It Really Is About Us
Isaiah 42:1-9
January 13, 2008
I would like you to imagine something with me this morning. Imagine that you are living a comfortable life as a farmer or a merchant or a craftsman. You live close to your extended family: you have a wife and children, parents, brothers and sisters, and varied aunts and uncles in your neighborhood. Your roots go down deep in this part of the country. Your family has worked the land for generations, or you are carrying on in a skill passed down from father to son for many years. Times are pretty good. You are not rich, but you get by, and even have enough to occasionally give to the poor.
There are a few well-known preachers running up and down the countryside with a message that bad times are coming. They try to remind the citizens that they have moved away from their roots, from their spiritual grounding, from the things that once had made them a great nation. But nobody really seems to be really listening.
You begin to get worried because there are some border skirmishes between troops of your homeland and the army of a neighboring superpower. The fighting gradually gets worse and worse as more and more land is taken. Finally, in one last major offensive, the invading army enters, occupies, and then destroys your capital city. They tear down your national Temple. When they move out into the countryside, these foreign troops not only burn your crops, but sow salt in those fields to make them unproductive for years to come.
And then in what is the final humiliation, they come to your house, put you and your whole family in handcuffs, and forcibly deport you to their country where you are put to work as slave laborers. You join thousands of your fellow countrymen and women, and weep when you remember your lost homeland. You ask deep, searching questions about God. How could God allow this to happen? What did we as a people do to cause this? How long will it last? Will we ever be restored?
That is not just a fantasy. It is a part of our heritage. You see, that is exactly what happened to the people of Judah, our Hebrew ancestors in the faith, when their land and everything they knew and loved was taken from them through foreign invasion.
The prophet Isaiah was active during these pre-exilic times. Scholars are pretty much agreed that Isaiah is responsible for the first 39 chapters of the book bearing his name. The last 27 chapters were written by one or perhaps two other people, depending on which scholar you consult. A careful reading of chapters 1-39 tells us that they are obviously written pre-exile; before the Babylonian captivity when so many of God’s people were hauled off in chains to slavery. These chapters are full of woes and warnings – admonitions, to which the people should have been listening - of what is to come because of the people’s disobedience. The consequences of their sin would soon be obvious as they would be taken away from their homeland and all that they loved. The truth of those prophecies was demonstrated when the armies of Babylon swept through the land, destroying and conquering everything and everyone in its path.
Beginning at chapter 40, there is a marked difference in the writing. This is written at a later time, after the people had spent many years in captivity. By this time, God has decided that they have suffered enough and that it is time for this chapter in their corporate life to be over. So God says, at the beginning of the fortieth chapter, “Comfort, comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…”
Writing in the spirit of First Isaiah, this prophet that we call Second Isaiah continues to speak the truth. There is a brighter future coming. The days of pain and loss are over. The days of slavery are over. They days of being separated from God are over. There is in fact, a new day beginning.
One theme that Second Isaiah keeps coming back to is the idea of a Servant. There are four “Servant Songs” in this section of the writing. The Servant is one who is to come who will become the source of rescue and salvation. Our lesson for the morning comes from the first Servant Song. Chapter 42:1 says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.”
But there are more. Chapter 49:1-3 says, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth, he has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
Isaiah 50 speaks about the servant in the first person. “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.”
Finally, Isaiah 52:13 says, “See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.”
The job of a prophet is to tell the truth, not to be a fortune teller. A fortune teller can be right or wrong, but the truth of God is always the right word for the right time.
January of 2008 is an important time. We are in the midst of the presidential election cycle and, if you are like me, you are spending a lot of time trying to guess which one of the candidates will be elected. Will it be Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, John McCain or Barak Obama, Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee, John Edwards or Bill Richardson? But history shows that when we try to guess, we are often wrong.
For some, even more important questions are on the horizon; like who’s going to win the Super Bowl? Can Indianapolis repeat? I doubt it, but then I thought that Denver would win the AFC West this year. I have a real feeling that it is the year for New England, but we can’t count out Green Bay or Dallas. I have no idea.
Perhaps – at least for some of us – even more important that who will be the next president or the next World Champions, is who will be the next American Idol or who will be the Biggest Loser or who will be the next Survivor.
It is really difficult to tell the future. Just the other day, Bill Gates said that before long, we will all have computer screens in every room of the house. Maybe, but we’ll have to wait and see. I guess that we have a right to be skeptical because history is full of examples of inventions that people thought would be the next big thing.
Someone invented an immobilizing foam gun. It’s for police to use and works by shooting this gooey stuff out at escaping criminals. It is supposed to harden once sprayed to stop people from running away. The problem is that is covers a person’s head so that they can’t breathe. A good idea, I guess, but it didn’t really work out.
