The Wise Servant of the Lord

Well, I'm gonna get us to open to Isaiah chapter 50. Isaiah chapter 50. We're gonna read from verse four through to verse 10. Isaiah chapter 50, verse four. The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.

Morning by morning, he awakens. He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. I turned not backward. I gave my back to those who strike and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard.

I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. But the Lord God helps me. Therefore, I have not been disgraced. Therefore, I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near.

Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God helps me.

Who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment. The moth will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. So far our reading.

Just to quickly put this into context, we are in Isaiah. We remember him as a prophet writing to the people of Israel, the special chosen people of God. Israel is chosen by God not because they're particularly good or particularly great. They are chosen because God wanted Israel. At this point in history, in Israel's history, we find them captured and removed from their own land, living as exiles in a place called Babylon.

And through His prophets, God tells Israel it was due to their rejection of Him. All along, He entreated them to love Him, to obey Him, to live a life in alignment with Him. Instead, they gave themselves over to believing other things, to following and desiring other things, other gods, in fact, instead of the living God. In the passage we read this morning, however, Isaiah starts talking about what will happen when Israel returns, when Israel receives a restoration from this tragedy that had befallen them. God is not simply concerned about a political restoration or a geographical restoration, bringing back a people that had been misplaced, displaced.

The real issue is not political. The prophet Isaiah begins explaining, it is not geographical, it is personal and it is spiritual. Isaiah begins to say, from chapter 40, in fact, onwards, so for up to 10 chapters to this point, that God is going to restore His people in the deepest parts of their hearts. And so at the centre of this spiritual restoration, that's not simply prophesied by Isaiah, but also by the likes of Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Daniel, at the heart of this restoration, Isaiah begins saying lies a person, a particular human being, who Isaiah calls the servant of the Lord. The servant of the Lord.

He is someone that is especially gifted. He is called with a special calling, set apart, holy, therefore, in that way. They call him the anointed one, the Messiah. And then a few hundred years after this, a man that fits some of these qualities arrives, and his name is Jesus. And people of his day start calling him the Messiah of Isaiah.

Now, if you know your Bible, you know that we have lots of information about this man Jesus. We have lots of information about the things he did, the things he said. It's all there for us to personally investigate, and we can go and weigh up the Old Testament language about this Messiah, and we can see if it fits the description of this man Jesus. Now as a Christian, we believe that Jesus is the Messiah. We believe that He was this special servant of the Lord that brought restoration, not just however for Israel, but for the rest of the world.

But what I want us to focus on this morning, and what I love about the Old Testament prophecies we find especially in places like Isaiah, is although we have lots of information about what Jesus said and did in the gospel accounts in the New Testament, what we find in Isaiah is the character of this Jesus. Not the content of His teaching, but the nature of that teaching. Not the content merely of what He wants us to do, but why He wants us to do it. And so the reason, especially today, I want us to reflect on these characteristics of Jesus is because we are being asked again, as our elder Tony prayed, to have our core values reevaluated. It's election season.

It's election season for us in Queensland next week, but for the Western world, we're captive to the big presidential election as well happening in that week following. At the moment, many of us are weighing up the things we hold most dear to us, and we are being asked to vote in a direction that best aligns with those deepest beliefs. But we are also made to make daily decisions, if we're truly honest with ourselves, decisions about where we want our life to go, what aligns with those values. It could be a decision on who I hang out with, who I call my friends. It can be value decisions of the type of people I want to be like.

We all make decisions based on our values. The question this morning as we look at Isaiah is, what is our values based on? If you say you base your values on the Christian worldview, then I wanna ask you why do you do so? If you say it is because you follow the words of Jesus, why do you follow the words of Jesus? A lot of that is being addressed in this passage in Isaiah.

So when we come to this prophecy of the coming Christ, we actually get a lot of very powerful insights on why we should make those decisions of value based on who He was and what He did. There's a few points we see in this passage of the character of who Jesus was. Firstly, we see that He is a wise teacher. This servant of the Lord, who in Isaiah's time is mysterious, a shrouded figure, is a wise teacher. Notice verse four, where we started.

The servant of the Lord begins to speak, and this is what He says. The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning, by morning, He awakens. He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. As you read through the gospels, one of the things that is very obvious is that Jesus spoke in an entirely different way from those of contemporary note.

