, judgmental ministry is easy. Moralism is a sin that we are all guilty of. (tell the story of the 2 girls and the word "damn")
It takes divine wisdom to understand God's grace in a new way, so that we can offer Jesus to people, by sustaining them, when they are weary.
2.) His ministry was one of suffering-----It was with an open ear, that Jesus became obedient to the point of death. His suffering was not a secondary result of His commitment. He chose the way of His suffering. He gave His back to the ones who struck Him and He offered His cheeks to the ones who pulled out His beard. He walked into opposition, with His eyes wide open, and His ears fully tuned. There was no place that Jesus wouldn't go and there was nothing that He wouldn't do, to care for weary people, with the truth of God's grace. Even those who thought that they loved God, were threatened by Jesus' radical words and teaching, and they tormented Jesus for it. In this fallen world, the servant had to suffer, there was no other way-----and if we listen to Him with the openness of heart, that He calls us to,we'll share in that suffering----but we will also share in more glory, than we can even begin to comprehend. ( One of the reasons, that we see widespread breakdowns in wisdom and integrity, even among believers, is because we have forgotten, that God calls us to follow the Lord into suffering. Jesus was not rebellious and He didn't turn away-------when we turn away from God, during hardship, instead of turning toward Him-we are rebelling against Him and we are diminishing our ability, to offer His comfort, to others, who are hurting. Jesus knew that obedience to God is always a winning move. That is what kept Him going all the way to the cross, one step at a time. Others misjudged Him,but God helped Him; and because God didn't help His enemies, who seemed so powerful, they wound up disappearing, like a garment that moths have eaten. The victories and defeats of this life, are not at all what they seem. In the experience of Jesus which is the paradigm(pattern) for us------His faith was vindicated by an unexpected, but unstoppable resurrection-------and in His dazzling, immortal body, forever scared, but forever alive, Jesus Christ will never suffer again. And because of Him, our suffering will be limited to the confines of this world, too.
3.) His ministry would be a light in the darkness-----There are 2 kinds of darkness------one is the darkness of disbelief and separation from God and Jesus is the light, that will dispel that darkness-----but there is also the darkness, that we believers will often find ourselves in----a darkness that can be disorienting and perplexing and indefinite. Jesus found Himself there, when His family scorned Him; He found Himself there when the religious leaders ridiculed Him; He found Himself there when He prayed for God to take the cup of the cross, away from Him and He didn't; He found Himself there when He was arrested; He found Himself there when His disciples scattered; He found Himself there when He was beaten and He had to carry His own cross; He found Himself there as He looked down on His mother, as she watched Him die and He found Himself there, as all the sin of the world,--- was heaped on His shoulders-------but----- the way that He walked through all of those things, that was when His light was the brightest.
We need to remember that when we find ourselves there, in the darkness, that it doesn't mean that we are being disobedient-it means that God is trying to teach us that faith, can offset the darkness and that darkness is what faith is for-----because it is in the darkness, that we will fully trust the Lord for every-thing.
Listening to Jesus, instead of to ourselves, is the only way to live. No one likes darkness---and there are so many lights out there for us to live by. People light their own fires-they strive to live by their own ideas . They wonder why we should listen to Jesus, when there are plausible and certainly, easier ways to live--but Proverbs 16:25 gives the answer and it is this ,"There is a way that seems right to man, but its end, is the way to death."
When nothing else, in our experience, makes sense; when we have no visible path forward and everything seems to be closing in around us------we need to focus on what we know to be true about the character of God and we need keep walking forward, in His will------ (ancient people put a candle in the toe of their upturned shoe, to illuminate their path, one step at a time) and that's all we need to do too, because when we can't see God's hand, we have to trust His heart, one small step at a time, with whatever amount of light, that He's given us----and----- we need to remind ourselves again and again, of the promises of the Gospel. It's amazing-----just one word from God, will stabilize our panicky hearts. And, in this one simple, but profound way, our lives will be a light to the world, of what a good Savior our God is.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
JOY "Israel's Calling" February 2
February 2, 2010
Israel's Calling
Isaiah 41:8-16; 42:1-25; 43:8-24; 48:1-6; 56:9-57; 58:1-59:20
I God Says, "I love You"
a.) Israel: Chosen By God 41:8-16
b.) The Messiah/ The Servant 42:1-25
II God Says, "I Am Preparing a Future for You"
a.) Israel: God's Witness 43:8-24 and 48:1-6
III God Says: "I Will Shepherd You Home"
a.) Israel's Need for a Savior 56:9-57:13 and 58:1-59:20
After Assyria departed, and the remnant of Judah and Israel, were left in Jerusalem, to ruled by God, through their own kings------- you would think, that they would never, have turned away from Almighty God or ever tried do anything in their own strength again-----and for awhile-----------at least for the 15 more years, that Hezekiah lived------they probably didn't---------but we know that 15 years is just the blink of an eye------so at some point, during those years ahead, God told Isaiah to prophesy, to the people what was going to happen to them, 160 years into the future, and 700 years into the future and beyond eternity, into the future:
*They would forsake God and His ways as a nation.
*They would be taken into captivity, by Babylon.
*They would resort to worshiping the gods and idols of their captors.
But even with all that-------God wanted Isaiah to tell them, that, even though judgment would come, because of their disobedience-------He was still their God and they still belonged to Him and He would still keep His promises------because their hope, would be just around the corner, in the person of Cyrus of Persia, the earthly king, whom God was going to use, to set His people free. And, underneath that promise, was the even greater promise, of Jesus, the King of all Kings and the Lords of Lords, who would, spiritually, set His people free forever.
Isaiah prophesied, that it would look like Israel, had lost all its credibility, as God's people and all of its identity, as God's chosen ones, and that it would look like, they had become, just a footnote, in the pages of world history------a nation hopelessly and helplessly forsaken ------that's why God wanted Isaiah, to let them know, ahead of time, that when they found themselves living out the prophecy----that they would remember Him, as their God, and they would turn back to Him.
And, God wanted them to know, that when they did remember, that He would be waiting for them, with outstretched arms, to rescue them, deliver them and dwell with them, and He would give them joy, just like He had promised.
When we see how far we've fallen and how broken the world is, it explains something to us. It explains why disappointment seems to pervade so much, of our thoughts and our desires. It explains why we dread to turn on the news or to pick up a paper, afraid of what bad report we might see or hear. The longer we live and the more of life that we experience, the more we seem to be confronted with disappointment, so persistently and so convincingly, that hope, starts to look empty and unattainble, to us. We become disappointed in our ideals, disappointed in romance, disappointed in our marriages, disappointed in our government, disappointed in our careers, disappointed in our churches, disappointed in the people we trust and disappointed in ourselves. When all human hopes have let us down, and we have reached the end of ourselves, that's when, we just might be ready to receive from God, the only real solution to our disappointment, which exists----and that is Jesus.
Isaiah prophesied that God's people, in their Babylonian exile, would be downtrodden and bitter and disillusioned. He prophesied that they would believe that God had failed them, and that they would blame Him for their misery. Which, if we're honest with ourselves, is what we humans, even believers, typically do------ we blame someone else or we blame God for our own bad choices and our own failures and our own disappointments.----------And for His part, what does God do? He comes down to comfort us and to sustain us and to lift us up and provide away, for us to come back to Him. God came to us, in the person of Jesus, over 2000 years ago and He comes to us now, in the person of the Holy Spirit, with a promise and with a hope that doesn't depend on us, at all, and doesn't depend on any circumstance, but depends solely, on Himself. Because God is good, all the time, He promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us and that He will give us the strength to face anything that we have to, until He comes back to get us, to take us home.
