The story line of the Bible is a very wonderful thing. And in some ways, when you read it at first, it seems a very complex thing because it unfolds over a period of thousands of years. And yet, the basic story line is very simple. It is the story of a great and wonderful God and his Son. It is the story of their glory and their majesty. It is the story of their fellowship with the Holy Spirit. And it is the story of how this great and wonderful God devised a most unexpected and extraordinary plan.
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He would place that man there, not for the amusement of the deity as, for example, has been characteristic of the thinking of pagan teaching. He would place that man there so that he might make in this world someone who would be a kind of miniature son. Just as the father enjoyed fellowship with his own son, he decided that he would create a world, and in that world, he would create a miniature son who would be like a miniature creator, who would be able to do and devise all kinds of things, almost as though he were a miniature of God himself.
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But this great God, this father in heaven, decided that he would do something in order to reverse this tragedy. This time, however, he didn't just make one man to be his son. He called a whole people to be his son. He gathered a great people out of bondage in Egypt. And he turned them into his son. He loved them like a father loves his son. And he called this newborn child to love him in return and to serve him and to bring glory to him throughout the world.
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And this time, he will not create a son out of the dust of the earth. He will not create a son out of the peoples of the world. He will send this time his own son into the world in order to be the son that these previous sons have failed to be.
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Since the first son had led the whole human race astray, there was an exile in the souls of men and women. And no physical restoration, no physical deliverance was in and of itself adequate to deal with this. And Isaiah began to recognize that what was needed was not just that God would come, not just that the Son would be sent, but the Son would live in such a way that the Son would be able to bring alienated men and women, rebels against God, back from their spiritual exile in the spiritual far country of their own souls. Bring them back to God.
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And I want us from these marvelous words simply to unfold what are obviously the basic things that Isaiah cast his eyes upon, as he listened interestingly now to the servant of the Lord speaking in the first person about what his experience would be.
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The Sovereign Lord, he says, has given me an instructed tongue, literally has given me the tongue of a disciple. It's important to notice that the servant says this has been given to him, and he implies it's been given to him by God. God has done something to give him the tongue of one who has learned, the tongue of one who is instructed.
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He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. And it's immediately the picture of a father and his son. Those of you who are fathers, at almost every stage you know what it is to have to go to your son if you have a son and say, get up, or get up, or it's time to get up. And that's the picture here. Although it's clothed not with the irritation of a father trying to rouse his lazy son, it is really the picture of a father looking down, first of all, upon his sleeping infant in the cart, in the cradle, gazing down upon the son whom he loves, finding his heart drawn out towards this child. And then lovingly bending down and whispering in the little one's ear, it's time to awaken. It's time to arise. It's time to listen.
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It indicates to us, as it were, that the first thing the Lord Jesus heard when he woke up in the morning as a real man, having had a real night's real sleep, the first thing that he was listening for was the voice of his heavenly Father saying to him, Jesus, it is today and I have something to show you.
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And if that was true at that level of his life, how much more true was it, he said, that whatever he did, he did because he'd been in the company of his Father. And he'd watched everything his Father had done and listened to everything his Father had said. And he had heard the instruction of his Father. Indeed, later on in John chapter 14, he went as far as to say, the words I speak are not my own. These, he said, are the things that I have heard from my Heavenly Father.
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That when he came right down into the beginning of our humanity as an embryo in the womb of Mary and then as a little lad and as he grew up, he was growing in his understanding. He was listening daily to the voice of his Father. And the result of that, Isaiah says, that he was given an instructed tongue by being wakened morning by morning to listen like one being taught in order for what? In order that he might know, he says, the word that sustains the weary. It's extraordinary.
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That is to say, weary of yourself and weary of your failure and weary of your sin and weary of your efforts to try to be better men and women and stumbling and failing constantly. I am the one who has come. Come to me, you who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Rest.
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The sovereign Lord, he says, has opened my ears and I have not been rebellious. You notice the development here? First of all, the Father, what? First of all, the Father, he says, wakens his ear at the end of verse 4 and now at the beginning of verse 5, the Father not only wakens his ear but opens his ear. There's a very subtle difference and a definite progression. It's the difference, as it were, between hearing what the Father says and being wholeheartedly obedient to the Father.
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And this is what Jesus does. He listens to the voice of His Heavenly Father, and to that voice He is totally obedient, even as Paul would later say, obedient to the death of the cross.
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I have not drawn back. 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. It's quite impossible. It's quite impossible ever to have read the gospel story of Jesus' passion and crucifixion without realizing that these words are almost perfectly, literally fulfilled in his experience.
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His active obedience in the sense that he actively obeyed everything that his heavenly father said to him. And his passive obedience. He was prepared obediently to suffer for those who had not obeyed the father. And in doing so, he made a kind of exchange. He obeyed the father in their place. And he stood in their place in order to take the judgment they desired for their disobedience to the father.
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He is treated shamefully, but he is not ashamed. He is treated disgracefully, but he is not himself disgraced. You know the great words of Hebrews chapter 12, speaking about Jesus for the joy that was set before him. He endured the cross and despised the shame. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't say he didn't experience the shame. It doesn't say he was impervious to the shame. It says he took the shame and he counted it a little thing because of the joy that was set before him, because of the vindication God would bring to him.
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And yet look at what he is able to say. I know I will not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who will bring charges against me? Let us face each other. Who is my accuser? Let him confront me. It is the sovereign Lord who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me? Then this, they will all wear out like a garment. The moths will eat them up.
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And so in the same way, the sheer power of the obedience of Jesus to his father meant that that unjust death he died could not hold him down. But its power was broken as easily as the threads of a moth -eaten garment can be broken by a child's hand, and it lay in tatters in his tomb as he walked out of it on the resurrection morning, vindicated by God. God was saying, He is the one. He is the Son. He is the obedient one. He's done it all. He's lived the life. He's died the death. He's able to save those who are weary.
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What Isaiah wants us to be clear about at the end of this passage is this, that somehow or another, that he will make even clearer in the next servant song to which we'll come next Sunday night, somehow or another, my personal destiny depends upon how I respond to this servant of God.
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Now all you who light fires and provide for yourselves flaming torches, you who can go on your own, who have no need of a savior, no need of this servant, no need of God, no need of grace, no need of the forgiveness of your sins as you see yourself. All you who light fires and provide for yourselves flaming torches, go then walk in the light of your fires. And of the torches you have set ablaze and see where they eventually lead. This is what you shall receive from my hand. At the end of the day, you will lie down in torment without a savior.
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Listen, says Isaiah, let him who walks in the dark, who has no light of his own, trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. And these are the only two responses. Isn't it strange that those who think they walk in the light end up in the dark and those who are conscious that they are surrounded by the dark and have great need are those who are brought out into the light by the servant.
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If you think you are walking in the light that you have created for yourself, you end up in the dark. But if in the dark you look to the servant of the Lord for light, you will be brought out into the day.
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