People said things like, when Jesus spoke, He speaks with such insight. Listen to what He says. He speaks with such authority. Jesus' words were sharp. Jesus' words penetrated hearts.

And yet, at the same time, they carried with it this sympathetic gentleness that understands the human condition. It's as though He could see into the hearts of the souls who were listening, and He would bear a word of life upon those lives. How does Jesus do that? Well, we don't have that explanation as succinctly in the gospels as we find it here in Isaiah. Here is the answer.

Morning by morning, God awakens my ear to hear as one who is taught. It's a prophetic voice of Jesus saying, God teaches me so that I may in turn teach. Now remember, Jesus is fully man and fully God. Philippians two says that when Jesus came to earth, He emptied Himself somehow of the divine nature by taking on humanity. Theologians say that this emptying results in Him becoming dependent on God the Father, depending on God the Holy Spirit in an altogether new way for the second person in the Trinity.

If we think about it, for thirty years in His earthly life, Jesus is growing and growing in understanding of His mission, and growing in His understanding of what God wants Him to say. Day by day, in the presence of God, He brings to mind passages from Scripture, and He asks, Father, teach me. How will I share this with Your people? Our passage in Isaiah 50, verse four says, God gave me the tongue of the one who is taught, the ears of the one who has been instructed. That's how Jesus becomes the teacher that He is.

Remember when He was eight and in Jerusalem, He sat at the feet of the rabbis and He discussed with them. He was brilliant, but He still needed to learn and grow and develop in His humanness. But then notice the goal of Jesus is knowledge. This is what is important for us. The Lord has given me the tongue of those who are taught that I may sustain with a word him who is weary.

I think that is one of the most difficult things to do. For me as a pastor, but for us as friends, what do we do with someone who is overcome with a sense of weariness and depression? Can we just say to them, cheer up, get yourself together, pull up those boots by those shoestrings and just get up out of the muck and that mire? If you have ever sat with someone deep in despair, has that ever helped saying those things? But Jesus says to the crowds, come to me those who are weary, and I will give you rest.

Isaiah's prophecy says, Jesus rests for the weary. However, comes from His word. There is something in His word, not in our word, something altogether different in His word that sustains the weary. And I think we know what that feels like. We've experienced that ourselves. I've been in situations where I felt no one in the world, not even those who know me best, have any idea just how tired and weary I am.

No one in the world understands why I'm so anxious, why I'm so angry. And then for some wonderful reason, we sit with the word of God. Whether it comes to you in a sermon, whether it comes to you when you're involved in a Bible study, or whether you're simply just reading the Bible quietly. And the word of Jesus comes to you with an accuracy and a sharpness that no one in the world could have given you. And we are being told here by Isaiah that this is because Jesus has had the ears of him who listens.

And He listens attentively to God. And when it is time for Him to speak, He speaks accurately that word. And to the praise and the glory of God, He speaks perfectly those words of life that He has heard from the Father. So that question of when we make decisions based on the values of our life, when we must make big decisions and little decisions about who we should be, what direction we should go, where do we go for teaching. It is sometimes necessary, yes, to go to parents or friends or trusted relatives, but it is a tragedy if we don't first go to the Lord Jesus Himself and say to Him, Lord, You have the words of life.

Lord, You're the one who knows how to speak to those who are weary. Lord, I am weary. I don't know. Please, I need Your wisdom. Show me how to live based on Your word.

In a society obsessed with therapeutic solutions and quick fixes, we're happy to just pop a tablet into our mouths like that. Fix us. You and I need to know that we need more than government ads on mental health to get us through. We need a Saviour who loves the weary. And in Jesus, not only do we receive that Saviour, not only is He the Saviour who paid the penalty for that weakness, the bad decisions because of that weariness.

In Jesus, we find a counsellor who knows me, who loves me, and also provides the words for me to live by. So that's the first thing. He is the wise teacher. But the prophetic voice of Isaiah goes on and says another thing about this coming Messiah, and that is that He is an unwavering soldier. This mysterious servant is not received very well, even though He is an exceptional teacher. But He also doesn't care that He's not received well.

In fact, He doesn't back away from the mission at all. Verse five, the Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. I gave my back to those who strike. I gave my cheek to those who pull out beards. The commentators point out that some of this language has political or military overtones.