I God Says, "I Love You"
a. Israel Chosen By God
(Little Kathy came to the home for homeless kids, dressed in nothing but dirty rags. She was only 10 years old and she only brought one possession with her. It was an old aluminum paint can. She never let that can out of her sight-------most of the time, she carried it around in her hands. Questions about the can's contents brought a brief shrug and a "can't tell you today" kind of answer. A lot of times, she sat all by herself in her dorm room, hugging the can to her chest and sometimes, she could even be seen, talking softly, but earnestly, to it. One day, one of the counselors invited Kathy to to eat breakfast with her. They talked quietly together, under the roar of conversation, going on around them, that was being created, by the other 150 homeless children, in that dining hall. Finally, the counselor worked up enough courage to ask Kathy about the can. "That's a really nice can that you have, can you tell me what's in it?" Seconds passed and then minutes, of silence. The counselor waited patiently. Then tears welled up in Kathy's eyes and she whispered, "It's my mother, I went and got her ashes from the funeral home." Hugging the can closer to her chest, she continued to talk, "I never really knew my mother. She threw me in a garbage dumpster, 2 days after I was born. Someone found me and turned me over to Social Services. I moved from 1 foster home to the next, getting madder and madder, at my mother and getting in more and more trouble, with my foster families. Then, one day, I just made up my mind that I was going to find her. I started asking around and I got lucky. Someone told me where she lived. But when I got there, she wasn't there-----she was in the hospital dying from AIDS. I finally got to meet her on the day before she died and she told me that she loved me. My mother told me that she really loved me."
We know from scripture, that, in their Babylonian exile, that the remnant of Israel, was a lot like Kathy-------they were searching for someone to love them. They considered themselves a hopeless case, with a God, who seemed to have forgotten and forsaken them. Then, through the mists of time, they did remember God's message and they heard Him say, "I love you."
Darkness enters every person's life. We all have times, when we can see no way out of a situation, that we might be facing or we might be in the middle of----- times when God seems to be a distant reality, from another lifetime, with no connection to what is happening right now. When we face those times -------we need to remember that Isaiah's word from the Lord, was meant for all of us-----"I love you", that is what the Lord wants us to know. God is more than the God who brings punishment or who allows judgment. He is also the God who brings comfort and the God who shepherds us through" the valley of the shadow of death" (which I think, is not just meaning death, but also means the dark days of life that we struggle with in this world). We have no reason to fear evil, because even in our darkest moments, God is still our God and He is still with us. We just need to trust Him, to shepherd our hearts and our lives---------and we have to allow Him, with total trust and submission, to do it, in any way that He chooses.
Fear must have swept across the whole world, as Cyrus moved over the land, conquering every city, that he encountered. Israel had been held captive, in Babylon, for 70 years, but the time had finally come, when God was ready to redeem them. He used Cyrus and his human power, to create the situation, that would send Israel back home. Isaiah had prophesied exactly what would happen, 230 years before, and Israel would have spared themselves, a whole lot of misery, if they had just trusted the Living God, but unfortunately, the frightened people had turned to idols, for a solution to their troubles. But, God had never taken His hand off of them---He was the same God that He had always been and in 41:10 He reminded Israel of His protection, "Fear not, for I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you and help you and I will uphold you with my righteous right hand". The Lord's great compassion comes through very clearly in this verse. He desires to take away whatever it is, that's frightening us, but more than that, He wants to take away the feeling of fear and dismay that we have. Fear produces torment and dismay creates uncertainty and both of these emotions, divert our focus from God and interrupt our relationship with Him. 1John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love, casts out all fear…" God is love and He desires for His children to enter into that love and to rest in it. He wants us to be strong in the knowledge---------that no matter what transpires in the future, He will always be there for us.
5 times in this one verse, God made statements that were designed to instill confidence, into the hearts of His children. He didn't add any conditions to His words, He just promised that He would be a very present help when trouble came. He was saying that in this fallen world, there will be trouble, but that it doesn't matter how immense or how trifling a problem may be, because He will be there to walk with us through it.
God addressed this passage to the OT people, but it is every bit as applicable, to us, today-------God hasn't changed and the hearts of people haven't changed-------just times have changed. His relationship with us, is just as real and important to Him ,as His relationship with Israel was and His ability to keep His promises, is just as reliable. (The story is told, of an American co-pilot, who took a direct hit on his airplane, by an Iraqi bomber. Half of the plane's nose was destroyed. The pilot, strapped into his seat, was killed. The co-pilot was badly injured. With blood streaming down his body; with his left arm shattered and unusable------He tried to take control of the aircraft. Unfortunately, all of his gauges and instruments were so damaged that he couldn't determine speed, altitude or direction. He knew that if he ejected over enemy territory, that it would mean certain death for him. Suddenly, though, into his seemingly hopeless situation, the co-pilot saw 2 American fighter planes coming straight toward him. What a beautiful sight they must have been! Flying alongside the crippled plane, and the brave co-pilot, they guided them both safely to the landing base.)
God's people don't ever have to fear-------we just need to look to God and He will provide, all the help that we need, in any situation. Just like sin is sin is sin and is all level at the cross---trouble is trouble is trouble and it's all level at the cross.
Isaiah used a number of descriptive nouns for God's people as he delivered Gods message to them. The words were purposeful in their intent------they were supposed to encourage the people and remind them who they belonged to. The word servant and the word worm were 2 words that were used, so that a comparison could be drawn between them.
*servant: "You O Israel, my servant…whom I have chosen." Because they were Abraham's descendants, and Abraham was so righteous, even with his human imperfections, that God called him His friend--------God chose Israel, to inherent the promises of the covenant, that He made to Abraham.
*worm: "Do not be afraid, O worm, Jacob." The concept, of being a servant, carries the idea of distinction and integrity and trust with it---but the word worm, means something very different. The word servant, describes who they were, because of God's grace and His calling of them. And the word worm, describes who they were, in their own power.
Israel, this side of the Millennial Kingdom, will never gain worldly power, but God promised, that in His hand, she would become a new "threshing sled", which He would use, to overthrow great nations and bring them to ruin. (its a heavy sled, with spikes on the underside------it was dragged over the ears of grain, so that the husks were separated from the grain). The encouragement is, that, we can go from being miserable, lowly worms, to being powerful instruments, if we are in the hands of God. And when we recognize, that it is only by God's power that we can succeed, then we will learn to rejoice, in the glory of the Lord.
For the remnant of Israel, the literal fulfillment of this part of the prophecy has not happened yet----it won't happen, until the middle of the Great Tribulation, when they finally realize, that Jesus is their Messiah. But there have been times and battles, in their long history, when with God's help, they have been the victors, against all odds. And despite the efforts of people and nations who have hated her and tried to destroy her, through the years, Israel has survived and has always had a remnant------It's remarkable that Israel:
* survived the Holocaust
* survived the attack in 1948, when the combined forces of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq went against her before she had had time to arm herself
* in 1967, that she withstood the combined forces of Syria, Jordan and Egypt and in 6 days had occupied Jerusalem, taken the Golan Heights and extended her boundaries into Gaza, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsular.
* on Yom Kippur in 1973-when Egypt and Syria, again joined forces against her, that the Israelis, devastatingly, defeated them.
