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.