His Obedience our Salvation

4 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. 5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. 6 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. 7 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. 8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.

Introduction

In the weeks leading up to Easter, we’re looking at the mission of Jesus and what he came into the world to do. We’re exploring that by examining these final chapters of the book of Isaiah,

where Isaiah prophesies a mysterious figure called the Servant of the Lord.

This figure will come into the world and bring God’s salvation.

The New Testament writers identify the Servant of the Lord prophesied by Isaiah as Jesus. This is the third of the Servant songs we’re looking at, .[1]

Big Idea: “This is a picture of the life we ought to live,” If Jesus Christ is the Servant of the Lord, the ultimate Servant, then he is a model for us.

If you believe in God and you want to serve God this text answers the question of what your life will look like.

1. The Servant lives a life of Service.

In The Servant of the Lord, we have a model for how we ought to be living.

There are two features to this life.

you will become what you worship

a. “He sustains the weary.” The Servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ, is a wonderful counselor.

In Isaiah 42, we read, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”

Jesus is so tender and so wise that he heals the brokenhearted. He binds up their wounds. He is gentle with the bruised.

He never snuffs out a smoldering wick.

which means no matter how much your strength is failing or how weak and bruised you are,

if you go to him, he will never put you out. He will never throw you over the edge.

He’ll be gentle with you. He’ll blow on the dying embers of your heart and your life back into a flame.

He is the wonderful counselor.

A servant of the Lord is like that.

Anyone who serves God is someone who is great with the weary, great with the bruised.

Do people seek you out?

Even though you haven’t invited them to do it.

do people seek you out, and they open up, and

they want to talk to you about their problems and their hurts because they perceive in you a wisdom and a grace and a kindness

such that they want to talk to you about their bruises and their weariness?

Are you that kind of person?

If you really want to be a servant of the Lord, you should be that kind of person… a person of attractive tenderness.

b. He is a servant of immovable character.

“I turned not backward.”

The other feature of this kind of life is found actually through … It’s a thread that goes through the next few verses.

Verse 5 says the Servant of the Lord says, “I have not drawn back.”

That means, “I did not chicken out.” From what? The beating (verse 6). The mocking. The spitting.

Verse 7: b. “Therefore have I set my face like a flint …” The flint is the hardest of all rocks.

“I’m going to do what I’m called to do, and it doesn’t matter who is accusing me.

It doesn’t matter who is condemning me. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to draw back. I’m going to go.”

Why?

Because verse 8: “He who vindicates me is near.”

What is this? This is the description of a person whose identity and self-regard is grounded in God himself. That’s what it means to say, “God is my vindication.”

He is able to take on this substitutionary role with God’s help, for his vindication and strength come from above (vv. 7–9).

c. His identity is so rooted in God that you can’t crush him through criticism, opposition, or defamation.

“I don’t care what anybody thinks. Nothing turns me back. Nothing gets me down. Nothing makes me lose my composure.”

Why? “Because God is my vindication. God is my identity. It’s his love and his regard.

That’s all that matters. As a result, nothing daunts me. Nothing!”

d. The Servant is a combination of attractive tenderness and absolutely unbending strength.

That’s what it means. That’s what a servant of the Lord (somebody who serves God) should be like.

How are you on that? How are you doing on that? I can tell you this. Some of us are tender and kind, or some of us are strong and unbending. But you almost never see this together.

It takes the Spirit of God, but this is the kind of life you ought to live. 2]

2. The Servant is Being Taught

“Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.”

The point of God “awakening” the Servant’s ear may well be that

The Servant is able to speak God’s word to the broken and outcast of the world because he has learned from the outset of the day to do what his Master tells him to do.

A disciple speaks what he has learned through a life of obedience (cf. Ps. 40:9 [Eng. 8]).

Because of the Servant’s discipleship, he knows what to say to help the weary.

Again, this is a step beyond ch. 49. There the power of God’s word in the Servant was discussed (49:2), but the function of that word was not disclosed. Here it is.

God does not send his Word into the world to destroy the world but to save it (cf. John 3:17).

It is true that those who oppose him will be destroyed by the Word’s power (cf. Isa. 11:4),

but that is not the purpose of its coming.

The Word comes to call those who are weary of their own efforts to justify their living, those whose labors seem pointless to find rest in him who comes to get into the harness with them (53:4–5; 61:1–3; Matt. 11:28–29).[3]

Where are you getting your intake?

Where are you getting enough Scripture?

Where are you learning it enough,

memorizing it enough,

meditating on it enough so it so immerses your imagination,

so saturates your imagination and your thinking and your emotions,

when you have a crisis you’re facing or a decision to make or you have somebody to counsel or comfort,

Even if you can’t think of a particular verse and chapter, it’s still guiding you.

You can be so immersed in the Scripture that you have a decision to make or you’re counseling somebody

or a crisis, and even though you can’t think of a particular chapter or verse,

the tropes, the paradigms, the trajectories, the themes,

the attitudes of the Scripture are guiding you.

For that to happen, you have to really know it.

Where are you getting the intake?

“morning by morning” That means at least daily.[4]

3. The Servant is Suffering

The heart of this passage

It’s verse 6. It’s the suffering. “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.”

Mark 15:15–20 (ESV)

15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. 16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.

17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18 And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

It is part of this Servant’s obedience that he gave his back to those who struck him, and his cheeks to those who plucked out his beard; he did not hide his face from shame and spit.

The servant was not rebellious to anything the Father told him to do, no matter how costly.

He willingly offered his back to his tormentors, his beard to those who would pluck it out, his face to those who would spit on it (v. 6).