All of these victories were miraculous, considering the overwhelming forces ranged against them. The whole world can see God's hand on Israel, if they will just look. God's ancient promise to Israel is still standing.
b.) Israel's Need for a Servant
(When the early settlers 1st came to America, they not only suffered hunger and disease, but they also had to fight to take the land from the Native Americans, who were already living here. Fierce fighting and raids were common, as the settlers and the Native Americans vied for land and existence. Both groups suffered great material loss as well as the loss of many lives. (There is a story that is told about a raid which happened in Wooster, Mass. in 1675. Native Americans attacked a forted, white settlement, burning cabins and killing many settlers. Capt. Hutchinson and his men, who were in the fort, fought hard, but supplies were running low. Their need was desperate. At the risk of his life, a young man escaped one night and went for help. After 3 more, fear-filled days, good news reached the fort . Rescue was on the way! Major Willard of Boston and his men were not far away with supplies and ammunition, for the exhausted settlers. At the appearance of the army, the enemy fled. Joy and thanksgiving flooded the hearts of the settlers, as they praised God for their deliverance and for their rescuers.)
Chapter 42 is God's announcement to the Israelites and to us, that help is on the way------Isaiah promised that the Rescuer would come. This passage in Isaiah is a very famous Messianic passage. Jesus is "the servant, in whom God's soul delights" that Isaiah is talking about. Jesus was the perfect servant, because He came to earth, to do the Father's will, no matter what the cost was, to Himself. In this prophecy, God described the qualifications and character of His servant, whom, as the Chosen One, He promised to empower with His Spirit, so that He could bring justice to all the nations. His Messiah-Servant would carry on a quiet ministry, avoiding all self-displaying and attention-getting activities. He would be gentle and peaceful. He would not harm, even the weakest person, but He would insist on right and truth. He would substitute content for loud noise. There were times when He raised His voice, but it was so that large crowds could hear Him, not because He was ranting and yelling to draw attention to Himself. The reed that is mentioned in verse 3 grew by the riverbank. It was a weak little plant and was easily damaged. A bruised reed would have been even more vulnerable to being broken. The fact that Jesus wouldn't hurt even a bruised reed, focused on His gentle spirit.
The smoking flax refers to a wick that is almost burned down and ready to go out. But even that, Jesus wouldn't quench. His tender dealing, with those who trust Him, will always be loving and gentle. But, even with all His tenderness and gentleness, Jesus never wavered from His purpose. His gentleness didn't conceal weakness; it revealed His strength. Where there is the least evidence of a heart turning toward God, the Servant(Jesus) will lead the person into salvation. (We know on this side of the cross, that every bit of what Isaiah said to describe Him, was and is true, about Jesus, which authenticates Him, as God's servant, even if Isaiah didn't name Him by name.) Jesus even called himself God's servant, when He was talking to James and John in Mark 10:45, "For even I, the Son of Man, came here, not to be served, but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many."
Before Isaiah explained what the mission of the servant was going to be, he took the time to remind the people again, of just who God is and just what kind of authority, He has.
1.) He is the Lord----- 2.) He is the Creator----- 3.) He spread out the earth and everything in it------ 4.) He gives breath to the earth's people and life to those who walk on it. And then, based on the authority of these truths, he revealed that God's great plan of salvation for mankind would be accomplished through the work of the Servant/Messiah. God chose His Servant and He called Him His son----- and His Son's mission will be successful----God will make sure that it is------He promised that He would watch over Him and that He would strengthen Him, in His ministry, with His own strength. The Servant/Messiah's calling would be worked out in 4 steps----------
* the fulfillment of God's covenant with Abraham------all the blessings that had been promised: wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption and peace, were vested in Jesus. He is our salvation and only by receiving Him, can we receive them.
* a light to the Gentiles------He came to redeem the Jews, God's chosen people------but He also came to offer forgiveness and redemption to the Gentile nations,
* to open blind eyes-----He did ,physically heal, blind people during His earthly ministry------but that was just a minute fulfillment of this prophecy-----the real ministry, was to bring spiritual sight, to the spiritually blind. Sin brought abut universal blindness and every human being is blind, until the Holy Spirit, opens up their eyes to the truth. That's why it isn't possible to reason or argue anyone into the kingdom of God. It would be like trying to reason or argue a physically blind man, into being able to suddenly physically see. If God hadn't lifted the inherent blindness of sin, by Jesus' work on the cross, lost mankind would never have been able to see.
* appointed to bring prisoners from the dungeons and those in darkness, out of prison----Only the perfect, sinless Jesus, could have set mankind free, from the bondage of sin.
Through Isaiah, God confirms and affirms His authority--------He is the Lord and He declares it Himself------He is eternal--------He is self-existent---------He is uncreated--------He has always existed------He is without beginning and without end------He has always been and always will be----He is the Lord of all Glory-------- And He gave that Glory to Jesus, His perfect Servant, because He loves us. This should prompt all of humanity, then and now, to sing a New Song of worship and praise and gratitude, all to the glory of the Lord.
(There is a story about a Frenchman, who was imprisoned in a dungeon, in solitary confinement. Depressed, he used a stone and scrawled on the cell wall,"no one cares." One day, he noticed a tiny green shoot coming up through a crack in the floor. Soon, it began to reach toward the light, that was coming from a tiny window, up near the ceiling. Day after day, it climbed the wall---and then one day, a beautiful flower appeared. The prisoner, who had observed the plant daily, marked out his original words and scratched a new message on the wall, "God cares.") God always cares. He has such patience toward His wayward people. The truth is, He never gives up on His own. Isaiah declared that God would send appropriate judgment on all the idolaters, but that He would tenderly restore anyone, who would turn back to Him, in repentance.
At the end of Chap. 42, Isaiah switched the title of the word Servant, from Jesus, the Messiah, to the nation of Israel. Even though God had called them to be His missionaries to the nations around them-------they had been blind to their sin and deaf to the consequences of it. They had seen more of God's miraculous power than any other nation--but their faith was no stronger or more evangelistic or more zealous, because of what they had seen and heard. You couldn't tell any difference between them and the world around them.
We have been even more blessed, than Israel, because we live on this side of the cross------we are without excuse----we have the full Scripture and the Holy Spirit------we need to take care, that we don't miss our calling, the way Israel did.
II. God Says I am Preparing a Future for You
a. Israel: God's Witness
In spite of all of their shortcomings and their disobedience, God wanted them to know, that the calling that He had given them, from the beginning, had not changed. Being a witness, to the pagan nations, around them, was still their mission. In chap. 41 God, through Isaiah, had called them into a courtroom scene and He did the same thing in this passage------He wanted to challenge them and hold them accountable for, their idol worship. He asked the question, "Can idols foretell the future? He challenged the people to put their money where their mouths were. If they believed that idols could reveal the future, then He wanted to see proof of that ability, laid out in front of Him. The answer, of course, was obvious-------idols, can't do anything for anyone-------So, God pointed His finger at Israel and declared to them, "You are my witnesses…my servant, whom I have chosen." God wants the world to recognize Him for who He is, but He especially, wants His own people, to know Him, to really know Him.
From their own personal experience, Israel could have proclaimed the greatness of their God, to the heathen nations. They could have shouted about the truth of His existence, from the rooftops and could they could have preached the truth about His grace and His power and His mercy and all the benefits of His love and His blessings, in the streets. But they didn't, except when they had no where else to turn. God existed before the first heathen idol was formed, by the hands of man, and He will still be here, after the last one is forgotten.
All men need a Savior and there is no Savior, other than God. If God chooses to act, there is no power, in heaven or on earth, which is able to thwart Him and nothing can can prevent, Him, from fulfilling His purpose. No idol and no god, from the imagination of man, has the ability to do, what the Living God has done. And Israel, because He had revealed Himself to them, over and over again, was supposed to proclaim to their world, what God had done for them.
