The Servant Who Strives for Us

[Below you'll find the text of the message for this morning's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with video of both the traditional and modern worship services.]

Isaiah 49:1-7

Ancient Israel failed. The descendants of Abraham and of Abraham’s grandson Jacob were given a mission by God. “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,” God had told Abraham. (Genesis 12:2) Through Moses, He told Israel, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Exodus 9:16) And the psalmist led worshipers in singing of God’s mission for ancient Israel: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us—so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” (Psalm 67:1-2)

Israel was to be a people saved, justified, declared innocent of sin, and thereby freed of the penalty of death, by God’s grace through faith in God and His promises. And Israel was to be a people who shared with all nations the good news of God’s grace for all who repent and believe in Him.

But Israel failed completely in its mission. Instead of putting its faith in the living God, Israel worshiped idols. Ancient Israel trusted in wealth, power, and status. Idolatry led, as it always does, to injustice. The people of Israel failed to love God with their whole hearts and failed to love their neighbors as they loved themselves. God repeatedly sent prophets to call the people to repentance and faith. Israel kept on as if God didn’t exist. So God allowed unrepentant ancient Israel to be conquered by foreign nations. Eventually, ancient Israel ceased to exist.

Despite the heartbreak of Israel’s faithfulness though, God hasn’t given up on saving the world–Jews or Gentiles–from sin, death, and eternal separation from Him. He still stands by the promise He made to the serpent, the devil, back in the garden of Eden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

You remember how Israel got its name. One night, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, wrestled with God. In the end, God gave Jacob the name, Israel. It means both Strives with God and God strives. The promises of God for the human race settled on Israel, Jacob, a sinner made a saint by grace through faith in God. Like you and me maybe, Jacob was always careening between striving against God and trusting God to strive for him. Jacob’s descendants were also called Israel. Eventually, they quit trusting in God to strive for them or to give them His promises.

Our first lesson for this morning, Isaiah 49:1-7, written about eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, shows us that God took the name of ancient Israel away from the descendants of Abraham. Instead, the true Israel, the One Who strives to bring the forgiveness of sins, the justification of sinners, and eternal life to all nations and peoples, is one man, a single Servant of God. Isaiah’s book has four passages known as Servant Songs, in which God points to this new Israel. The first of these songs comes in Isaiah 42, which begins, “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.” (Isaiah 42:1) Centuries later, God the Father would signal that His Servant had come into the world. At the Jordan River, he would say of Jesus: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17)

The Servant Jesus speaks to us in today’s lesson from Isaiah: “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken 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.’”

Here, before His birth at Bethlehem, Jesus says that though He is God, He would be born to a woman. God the Father would make Jesus’ words like a sharpened sword, able to pierce all our pretense and pomposity, to cut away the sin that kills and give us life in His name. Jesus goes on to say that the “splendor,” or the power, majesty, and holiness of God is on full display in Himself. That, of course, turned out to be true. “No one has ever seen God,” the apostle John who knew Him would say of Jesus, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God…has made Him known.” (John 1:18)

But it isn’t by the power of His deity that Jesus does His saving work for us. To give us His salvation, Jesus had to bear our sins, suffer rejection, and go through death. He had to experience the same sense of futility and forgottenness we go through in our own lives. Jesus could only save us by immersing Himself in the depths of our sin, forsakenness, and death in order to pull us out of chaos and deliver us into the hands of our loving Father! Last week, feeling overwhelmed by bad news in the midst of good news, looking too much at the world and too little at Jesus, I asked Ann, “Do you think I’ve actually accomplished anything worthwhile in my life?” Have you been there? The truth is that we are all, in our own power and reason, like ancient Israel: failures. Friends, God understands. Jesus says in today’s Servant Song: “...I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.” This is what Jesus felt on the cross. There He died for us, a Savior hated, despised, and defeated, crying out, “​​My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

But Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father and to us was not in vain! Because of the crucified and risen Jesus, the once-rejected, now vindicated Jesus, sin, death, and failure are the last words over the life of His Servant, or over the lives of those who trust in Him. Not the last words over your lives, friends! That’s why Jesus says to us today, “Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” (Isaiah 49:4b) Jesus led the perfect life and offered it for your forgiveness! He died the death we deserve to give us the life with God we don’t deserve. Jesus is the light to all nations Israel never was and, without Him living in us, we never can be. Jesus succeeds where ancient Israel failed. Jesus succeeds where we fail, then hands the eternal benefits of His righteousness over to us as a free gift! This is why the apostle Paul says that God the Father gave Jesus, “the name that is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9)

And so, after the Servant Jesus speaks in today’s first lesson, God the Father tells Jesus: “It is too small a thing [the original Hebrew carries the meaning of “too trifling a thing”] for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. [Jesus, in other words, wasn’t just going to save those in Israel who trusted in Him. The Father says:] I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)

Jesus triumphs where we fail and then graciously offers to share His victory over sin and death with all who turn to Him in repentant faith! God the Father says of Jesus in our lesson: “To him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: ‘Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” (Isaiah 49;7) John the Baptizer was right then when he said of Jesus, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!.” (John 1:29)

Jesus died to set you free from sin and set you free to live in God’s loving embrace. The Servant has finished the work long ago foretold by the prophets. You are free from condemnation for all the ways you (and I) fall short, whether by worshiping ourselves or the things of the world, failing to honor parents or those in authority, murdering or committing adultery by thought, word, or deed, stealing, coveting, lying, or gossiping. 

Jesus, the Servant, has set us free from death, free from the unkind or indifferent condemnation that may come to you from a fallen world. Free of condemnation for both our self-congratulation and our self-reproach. We are free to live in the approval of God available to us only in Christ. Jesus’ words are still true: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18) 

Friends, repent and trust in Jesus the Servant each day and live in the freedom He has won for you, now and eternally. Amen

"Hit me with your best shot"

That's the title of Pastor Jennifer Johnson's reflections on Isaiah 49:1-7. When do pastors risk being prophetic and when do we keep the arrows hidden away?

My One and Only Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (January 20, 2008)

[Each week, I try to preview the Bible lessons for the upcoming Sunday's worship celebration. I do this to help the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I'm the pastor, to prepare for worship. But because we use the lectionary texts for the Church Year, I hope that most Christians will find the passes helpful.]

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-11
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

General Comments:
1. Epiphany is a rough season for we Lutherans. That's because historically, Lutherans have been good about doing acts of mercy and kindness, but reticent about verbally sharing their faith with others or inviting folks to worship. The Epiphany season of the Church Year, with its focus on the ways in which the identity of God has been revealed in Jesus Christ, also is a call to followers of Christ to share their faith in Christ, to be witnesses.

The lessons for this coming Sunday contain strong affirmations of the universal Lordship of the God first revealed to Israel and ultimately disclosed in the person of Jesus, along with calls to share that God with the whole world.

2. Isaiah 49:1-7: This passage presents us with the second "servant song" from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The first one was our first lesson last Sunday.

3. In any book of Old Testament prophecy, texts usually deal with both immediate contexts and secondarily, more distant ones.

Some scholars claim that this passage deals most immediately with the Babylonian king, Darius, who God chose to help the Israelite exiles to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. (Thanks to my colleague, Chris Adams, for pointing this out.)

4. Be that as it may, the passage is more significantly, a call to God's servant--Israel and ultimately, Jesus--to be "a light to the nations." What's striking is the counterintuitive call issued by God to His servants in verse 6. It basically says, "Because you failed to win My own people back, I'm now going to send you with a message of salvation to the whole world."

This is similar to the counterintuitive call Jesus issues to His disciples in Matthew 28:19-20. In it, He essentially says, "You scattered to the four winds when I was arrested and crucified. The only one who came close to being dependable was Peter. He stayed close to me...then denied me three times. Now that you've failed at that, I want you to go to all the world, making disciples of all nations."

In spite of their failings and with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, Jesus' first witnesses fulfilled that mission. It remains the Christian mission today in spite of our failings.

