The Calling Placed on the Servant | Clip from Servant Songs IV: Isaiah 49

But I think the healthy believer is bothered when what we experience, how we're living, what we're seeing, especially in God's people and in ourselves, seems to be so distant from what the scripture says.

So what do you do with that? Well, the best pattern is our Lord. How He lived on what the Father said to Him as a man when it didn't appear to match up with what He was experiencing. And that brings us to Isaiah 49.

Now let me read you the first three verses. You remember in Isaiah 42, we left off with this really mountaintop scene where the writer says that all creation ought to gather and bring its praises before the Lord and sing for joy because God Himself was coming like a warrior to take the field of battle.

And with the war cry, He was entering into the fray. And that is a picture of the God-man coming to save us. One of my favorite pictures of Christ in all the Bible. Strangely, when we come to 49, what we expect to be just a continual crescendo, you know, we expect to continue to go ever higher and to see ever more beautiful pictures of Christ's triumph, but instead we see an unexpected resistance to His ministry.

Let me read the first three verses. Listen to me, O islands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother He named me. He has made my mouth like a sharp sword.

In the shadow of His hand He has concealed me, and He has also made me a select arrow. He has hidden me in His quiver. He said to me, you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will show my glory. Wonderful opening here.

A bit strange though. Notice that the Messiah turns to the world. The servant says, listen to me, O islands. Now for the Jew, the islands, the coastlands, that's saying everybody other than Jerusalem.

So not just Jews, but all the world, listen to me. Nobody talks that way in the book of Isaiah, except God. The prophet says things like this, thus says the Lord. But only God says, hear me. So we have a servant coming from God, but he speaks with the authority of deity and not the authority of a normal prophet.

And his message is for the nations, and then he gives an autobiographical description. He says, the Father called me. In other words, God not only created me, but chose me for this wonderful task. But what a calling for the Son of God.

The Most High Son is called for the humility of becoming a man. The lawmaker is called to carry his own law. The clean one is called to bear our filth. The rich called for impoverishment. The one worshiped by angels is called to a task that will result in him being mocked by his own people.

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