When God becomes the center of a person's life, there will be evidence, immediately, of the change in their hearts. Fruit that can be seen by others, will start to grow, abundantly. One of the most effective impacts, that witnessing of God's great goodness can have, on a non-believer, is the evidence of joy, that is reflected in a believer's life. Paul says, in 2nd Corinthians 3:2-3, "You, yourselves are a letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show how, that you are a letter from Christ….written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart."
(The devotional magazine, Our Daily Bread, told a story about the great British minister of the 19th century, Alexander Maclaren. The minister was delighted to see a well-known skeptic in His congregation, one Sunday. At the door, Maclaren greeted the man and invited Him to return. As an extra incentive, Maclaren said that he would be speaking on the main doctrines of the Christian faith for the next 4 weeks. After attending every service, faithfully, the skeptic told Maclaren that he had accepted the Lord as his Savior. Thrilled and thankful, the pastor asked which of the 4 sermons had made the difference and brought him to Christ? "Your sermons were very helpful," was the reply, "but there was something else. A few weeks ago, as I left church, I noticed an elderly lady, with a radiant face, also leaving, but moving slowly on the icy street. I offered to help her. As we walked along, she looked up at me and said, 'I wonder if you know my Savior, Jesus Christ? He is everything in the world to me and I want you to love Him too.' Sir, those words touched my heart. When I got home, I knelt and received the Lord Jesus, as my Savior."
The world is watching us-----we are the only face of Jesus, that some people will ever see. God's challenge to His witnesses hasn't changed. We are commanded to go into the world and tell. And we have been empowered, by the Holy Spirit, to carry out that calling. When we allow the Savior to become the Lord of our lives---our actions, become as much of a witness, as our words.
God reminded Israel again, that in due time, He was going to end their Babylonian captivity. That's how God is------we might have to suffer hard places that we don't understand------and those times might last longer, than we can almost stand----but God never fails to let us know, all along the way, that He is still in control and that we can take heart, and trust, that in the end, there will be blessing. (I call these times, that He makes Himself known to us, in the middle of our trial, green pastures-----Psalm 23 says, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness, for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me me all the days of my life, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.") And when we come out of the hard place, and we look back--------we are able to clearly see, just how the Lord walked with us, through it.
Through Isaiah, God referred again, to the Red Sea miracle, when He had destroyed Pharaoh's chariots and had allowed the Israelites to walk on the dry river bed. He wanted them to remember it, as a miracle, but He also wanted them to see it, as only one miracle, among many. He wanted them to remember the past, but He didn't want them to dwell there-----He wanted them to use the past, as a foundation to build on, so that they would be able to trust Him better, in the future. He wanted them to realize that His miracles hadn't stopped, while they were in captivity-----and He wanted them to know that He had plans to do, even greater miracles in the future. *they would gain freedom from Babylon *they would be led home to the Promised Land and they would rebuild Jerusalem and the temple *their nation would be reestablished and they would provide the family, that the miraculous birth of the Messiah would ome from and *beyond the cross---Israel will recognize their Messiah and they will fulfill their calling, during the Tribulation and they will be the missionaries, that God so desired for them to be *and ultimately---all of nature will be restored and there will be a new heaven and new earth and God will dwell among His people forever. God promised that a highway would be built and that streams would start flowing in the desert and that there would be no road blocks, to deter His children, from finding their way home. This had all been planned before the earth was even spoken into existence.
What an important truth that this is, for us to hear------When God forgives our sins, He wants us to forget the past, which included sins and failures. And He wants us go forward. After being forgiven, we need to claim His promises for guidance and strength and trust Him, as He leads us "into new things". Too many believers live defeated lives, because they fail to forgive themselves, which means that they never completely accept God's forgiveness. Psalm 103:12 assures us that we can trust that our sins are forgiven, though, because it says, "as far as the east is from the west, so far, has He removed our transgressions from us."
Israel had neglected prayer and their worship wasn't offered with the right attitude. God wasn't honored by their sacrifices and even though He hadn't imposed unreasonable demands and burdens on them, the people were wearied by the things that He did desire. Consequently, He forewarned them, that they would have to endure their national punishment again and again, down through the centuries-----but He promised them, that He would never take His hand off of them------there would come a day, when their relationship would be perfect! If they would seek Him, He would be found. And, He has already prepared the future, that He intends for each one of us.
III God Says "I will Shepherd You Home"
a. Israel's Need for a Savior
God is not impressed by the words that we say or by the number of times we go to church. He looks at the heart and judges the value of our worship, by our inner attitude. The people of Judah were religious, but they just went through the motions, their hearts were far from God-----they weren't faithful and there is a big difference between religion and faith----one is a matter of the mind and the other one is a matter of the heart. This, more than anything, should have shown them how desperately they needed a Savior. We need to examine our own hearts------are we religious or are we faithful-------if we are just going through the motions of religion, then we need ask the Lord to help us get it straight. That is what He longs to do. He wants us to ask Him to help us and He wants to lavish us with His goodness.
The bulk of Israel's leaders; their prophets and their priests, and even a lot of their kings, according to Isaiah, had failed miserably. They were ignorant and greedy. They were like blind watchmen who couldn't see what was going on around them. Instead of taking the proper role of shepherds, ever alert to the dangers, that might be lurking, as all spiritual leaders should be, Israel's leaders, are described as "shepherds who lack understanding." They were preoccupied with their own ambitions; they were dreamers without any follow-through; they were obsessed with satisfying their physical passions------eating, drinking and physical pleasures. If those men had turned from their sinful ways, the nation would have turned from their sinful ways and God would have been ready to forgive and forget. But, unfortunately, they continued in their rebellion and the consequences for their deplorable leadership, took them into exile.
Idolatry has always been mankind's problem--and in Israel's long history, she is punished for it, over and over again. Despite the fact that both King Hezekiah and King Josiah had led the people in destroying their idols, in the high places----- as soon as an ungodly king was on the throne, Israel went right back to her old ways. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah warned them about idolatry and made it plain, that God sees it as adultery and prostitution, against Him. But the people just ignored them and continued worshiping idols on every hand.
In contrast to the inability of idols to do anything, is the beautiful picture of the Lord's compassion for the truly repentant----God's promise to them is "I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts." God's anger against His children will only last, until there is repentance for sin, and then He will bring healing and comfort.
God told Isaiah to name the sins again, that Israel was and would commit and then to warn them, to turn from their wicked ways, before it was too late to escape judgment.
1.) He revisited again, the problem that they had, with insincere and false worship-of just going through the motions, without their hearts being engaged. In this passage, Isaiah focused specifically on the practice of fasting. The way that the people were fasting in Isaiah's day, was unacceptable to God. They boasted about how good they were, for fasting, and then complained about the fact that they weren't getting the attention that they deserved, for doing it. They wanted to be rewarded and when they weren't, it made them mad that God didn't answer their prayers, the way that they wanted Him to. They created huge drama with their fasting, patting themselves on the back for their piety, while they were exploiting their employees and gossiping and quarreling with other, at the same time.
When we fast or worship, just because its the thing to do----- it becomes hypocritical. Fasting is a very private discipline, between God and the individual. He has to lead us to fast. True fasting leads to humility before the Lord----which causes us to reach out sacrificially, to help others, who are less fortunate than we are and it will cause us, to earnestly seek, the Lord's leadership in situations that trouble us. If our worship doesn't move us to make our world a better place, then something is wrong. If there is reality in our worship, not just vacant ritual----God will bless us.