One of the forms of punishment for those political or military leaders who disobeyed orders in the time of Isaiah here was that they were paraded in public and would have chunks of their beard pulled out of their face in humiliation. Similarly, when you are court-martialled or were court-martialled, you would have your back flogged. Isaiah says, this special servant, who some people regard as a servant, He has some authority, but He deserves a humiliation and a flogging. This servant is a soldier who hasn't disobeyed any orders. He says He is not rebellious.

He has not done the wrong thing. All along, His ears have been open to instruction, but it's been the instruction of God Himself. His marching orders are from that God alone, and yet, He is punished as though He is the one who is disobedient. Now, for us as Christians living on this side of the cross, on this side of the New Testament, we understand that amazing plot twist of the cross. I mean, this has those prophecies of how Jesus was led to the cross, doesn't it?

A few chapters after this, Isaiah 53, famously, He was a man stricken by God. We considered Him not. The gospel says that even though when Jesus was flogged and spat upon, stripped naked and died, while it looked that He was punished for rebellion, what was happening was the accomplishment of the mission all along. While it looked like He is failing and His enemies are winning, they actually facilitate His victory. Notice the language here even.

The servant says He gives His back to those who strike, He gives His cheeks to those who pluck out the beard. This soldier seemingly court-martialled for disobedience is actually the one handing Himself over to His torturers. The words of John 10, verse 18 echo in Isaiah, where Jesus says to His disciples, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to take it back up again.

Jesus is the obedient warrior prince with unwavering obedience to the Father. And He is advancing through His enemies, going behind those enemy lines to win back His kingdom. It is supremely comforting then for us to realise that we don't simply have a Saviour in Jesus. We have a Saviour who is so determined to win us back. Verse seven says that His face is like flint.

That's a wonderful expression. His face is like stone, the hardest of stone. If you've ever watched an athlete stand at the 100 metre race in the Olympics, in the finals, and they're looking at that white finish line in the back, you see their concentration. Their face is like flint. Their eyes are as emotionless and as focused as you can get. This is the image of Jesus, the Saviour.

His eyes always on that cross. His face is hard as stone. He will not be distracted. And then finally, in verses eight to 10, we see this third element of the Messiah, this mysterious servant that has come to restore God's people. Not only is He the wise teacher, not only is He the unwavering soldier, but thirdly, He is the guiltless revealer of truth.

Despite this prophesied servant of God having His beard plucked out, His back flogged by the whip, Isaiah says, God will vindicate Him. God will show everyone that He was right all along. Verse eight, He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.

Who is my adversary? Behold, the Lord God helps me. Who will declare me guilty? Have you ever seen that in the gospel accounts of Jesus? How everyone declared Jesus at the one time worthy of execution, crucify Him they call, and yet at the same time, they cannot identify the exact crime that He has committed.

They keep demanding death, but in any legal sense, nothing sticks to Him. Any lawyer would tell you, it's a gross perversion of justice. Yet the prophecy asks this question to them, who has declared me guilty? And then verse nine follows and says, behold, all of them, all of these enemies will wear out like a garment. The moth will eat them up.

When it seems the enemies of God's servant have won, their arguments and their power turns to moth-eaten clothes. I don't know if that's so much a thing these days, but I remember growing up, we had moths in our cupboards from time to time, and a moth-eaten shirt is the flimsiest thing there is. You can poke your finger right through it. You can crunch it between the hand and that fabric turns to dust. The enemies of Jesus, who have accused Him of these crimes, are like dust.

When it seems Jesus' accusers win, even when they seal His body away in a tomb, it takes simply the breath of God, and their greatest, cleverest plans are destroyed. Jesus comes back from the dead. Who can win against an enemy that cannot die? For three years, Jesus' most devoted enemies plan to kill and to silence Him. When He does die, they think they win.

But God says their efforts have turned to dust. Kings and governors set themselves up against Jesus. Priests and politicians, scholars and lawmakers, none of them can hold down the mighty servant of the Lord. But here's the good part. It was not mere mortals that were His greatest enemies.

Jesus had to die to conquer the greatest enemy, eternal death. Sin and death is conquered in Jesus. Who declares me guilty? He says. Who is willing to reject me as a criminal, as a lunatic, or as an outcast.