This astonishing humility was that of the “Lamb of God” who would be led to the slaughter.

In all of this degradation, Jesus was not ashamed; his glory was to die in submission to his Father’s wise plan.

His vindication would come through centuries of exaltation by the Father as the Holy Spirit applied his blood to the elect from every nation.

How can you ever come to grips with someone who has given himself utterly to you without you giving yourself utterly to him? Impossible! That’s it. What is the Bible about? Costly grace.[7]

4. The Lord Helps His Servant

9 “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.”

The Servant may have been set up for public ridicule, but in the end, it will be amply proved that his decision to trust God, be obedient to him, and leave the outcome in his hands was the right decision.

Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9 Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? 1

Others may say he is a fool; he knows that the final outcome will prove him right.

Here he would be following the course that other prophets had taken[8]

God is immediately available to his own.

“ He who vindicates me is near.”

We, therefore, can rely on the justice of our cause and freely defy them to fight us. They may condemn us without listening to our vindication; they may have many people to support the sentence they have pronounced. But

We have no reason to be afraid. God, whose cause we plead, is our Judge and will acquit us in the end.

9. Isaiah is speaking of the ministry of the Word, which the Lord will defend against the attacks of the wicked. He will not let his people be overwhelmed by their fraud of violence.

“Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.”

They will all wear out like a garment; the moths will eat them up.

Though deadly foes attack him, he still maintains his position boldly, because all who fight against the Word of God will fall away through their own frailty.

People of this world may shine like dazzling garments but will perish; but believers, who now are covered with filth, will in the end obtain new brightness and will shine brilliantly like the stars.

Calvin, J. (2000). Isaiah (pp. 312–313). Crossway Books.

Will You Listen to the Servant or to Yourself?

“ Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled!”

Either you are the one in the judgment seat and you’re deciding what parts of the Bible make sense and what parts don’t,

or the Bible is in the judgment seat over you, and it’s looking at you and deciding what parts of your life make sense and what parts don’t.

See, you know verses 10 and 11 at the very end, that kind of weird ending?

It’s all about this. “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord …”

What does that mean? “

“But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: you will lie down in torment.”

He is talking about the sin of self-sufficiency.

He is saying, “If you’re in the dark and nothing seems to be making sense and everything is a mess, don’t light your own fires.

Stick with the Word of God.

You stick with what I’ve told you. You move ahead like that.”[10]

Application

We must recognize our own tendency to wander from God by refusing to obey his Word.

We must stand in awe of the astonishing humility and obedience of the Suffering Servant, Jesus Christ.

We must feel the weight of the abuse he endured and with humble tears acknowledge that it is our sins that produced his sufferings.

We must consider his daily pattern of listening to his Father and seek to imitate it by having daily quiet times in the Bible and constant prayer.

We must awaken our ears every day to listen to his words of instruction then seek to live out that wisdom, to bless others with the words he gives us to sustain other weary sinners.

For non-Christians, here is a warning: If you refuse to trust in Christ, you are effectively making your own torch to light your way. The end of that way is eternal torment.

Flee to Christ by faith![11]

The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 1989-2011 (The Mocking and the Spitting)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a young Lutheran minister in the 1930s, and he saw the German national church capitulate to Hitler, you know, sign the loyalty oath and all that. He couldn’t believe it. He was a German Lutheran minister. He couldn’t believe it. He struggled. How could the church that was founded by Martin Luther, that great teacher of the gospel, have capitulated to Hitler?

He wrestled, and he came up with an answer. He wrote about it in his book The Cost of Discipleship (1937). In that book, he says the German church had lost its grasp on the gospel. He says instead of the gospel, the biblical gospel, the German church had come to believe in what he called cheap grace. Now what is cheap grace? Here’s what cheap grace is. The German theology for a hundred years had moved away from the idea that God punishes sin.

See, increasingly German theologians said, “We don’t believe in a God who is holy, who punishes sin, who punishes evil. We believe in a God of love, who loves everybody, just accepts and loves everybody.” You realize if you have a God of love who just accepts and loves everybody, there is no need for a cross. He just accepts and loves everybody. That’s his job. The irony is if …

Maybe some of you here feel like, “Well, that’s the God I believe in. I don’t believe in a God who is holy and who punishes sin, wrath, Mount Sinai, thunder and lightning. I believe in a God who just accepts and loves everybody.” Ironically, you have a less loving God than the old traditional biblical God. How so? A God who simply loves everybody gives you cheap grace. Why? Because it doesn’t cost him anything.

What does an unholy God who just loves and accepts everything, what does it cost him to love you? The answer is nothing. It’s cheap. It costs nothing.

The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 1989-2011 (The Mocking and the Spitting)

What did it cost a holy God to love you? The answer is it cost him everything. Here’s the irony. Because he is holy, because he punishes sin, the only way he could love you was at an infinite cost. He had to take the punishment himself. He had to absorb the debt himself. Bonhoeffer was right.

The gospel is not no grace or cheap grace. It’s costly grace

[1]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [2]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [3]Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (p. 324). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. [4]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [5]Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (p. 325). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. [6]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. 38 So Jesus would “set his face” to go to Jerusalem, even though to others, including his disciples, it seemed a foolish decision (Luke 9:51). [8]Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (p. 326). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 39 See Prov. 17:15, where the two roles are reversed, resulting in a miscarriage of justice. See also Deut. 25:1; 2 Sam. 15:4; Ps. 82:3; 109:7. [9]Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (pp. 326–327). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. [10]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [11]Davis, A. M. (2017). Exalting jesus in isaiah (p. 303). Holman Reference.

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