2.) They had a problem with not remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy. Sunday is not an extra Saturday. Its not the end of the weekend. Its not the day to get caught up for Monday. It is the Lord's day and it is the day when we are supposed set lesser things aside and replenish ourselves and others with the fullness of God. We are supposed to structure our schedules around glorifying and enjoying God together. If we kept the Sabbath, one day in seven, fifty-two weeks a year, we would automatically add, 7 and half weeks of vacation, to our year. And it wouldn't be, just seven and half weeks of messing around, like we do on vacation, it would be seven and half weeks, of focusing on God. God has made a weekly appointment with us. Do we love Him enough to keep it?
The other sins on Isaiah's list are pretty self-explanatory------------
3.) Unjust and unethical in their business dealings
4.) Exploiting the poor
5.) Murder
6.) Lies
7.) Violence
8.) Dishonesty and so much more
There sin was so brazen, as they shook their fists in God's face, that He had to punish them------- but it was in that punishment, that He showed them, their desperate need for a Savior.
The good news is, that the Redeemer will come to Jerusalem for Israel and for any nation that will call Him King and for any person that will call Him Lord. He came once and He will come again. And we are waiting for that coming. When Jesus came to Bethlehem, as a baby, He came to provide salvation on the cross. When He comes a 2nd time, it will be to reign, in Glory, forever. In the meantime, we have been commissioned to spread the Gospel, so that everybody will be ready for His return. The Lord isn't slow about His promise to return…He is being patient, because He doesn't want anyone to perish; He wants to give everyone a chance to hear and to repent.
God does exist! Love does conquer all obstacles! Hope is not just a dream! The Bible won't let us succumb to dark pessimism and despair. The scripture paints a picture of eternal hope. In the darkest moments of our lives------God wants us to remember Him; and He wants us to remember His words that have stayed true, down through the ages------words spoken to Israel, but words that are also meant for us, "I will be your comforter, I will be your shepherd, I will be your redeemer, because I am God; and there is no other."
Israel's Calling
Isaiah 41:8-16; 42:1-25; 43:8-24; 48:1-6; 56:9-57; 58:1-59:20
I God Says, "I love You"
a.) Israel: Chosen By God 41:8-16
b.) The Messiah/ The Servant 42:1-25
II God Says, "I Am Preparing a Future for You"
a.) Israel: God's Witness 43:8-24 and 48:1-6
III God Says: "I Will Shepherd You Home"
a.) Israel's Need for a Savior 56:9-57:13 and 58:1-59:20
After Assyria departed, and the remnant of Judah and Israel, were left in Jerusalem, to ruled by God, through their own kings------- you would think, that they would never, have turned away from Almighty God or ever tried do anything in their own strength again-----and for awhile-----------at least for the 15 more years, that Hezekiah lived------they probably didn't---------but we know that 15 years is just the blink of an eye------so at some point, during those years ahead, God told Isaiah to prophesy, to the people what was going to happen to them, 160 years into the future, and 700 years into the future and beyond eternity, into the future:
*They would forsake God and His ways as a nation.
*They would be taken into captivity, by Babylon.
*They would resort to worshiping the gods and idols of their captors.
But even with all that-------God wanted Isaiah to tell them, that, even though judgment would come, because of their disobedience-------He was still their God and they still belonged to Him and He would still keep His promises------because their hope, would be just around the corner, in the person of Cyrus of Persia, the earthly king, whom God was going to use, to set His people free. And, underneath that promise, was the even greater promise, of Jesus, the King of all Kings and the Lords of Lords, who would, spiritually, set His people free forever.
Isaiah prophesied, that it would look like Israel, had lost all its credibility, as God's people and all of its identity, as God's chosen ones, and that it would look like, they had become, just a footnote, in the pages of world history------a nation hopelessly and helplessly forsaken ------that's why God wanted Isaiah, to let them know, ahead of time, that when they found themselves living out the prophecy----that they would remember Him, as their God, and they would turn back to Him.
And, God wanted them to know, that when they did remember, that He would be waiting for them, with outstretched arms, to rescue them, deliver them and dwell with them, and He would give them joy, just like He had promised.
When we see how far we've fallen and how broken the world is, it explains something to us. It explains why disappointment seems to pervade so much, of our thoughts and our desires. It explains why we dread to turn on the news or to pick up a paper, afraid of what bad report we might see or hear. The longer we live and the more of life that we experience, the more we seem to be confronted with disappointment, so persistently and so convincingly, that hope, starts to look empty and unattainble, to us. We become disappointed in our ideals, disappointed in romance, disappointed in our marriages, disappointed in our government, disappointed in our careers, disappointed in our churches, disappointed in the people we trust and disappointed in ourselves. When all human hopes have let us down, and we have reached the end of ourselves, that's when, we just might be ready to receive from God, the only real solution to our disappointment, which exists----and that is Jesus.
Isaiah prophesied that God's people, in their Babylonian exile, would be downtrodden and bitter and disillusioned. He prophesied that they would believe that God had failed them, and that they would blame Him for their misery. Which, if we're honest with ourselves, is what we humans, even believers, typically do------ we blame someone else or we blame God for our own bad choices and our own failures and our own disappointments.----------And for His part, what does God do? He comes down to comfort us and to sustain us and to lift us up and provide away, for us to come back to Him. God came to us, in the person of Jesus, over 2000 years ago and He comes to us now, in the person of the Holy Spirit, with a promise and with a hope that doesn't depend on us, at all, and doesn't depend on any circumstance, but depends solely, on Himself. Because God is good, all the time, He promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us and that He will give us the strength to face anything that we have to, until He comes back to get us, to take us home.
I God Says, "I Love You"
a. Israel Chosen By God
(Little Kathy came to the home for homeless kids, dressed in nothing but dirty rags. She was only 10 years old and she only brought one possession with her. It was an old aluminum paint can. She never let that can out of her sight-------most of the time, she carried it around in her hands. Questions about the can's contents brought a brief shrug and a "can't tell you today" kind of answer. A lot of times, she sat all by herself in her dorm room, hugging the can to her chest and sometimes, she could even be seen, talking softly, but earnestly, to it. One day, one of the counselors invited Kathy to to eat breakfast with her. They talked quietly together, under the roar of conversation, going on around them, that was being created, by the other 150 homeless children, in that dining hall. Finally, the counselor worked up enough courage to ask Kathy about the can. "That's a really nice can that you have, can you tell me what's in it?" Seconds passed and then minutes, of silence. The counselor waited patiently. Then tears welled up in Kathy's eyes and she whispered, "It's my mother, I went and got her ashes from the funeral home." Hugging the can closer to her chest, she continued to talk, "I never really knew my mother. She threw me in a garbage dumpster, 2 days after I was born. Someone found me and turned me over to Social Services. I moved from 1 foster home to the next, getting madder and madder, at my mother and getting in more and more trouble, with my foster families. Then, one day, I just made up my mind that I was going to find her. I started asking around and I got lucky. Someone told me where she lived. But when I got there, she wasn't there-----she was in the hospital dying from AIDS. I finally got to meet her on the day before she died and she told me that she loved me. My mother told me that she really loved me."
We know from scripture, that, in their Babylonian exile, that the remnant of Israel, was a lot like Kathy-------they were searching for someone to love them. They considered themselves a hopeless case, with a God, who seemed to have forgotten and forsaken them. Then, through the mists of time, they did remember God's message and they heard Him say, "I love you."