In England, they use ferrets to chase rabbits. But the ferrets sometimes get into the rabbit holes, get lost, and can’t get back out. So somebody invented a ferret locator, a little transmitter that attaches to one of the creature’s legs. But it just never caught on.
It wasn’t too long after WWII when scientific and technological advances began to make computers a dream. It was thought that there might be a worldwide use for five of them. Toni and I each have a computer at the church, plus we have a desktop computer at home, and we each have a laptop. That’s five right there.
People have looked into the future and foreseen all sorts of stuff: the dog umbrella, the automatic toilet seat, and the finger toothbrush. Sometimes our predictions come true and some times they don’t.
Some people think they are modern day prophets. Many of you remember Jeane Dixon. She was an astrologer who foresaw the assassination of John Kennedy – in 1956. She also said that World War III would break out in 1958, cancer would be cured in 1967, and peace would fill the world by 2000.
The “Amazing Criswell” predicted that there would be a tragedy for President Kennedy in November of 1963. That is one thing he got right. He also predicted that a space ray would destroy Denver, that brain transplants would become common, and that Mae West would be elected president.
So it seems clear – to me at least – that whether we are trying to prognosticate the winner of the Super Bowl, figure out the next great invention, or describe the next cultural phenomena, there is plenty of danger of being flat-out wrong. But then that is the difference between being a fortune teller and a biblical prophet. A good prophet is not a fortune teller, but a truth teller. A good prophet tells the truth about God.
When I was in college, I read a book that was all the rage with all of us social-justice minded students. A professor out at Stanford University named Paul Erlich, wrote a book titled, “The Population Bomb.” He began by looking at the baby-boom generation and then projected out the world’s population growth for the future. Then he looked at our resources for food production and concluded that there would be major problems in the future, especially in less-developed nations. That was good prophecy. It was telling the truth.
It would have been alright if he had ended his book right there, but he went on. He described mass starvation which would add up to hundreds of millions. He then predicted that India would run out of food for its people by 1971. That is fortune telling. It is not good prophecy.
As we go to Isaiah this morning, we realize that some people like to try to turn the biblical prophets into fortune tellers, but they are not. They are truth-tellers extraordinaire.
Isaiah wasn’t just a fortune teller. He was a truth teller. And the truth is this: to people who were hurting, scared, and alone, a servant was coming to take away their pain. A servant was coming to save them from themselves. A servant was coming to preach the good news and model behavior fit for God’s people. Isaiah speaks about the future, but he does so in a way to let us know that it the future is already accomplished. It is a sure thing. It is a sure bet. It is 100% guaranteed.
Scholars have struggled with the identity of this Servant throughout the modern era of biblical interpretation. Was Isaiah talking about the nation of Israel? Was he talking about Jesus? I am going to step out on a limb here and say that he was talking about both.
When the prophet speaks of the Servant, he is reminding Israel of her duty to act like their status as the Lord chosen people. Their mission is to spread the Word, teach the world, and establish justice. They are to be light to the nations.
It looks to me anyway, that Isaiah came pretty close on this one. Israel did indeed become a light to the nations. Don’t forget that without Israel, we would never have had the foundation for the coming of Jesus. The appropriate time for the coming of Jesus came after the preparations of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets. Without their faithfulness, we would never have gotten to know Jesus who came as fulfillment of all that had come before.
In speaking of the Servant, Isaiah is also speaking of Jesus. Chapter 42:1 says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen one in whom I delight.” That is echoed in Matthew 3:17. After the baptism of Jesus, the heavens opened up, a voice was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”
Isaiah says, “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.”
You see, the mission of the Servant isn’t just to die for humanity, but also to be the light of the world and to spread salvation all around the globe. Sounds like a pretty good description of Jesus to me.
I also think that the Servant is us. We know that the Servant is to suffer. The second chapter of I Peter speaks about the suffering of Jesus, and then in verse 21 says this: For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” You see, we have the same ministry, mission, and message as Jesus. It really is all about us.
By saying that it is all about us, that doesn’t mean that I am saying that the world revolves around us. It means that the world revolves around those who haven’t yet heard or those who haven’t yet accepted the truth of the gospel. It is for those that God sent the Servant. It is for those that God is sending us.
It is the difference between a bib and an apron. We could say that being all about us means that our major goal is to be fed continually and constantly. Our we could say that being all about us means that we understand and accept our role as fellow servants with Christ.
Isaiah doesn’t try to tell the future, but he does a pretty good job of telling the truth. And the truth is this: the work of the Servant began with the witness of Israel, was fulfilled through the ministry of Jesus, and continues on in the lives of those who try their best to be like him.
My prayer is that we might immerse ourselves in prayer and study so that we can learn how best to be servants in our sphere of influence. Through us, may people see Jesus.