5. Psalm 40:1-11: This is an exuberant affirmation of one who has given witness of the greatness and grace of God.

6. 1 Corinthians 1:1-9: Paul here opens his letter to the first century Greek church of Corinth. Some wonder if, given the overt sinning of the Corinthian church, Paul is being disingenuous in his opening affirmation of the congregation. He tells people who, in just a few verses, he will scorn for their selfishness, sexual immorality, and spiritual pride, "I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given to you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him..."

Is Paul just buttering up the Corinthian congregation? I don't think so. Two points...

(1) The Bible teaches that, so long as we live on this earth, believers in Jesus are simultaneously "saints and sinners." A saint is one who imperfectly turns from sin and believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and God. Although I'm a saint, I'm also a sinner. This was true of the members of the Corinthian church, as much as it is of me...and all believers.

(2) Notice that Paul doesn't laud the Corinthians here for any great works of love or faith. He's thankful that the grace of God, the force which turns sinners into sinners, has been given to them. Paul might like the church members that C.S. Lewis mentions in The Screwtape Letters--the fanatical bridge player, the vain person with the ridiculous hat, people whose sinful habits haven't gone away although they are believers in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit won't exorcise the last vestiges of sin from us on this side of the grave. The "old Adam" and the "old Eve" don't give up easily. But it's a testimony to God's grace--His charitable acceptance of repentant sinners--that even people like fanatical bridge players, vain egomaniacs, recovering alcoholics and junkies, and other sinners like me are nonetheless part of His kingdom. No doubt this is why Paul's expression of thankfulness for the grace that's come to the Corinthian Christians is genuine.

7. John 1:29-42: Twice in our lesson, John identifies Jesus as "the Lamb of God."

Those familiar with Old Testament sacrificial law will know that each year on Yom Kippur--the Day of Atonement--a pure, unblemished lamb was sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem. That lamb bore the sins committed by God's people Israel in the preceding year.

But in Jesus, John identifies the Lamb Whose death on a cross will atone for the sins of the entire world. Jesus underscores the universality of His mission in John 3:16, of course. The New Testament book of Hebrews, written, or more accurately, preached, by a Jewish Christian to other Jewish Christians, asserts that Jesus' sacrificial death wiped out the power of sin and death over believers in Christ "once and for all."

8. Two mega-themes suggest themselves as one reads our Gospel lesson, each encapsulated in a word. The words are: abide or live (meno in the original Greek) and witness (martureo in the original Greek). (An allied word to the second is semeia, meaning sign. More on that momentarily.)

John is obsessed with the incarnation, the enfleshment of God in the person of Jesus. His prologue, for example, speaks of the Word made flesh who dwelt among us (John 1:14). Jesus is the active, life-giving Word of God. Once, in a particular place and time, He lived, remained, or dwelt among us. The word meno is used repeatedly in John's Gospel. It can be translated as lived, dwelt, abided, or remained. Jesus uses this verb repeatedly, for example, when He speaks of how He abides in the Father and we are to abide in Him (John 15).

In this Sunday's Gospel lesson, the question posed by John's disciples to Jesus is to be taken both literally and figuratively, I suppose. They want to know where Jesus is staying or living.

But, at another level, they want to know if Jesus is with them. Is He with the human race? Or is He just one more promising savior who lets us down in the end? We human beings, in spite of pretending to be world weary or cynical, are constantly looking for saviors, be they politicians, entertainment personalities, psychologists, financial gurus, generals, or preachers. All will disappoint, especially if they spend their time trying to prove themselves to us. Jesus has nothing to prove. He tells us, as He did John the Baptist's disciples, "Come and see."

9. John's Gospel is often referred to as "a book of signs." In John 20, the evangelist gives a mission statement for his Gospel:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

The Gospel of John is designed to be a witness--or a sign--that points others to Jesus Christ as "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).

Throughout the Gospel, Jesus performs signs and a premium is put on witnessing. (The word for witness in the original Greek of the New Testament is martureo, from which our word, martyr comes. Witnesses don't always meet with happy endings here on earth, which may partly explain why we are sometimes hesitant to share our faith with others. I'm not throwing stones; I'm as hesitant as the next person.)

As Brian Stoffregen points out, Jesus Himself is a sign of a sort in John's Gospel. Here, He's called "the Word," a message from God pointing us to salvation and new life.