Darkness enters every person's life. We all have times, when we can see no way out of a situation, that we might be facing or we might be in the middle of----- times when God seems to be a distant reality, from another lifetime, with no connection to what is happening right now. When we face those times -------we need to remember that Isaiah's word from the Lord, was meant for all of us-----"I love you", that is what the Lord wants us to know. God is more than the God who brings punishment or who allows judgment. He is also the God who brings comfort and the God who shepherds us through" the valley of the shadow of death" (which I think, is not just meaning death, but also means the dark days of life that we struggle with in this world). We have no reason to fear evil, because even in our darkest moments, God is still our God and He is still with us. We just need to trust Him, to shepherd our hearts and our lives---------and we have to allow Him, with total trust and submission, to do it, in any way that He chooses.
Fear must have swept across the whole world, as Cyrus moved over the land, conquering every city, that he encountered. Israel had been held captive, in Babylon, for 70 years, but the time had finally come, when God was ready to redeem them. He used Cyrus and his human power, to create the situation, that would send Israel back home. Isaiah had prophesied exactly what would happen, 230 years before, and Israel would have spared themselves, a whole lot of misery, if they had just trusted the Living God, but unfortunately, the frightened people had turned to idols, for a solution to their troubles. But, God had never taken His hand off of them---He was the same God that He had always been and in 41:10 He reminded Israel of His protection, "Fear not, for I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you and help you and I will uphold you with my righteous right hand". The Lord's great compassion comes through very clearly in this verse. He desires to take away whatever it is, that's frightening us, but more than that, He wants to take away the feeling of fear and dismay that we have. Fear produces torment and dismay creates uncertainty and both of these emotions, divert our focus from God and interrupt our relationship with Him. 1John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love, casts out all fear…" God is love and He desires for His children to enter into that love and to rest in it. He wants us to be strong in the knowledge---------that no matter what transpires in the future, He will always be there for us.
5 times in this one verse, God made statements that were designed to instill confidence, into the hearts of His children. He didn't add any conditions to His words, He just promised that He would be a very present help when trouble came. He was saying that in this fallen world, there will be trouble, but that it doesn't matter how immense or how trifling a problem may be, because He will be there to walk with us through it.
God addressed this passage to the OT people, but it is every bit as applicable, to us, today-------God hasn't changed and the hearts of people haven't changed-------just times have changed. His relationship with us, is just as real and important to Him ,as His relationship with Israel was and His ability to keep His promises, is just as reliable. (The story is told, of an American co-pilot, who took a direct hit on his airplane, by an Iraqi bomber. Half of the plane's nose was destroyed. The pilot, strapped into his seat, was killed. The co-pilot was badly injured. With blood streaming down his body; with his left arm shattered and unusable------He tried to take control of the aircraft. Unfortunately, all of his gauges and instruments were so damaged that he couldn't determine speed, altitude or direction. He knew that if he ejected over enemy territory, that it would mean certain death for him. Suddenly, though, into his seemingly hopeless situation, the co-pilot saw 2 American fighter planes coming straight toward him. What a beautiful sight they must have been! Flying alongside the crippled plane, and the brave co-pilot, they guided them both safely to the landing base.)
God's people don't ever have to fear-------we just need to look to God and He will provide, all the help that we need, in any situation. Just like sin is sin is sin and is all level at the cross---trouble is trouble is trouble and it's all level at the cross.
Isaiah used a number of descriptive nouns for God's people as he delivered Gods message to them. The words were purposeful in their intent------they were supposed to encourage the people and remind them who they belonged to. The word servant and the word worm were 2 words that were used, so that a comparison could be drawn between them.
*servant: "You O Israel, my servant…whom I have chosen." Because they were Abraham's descendants, and Abraham was so righteous, even with his human imperfections, that God called him His friend--------God chose Israel, to inherent the promises of the covenant, that He made to Abraham.
*worm: "Do not be afraid, O worm, Jacob." The concept, of being a servant, carries the idea of distinction and integrity and trust with it---but the word worm, means something very different. The word servant, describes who they were, because of God's grace and His calling of them. And the word worm, describes who they were, in their own power.
Israel, this side of the Millennial Kingdom, will never gain worldly power, but God promised, that in His hand, she would become a new "threshing sled", which He would use, to overthrow great nations and bring them to ruin. (its a heavy sled, with spikes on the underside------it was dragged over the ears of grain, so that the husks were separated from the grain). The encouragement is, that, we can go from being miserable, lowly worms, to being powerful instruments, if we are in the hands of God. And when we recognize, that it is only by God's power that we can succeed, then we will learn to rejoice, in the glory of the Lord.
For the remnant of Israel, the literal fulfillment of this part of the prophecy has not happened yet----it won't happen, until the middle of the Great Tribulation, when they finally realize, that Jesus is their Messiah. But there have been times and battles, in their long history, when with God's help, they have been the victors, against all odds. And despite the efforts of people and nations who have hated her and tried to destroy her, through the years, Israel has survived and has always had a remnant------It's remarkable that Israel:
* survived the Holocaust
* survived the attack in 1948, when the combined forces of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq went against her before she had had time to arm herself
* in 1967, that she withstood the combined forces of Syria, Jordan and Egypt and in 6 days had occupied Jerusalem, taken the Golan Heights and extended her boundaries into Gaza, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsular.
* on Yom Kippur in 1973-when Egypt and Syria, again joined forces against her, that the Israelis, devastatingly, defeated them.
All of these victories were miraculous, considering the overwhelming forces ranged against them. The whole world can see God's hand on Israel, if they will just look. God's ancient promise to Israel is still standing.
b.) Israel's Need for a Servant
(When the early settlers 1st came to America, they not only suffered hunger and disease, but they also had to fight to take the land from the Native Americans, who were already living here. Fierce fighting and raids were common, as the settlers and the Native Americans vied for land and existence. Both groups suffered great material loss as well as the loss of many lives. (There is a story that is told about a raid which happened in Wooster, Mass. in 1675. Native Americans attacked a forted, white settlement, burning cabins and killing many settlers. Capt. Hutchinson and his men, who were in the fort, fought hard, but supplies were running low. Their need was desperate. At the risk of his life, a young man escaped one night and went for help. After 3 more, fear-filled days, good news reached the fort . Rescue was on the way! Major Willard of Boston and his men were not far away with supplies and ammunition, for the exhausted settlers. At the appearance of the army, the enemy fled. Joy and thanksgiving flooded the hearts of the settlers, as they praised God for their deliverance and for their rescuers.)
Chapter 42 is God's announcement to the Israelites and to us, that help is on the way------Isaiah promised that the Rescuer would come. This passage in Isaiah is a very famous Messianic passage. Jesus is "the servant, in whom God's soul delights" that Isaiah is talking about. Jesus was the perfect servant, because He came to earth, to do the Father's will, no matter what the cost was, to Himself. In this prophecy, God described the qualifications and character of His servant, whom, as the Chosen One, He promised to empower with His Spirit, so that He could bring justice to all the nations. His Messiah-Servant would carry on a quiet ministry, avoiding all self-displaying and attention-getting activities. He would be gentle and peaceful. He would not harm, even the weakest person, but He would insist on right and truth. He would substitute content for loud noise. There were times when He raised His voice, but it was so that large crowds could hear Him, not because He was ranting and yelling to draw attention to Himself. The reed that is mentioned in verse 3 grew by the riverbank. It was a weak little plant and was easily damaged. A bruised reed would have been even more vulnerable to being broken. The fact that Jesus wouldn't hurt even a bruised reed, focused on His gentle spirit.