Come forward and show yourself. And many of us can listen to this, and I think we will never ever do that. We would never ever have that courage to do that, but in some way, we might. This is a question that drives a stake into each of our hearts as we listen because each one of us is called to answer this question, who is this man? Who is this Jesus?

What do you make of Him? Many people today continue to declare that Jesus is guilty. He is guilty as a fraudster in their minds. He lied. How can He be God?

Or He is guilty of being a lunatic who thought He was God. Or some of us may think that He had good morals and good ideas, but someone who was just a bit misguided. Whether we do so actively, intentionally, or whether we do so through apathy and disinterest, the truth is we are all making decisions about who Jesus is. Perhaps the most popular accusation from people in our time is not to reject Him as some sort of bad man or a false teacher. I think the greatest challenge of our generation is to see Jesus aligning with every thought that I have, every sinful proclivity that I have, and claiming that He is okay with everything I'm okay with.

For those people, we must answer that same question. Who is Jesus? Do you call Him a fraud or a misguided rascal? Or do you perhaps in some secret hidden way think that He is a weakling? That He condones all that you condone, every little sin that you commit, and therefore in reality, you say that you are His master, and that He dances to your tune.

The prophecy of Isaiah asked the question that demands an answer, who declares me guilty? And that's why verse 10 ends like this. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on His God. If you are not a Christian, it may be because you think that Jesus is a fraud.

But the Bible says here in Isaiah 50 that He delivered the truest message about God that you will ever receive. If you think that Jesus is misguided, the Bible says that He holds the light of truth for those of us who stumble in the darkness. And we may not even know that we are in the darkness. But then even for Christians, there is a message for us. If we think that He serves us and our every whim, God's word says He serves God alone.

He serves God alone. And He demands that we obey His teaching, not the other way around. When the servant speaks, it is God who is speaking. And so if you call yourself a believer in God, the Bible says, you will hear the voice of God in the voice of the servant. If you fear God, it says, you will fear His servant.

And if you think that you are that familiar with Jesus, that you can chain Him up like some animal in your personal camp, whether it's political, ideological, or philosophical, if you think that Jesus is someone that you can bring out and parade to say what you want to say, you have misunderstood Jesus. Is Jesus a fraud or a lunatic or is He Lord? The Bible says, be careful. The one who holds out the words of life is the one who carries light for those who stumble in the darkness of sin. Who among us will fear and obey the voice of the Lord's servant?

Who among us will come to Him when He says, my sheep know my voice? Who among us will say with the apostle Peter, Lord, where else can we go? You have the words of eternal life. And so, when our brothers and sisters must make hard decisions in the US in two weeks' time, when we have to make hard decisions that have consequence in a week's time, when we have to make hard decisions about how we run our family, how we prioritise our rest and our relaxation. Is Jesus serving us or do we serve Him?

Do we get carefully go to Him with a sense of awe and reverence in fear of the Lord? Or are we complacent with a sense of familiarity? Friends, we all engage every day in all sorts of philosophical debates. As we make decisions about what we want to value in life, what we want to promote in our society, hear this. Jesus Christ is the teacher that God sent for the world.

He has a truth that leads to eternal life. He is on a mission that is not necessarily our mission, and He calls us to align with that mission. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the clarity of the character of Jesus that we find in this passage that was spoken hundreds of years before Jesus.

We thank You that in Him we find a wise teacher who has listened perfectly and who has spoken perfectly. We thank You, Lord, that You did not leave us to our own devices to try and gather wisdom and insight and knowledge for life through some difficult mysterious channels. You came as a teacher to teach us. And Lord, where we try to teach ourselves, where we go to all different sources to try and figure out how to walk, what to value, what to pursue. And God, will You speak to us again today?

Will You remind us that there is nothing but darkness in those things that have not come from You. Father, we ask that You will empower us by the Holy Spirit. Thank You that because of Jesus, You have made us a holy people. And we pray, Lord, that we will obey the truth. And as children of that truth, we will live in grateful obedience to Jesus Christ.

Give us the strength and the wisdom to traverse challenging and difficult decisions. Lord, help us to desire more and more to know Your word so well that we may hear Your voice and know it is the voice of our Shepherd. And Lord, let us walk in humble obedience to that voice. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.