The smoking flax refers to a wick that is almost burned down and ready to go out. But even that, Jesus wouldn't quench. His tender dealing, with those who trust Him, will always be loving and gentle. But, even with all His tenderness and gentleness, Jesus never wavered from His purpose. His gentleness didn't conceal weakness; it revealed His strength. Where there is the least evidence of a heart turning toward God, the Servant(Jesus) will lead the person into salvation. (We know on this side of the cross, that every bit of what Isaiah said to describe Him, was and is true, about Jesus, which authenticates Him, as God's servant, even if Isaiah didn't name Him by name.) Jesus even called himself God's servant, when He was talking to James and John in Mark 10:45, "For even I, the Son of Man, came here, not to be served, but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many."
Before Isaiah explained what the mission of the servant was going to be, he took the time to remind the people again, of just who God is and just what kind of authority, He has.
1.) He is the Lord----- 2.) He is the Creator----- 3.) He spread out the earth and everything in it------ 4.) He gives breath to the earth's people and life to those who walk on it. And then, based on the authority of these truths, he revealed that God's great plan of salvation for mankind would be accomplished through the work of the Servant/Messiah. God chose His Servant and He called Him His son----- and His Son's mission will be successful----God will make sure that it is------He promised that He would watch over Him and that He would strengthen Him, in His ministry, with His own strength. The Servant/Messiah's calling would be worked out in 4 steps----------
* the fulfillment of God's covenant with Abraham------all the blessings that had been promised: wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption and peace, were vested in Jesus. He is our salvation and only by receiving Him, can we receive them.
* a light to the Gentiles------He came to redeem the Jews, God's chosen people------but He also came to offer forgiveness and redemption to the Gentile nations,
* to open blind eyes-----He did ,physically heal, blind people during His earthly ministry------but that was just a minute fulfillment of this prophecy-----the real ministry, was to bring spiritual sight, to the spiritually blind. Sin brought abut universal blindness and every human being is blind, until the Holy Spirit, opens up their eyes to the truth. That's why it isn't possible to reason or argue anyone into the kingdom of God. It would be like trying to reason or argue a physically blind man, into being able to suddenly physically see. If God hadn't lifted the inherent blindness of sin, by Jesus' work on the cross, lost mankind would never have been able to see.
* appointed to bring prisoners from the dungeons and those in darkness, out of prison----Only the perfect, sinless Jesus, could have set mankind free, from the bondage of sin.
Through Isaiah, God confirms and affirms His authority--------He is the Lord and He declares it Himself------He is eternal--------He is self-existent---------He is uncreated--------He has always existed------He is without beginning and without end------He has always been and always will be----He is the Lord of all Glory-------- And He gave that Glory to Jesus, His perfect Servant, because He loves us. This should prompt all of humanity, then and now, to sing a New Song of worship and praise and gratitude, all to the glory of the Lord.
(There is a story about a Frenchman, who was imprisoned in a dungeon, in solitary confinement. Depressed, he used a stone and scrawled on the cell wall,"no one cares." One day, he noticed a tiny green shoot coming up through a crack in the floor. Soon, it began to reach toward the light, that was coming from a tiny window, up near the ceiling. Day after day, it climbed the wall---and then one day, a beautiful flower appeared. The prisoner, who had observed the plant daily, marked out his original words and scratched a new message on the wall, "God cares.") God always cares. He has such patience toward His wayward people. The truth is, He never gives up on His own. Isaiah declared that God would send appropriate judgment on all the idolaters, but that He would tenderly restore anyone, who would turn back to Him, in repentance.
At the end of Chap. 42, Isaiah switched the title of the word Servant, from Jesus, the Messiah, to the nation of Israel. Even though God had called them to be His missionaries to the nations around them-------they had been blind to their sin and deaf to the consequences of it. They had seen more of God's miraculous power than any other nation--but their faith was no stronger or more evangelistic or more zealous, because of what they had seen and heard. You couldn't tell any difference between them and the world around them.
We have been even more blessed, than Israel, because we live on this side of the cross------we are without excuse----we have the full Scripture and the Holy Spirit------we need to take care, that we don't miss our calling, the way Israel did.
II. God Says I am Preparing a Future for You
a. Israel: God's Witness
In spite of all of their shortcomings and their disobedience, God wanted them to know, that the calling that He had given them, from the beginning, had not changed. Being a witness, to the pagan nations, around them, was still their mission. In chap. 41 God, through Isaiah, had called them into a courtroom scene and He did the same thing in this passage------He wanted to challenge them and hold them accountable for, their idol worship. He asked the question, "Can idols foretell the future? He challenged the people to put their money where their mouths were. If they believed that idols could reveal the future, then He wanted to see proof of that ability, laid out in front of Him. The answer, of course, was obvious-------idols, can't do anything for anyone-------So, God pointed His finger at Israel and declared to them, "You are my witnesses…my servant, whom I have chosen." God wants the world to recognize Him for who He is, but He especially, wants His own people, to know Him, to really know Him.
From their own personal experience, Israel could have proclaimed the greatness of their God, to the heathen nations. They could have shouted about the truth of His existence, from the rooftops and could they could have preached the truth about His grace and His power and His mercy and all the benefits of His love and His blessings, in the streets. But they didn't, except when they had no where else to turn. God existed before the first heathen idol was formed, by the hands of man, and He will still be here, after the last one is forgotten.
All men need a Savior and there is no Savior, other than God. If God chooses to act, there is no power, in heaven or on earth, which is able to thwart Him and nothing can can prevent, Him, from fulfilling His purpose. No idol and no god, from the imagination of man, has the ability to do, what the Living God has done. And Israel, because He had revealed Himself to them, over and over again, was supposed to proclaim to their world, what God had done for them.
When God becomes the center of a person's life, there will be evidence, immediately, of the change in their hearts. Fruit that can be seen by others, will start to grow, abundantly. One of the most effective impacts, that witnessing of God's great goodness can have, on a non-believer, is the evidence of joy, that is reflected in a believer's life. Paul says, in 2nd Corinthians 3:2-3, "You, yourselves are a letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show how, that you are a letter from Christ….written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart."
(The devotional magazine, Our Daily Bread, told a story about the great British minister of the 19th century, Alexander Maclaren. The minister was delighted to see a well-known skeptic in His congregation, one Sunday. At the door, Maclaren greeted the man and invited Him to return. As an extra incentive, Maclaren said that he would be speaking on the main doctrines of the Christian faith for the next 4 weeks. After attending every service, faithfully, the skeptic told Maclaren that he had accepted the Lord as his Savior. Thrilled and thankful, the pastor asked which of the 4 sermons had made the difference and brought him to Christ? "Your sermons were very helpful," was the reply, "but there was something else. A few weeks ago, as I left church, I noticed an elderly lady, with a radiant face, also leaving, but moving slowly on the icy street. I offered to help her. As we walked along, she looked up at me and said, 'I wonder if you know my Savior, Jesus Christ? He is everything in the world to me and I want you to love Him too.' Sir, those words touched my heart. When I got home, I knelt and received the Lord Jesus, as my Savior."
The world is watching us-----we are the only face of Jesus, that some people will ever see. God's challenge to His witnesses hasn't changed. We are commanded to go into the world and tell. And we have been empowered, by the Holy Spirit, to carry out that calling. When we allow the Savior to become the Lord of our lives---our actions, become as much of a witness, as our words.
God reminded Israel again, that in due time, He was going to end their Babylonian captivity. That's how God is------we might have to suffer hard places that we don't understand------and those times might last longer, than we can almost stand----but God never fails to let us know, all along the way, that He is still in control and that we can take heart, and trust, that in the end, there will be blessing. (I call these times, that He makes Himself known to us, in the middle of our trial, green pastures-----Psalm 23 says, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness, for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me me all the days of my life, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.") And when we come out of the hard place, and we look back--------we are able to clearly see, just how the Lord walked with us, through it.
Through Isaiah, God referred again, to the Red Sea miracle, when He had destroyed Pharaoh's chariots and had allowed the Israelites to walk on the dry river bed. He wanted them to remember it, as a miracle, but He also wanted them to see it, as only one miracle, among many. He wanted them to remember the past, but He didn't want them to dwell there-----He wanted them to use the past, as a foundation to build on, so that they would be able to trust Him better, in the future. He wanted them to realize that His miracles hadn't stopped, while they were in captivity-----and He wanted them to know that He had plans to do, even greater miracles in the future. *they would gain freedom from Babylon *they would be led home to the Promised Land and they would rebuild Jerusalem and the temple *their nation would be reestablished and they would provide the family, that the miraculous birth of the Messiah would ome from and *beyond the cross---Israel will recognize their Messiah and they will fulfill their calling, during the Tribulation and they will be the missionaries, that God so desired for them to be *and ultimately---all of nature will be restored and there will be a new heaven and new earth and God will dwell among His people forever. God promised that a highway would be built and that streams would start flowing in the desert and that there would be no road blocks, to deter His children, from finding their way home. This had all been planned before the earth was even spoken into existence.
What an important truth that this is, for us to hear------When God forgives our sins, He wants us to forget the past, which included sins and failures. And He wants us go forward. After being forgiven, we need to claim His promises for guidance and strength and trust Him, as He leads us "into new things". Too many believers live defeated lives, because they fail to forgive themselves, which means that they never completely accept God's forgiveness. Psalm 103:12 assures us that we can trust that our sins are forgiven, though, because it says, "as far as the east is from the west, so far, has He removed our transgressions from us."
Israel had neglected prayer and their worship wasn't offered with the right attitude. God wasn't honored by their sacrifices and even though He hadn't imposed unreasonable demands and burdens on them, the people were wearied by the things that He did desire. Consequently, He forewarned them, that they would have to endure their national punishment again and again, down through the centuries-----but He promised them, that He would never take His hand off of them------there would come a day, when their relationship would be perfect! If they would seek Him, He would be found. And, He has already prepared the future, that He intends for each one of us.
III God Says "I will Shepherd You Home"
a. Israel's Need for a Savior
God is not impressed by the words that we say or by the number of times we go to church. He looks at the heart and judges the value of our worship, by our inner attitude. The people of Judah were religious, but they just went through the motions, their hearts were far from God-----they weren't faithful and there is a big difference between religion and faith----one is a matter of the mind and the other one is a matter of the heart. This, more than anything, should have shown them how desperately they needed a Savior. We need to examine our own hearts------are we religious or are we faithful-------if we are just going through the motions of religion, then we need ask the Lord to help us get it straight. That is what He longs to do. He wants us to ask Him to help us and He wants to lavish us with His goodness.
The bulk of Israel's leaders; their prophets and their priests, and even a lot of their kings, according to Isaiah, had failed miserably. They were ignorant and greedy. They were like blind watchmen who couldn't see what was going on around them. Instead of taking the proper role of shepherds, ever alert to the dangers, that might be lurking, as all spiritual leaders should be, Israel's leaders, are described as "shepherds who lack understanding." They were preoccupied with their own ambitions; they were dreamers without any follow-through; they were obsessed with satisfying their physical passions------eating, drinking and physical pleasures. If those men had turned from their sinful ways, the nation would have turned from their sinful ways and God would have been ready to forgive and forget. But, unfortunately, they continued in their rebellion and the consequences for their deplorable leadership, took them into exile.
Idolatry has always been mankind's problem--and in Israel's long history, she is punished for it, over and over again. Despite the fact that both King Hezekiah and King Josiah had led the people in destroying their idols, in the high places----- as soon as an ungodly king was on the throne, Israel went right back to her old ways. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah warned them about idolatry and made it plain, that God sees it as adultery and prostitution, against Him. But the people just ignored them and continued worshiping idols on every hand.
In contrast to the inability of idols to do anything, is the beautiful picture of the Lord's compassion for the truly repentant----God's promise to them is "I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts." God's anger against His children will only last, until there is repentance for sin, and then He will bring healing and comfort.
God told Isaiah to name the sins again, that Israel was and would commit and then to warn them, to turn from their wicked ways, before it was too late to escape judgment.
1.) He revisited again, the problem that they had, with insincere and false worship-of just going through the motions, without their hearts being engaged. In this passage, Isaiah focused specifically on the practice of fasting. The way that the people were fasting in Isaiah's day, was unacceptable to God. They boasted about how good they were, for fasting, and then complained about the fact that they weren't getting the attention that they deserved, for doing it. They wanted to be rewarded and when they weren't, it made them mad that God didn't answer their prayers, the way that they wanted Him to. They created huge drama with their fasting, patting themselves on the back for their piety, while they were exploiting their employees and gossiping and quarreling with other, at the same time.
When we fast or worship, just because its the thing to do----- it becomes hypocritical. Fasting is a very private discipline, between God and the individual. He has to lead us to fast. True fasting leads to humility before the Lord----which causes us to reach out sacrificially, to help others, who are less fortunate than we are and it will cause us, to earnestly seek, the Lord's leadership in situations that trouble us. If our worship doesn't move us to make our world a better place, then something is wrong. If there is reality in our worship, not just vacant ritual----God will bless us.
2.) They had a problem with not remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy. Sunday is not an extra Saturday. Its not the end of the weekend. Its not the day to get caught up for Monday. It is the Lord's day and it is the day when we are supposed set lesser things aside and replenish ourselves and others with the fullness of God. We are supposed to structure our schedules around glorifying and enjoying God together. If we kept the Sabbath, one day in seven, fifty-two weeks a year, we would automatically add, 7 and half weeks of vacation, to our year. And it wouldn't be, just seven and half weeks of messing around, like we do on vacation, it would be seven and half weeks, of focusing on God. God has made a weekly appointment with us. Do we love Him enough to keep it?
The other sins on Isaiah's list are pretty self-explanatory------------
3.) Unjust and unethical in their business dealings
4.) Exploiting the poor
5.) Murder
6.) Lies
7.) Violence
8.) Dishonesty and so much more
There sin was so brazen, as they shook their fists in God's face, that He had to punish them------- but it was in that punishment, that He showed them, their desperate need for a Savior.
The good news is, that the Redeemer will come to Jerusalem for Israel and for any nation that will call Him King and for any person that will call Him Lord. He came once and He will come again. And we are waiting for that coming. When Jesus came to Bethlehem, as a baby, He came to provide salvation on the cross. When He comes a 2nd time, it will be to reign, in Glory, forever. In the meantime, we have been commissioned to spread the Gospel, so that everybody will be ready for His return. The Lord isn't slow about His promise to return…He is being patient, because He doesn't want anyone to perish; He wants to give everyone a chance to hear and to repent.
God does exist! Love does conquer all obstacles! Hope is not just a dream! The Bible won't let us succumb to dark pessimism and despair. The scripture paints a picture of eternal hope. In the darkest moments of our lives------God wants us to remember Him; and He wants us to remember His words that have stayed true, down through the ages------words spoken to Israel, but words that are also meant for us, "I will be your comforter, I will be your shepherd, I will be your redeemer, because I am God; and there is no other."
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