This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Suffering Servant” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 1, 1987.
Tonight we are, in a sense, preparing ourselves for descent into Isaiah 53 in earnest. We will read, however, Isaiah 40. I hope this isn’t too much of a backward move, but its intent is to summarize and pull together our thinking and preaching on the servant of the Lord as we then take on Isaiah 53. So Isaiah chapter 40. I might ask you to keep your finger in 40 and be ready to thumb through some of the chapters up to 53, and especially those that contain the servant’s songs that we’ve spoken of.
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak kindly to Jerusalem and call out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice is crying, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough ground become a plain and the rugged terrain a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
A voice says, Call out. Then he answered, What shall I call out? All flesh is grass. And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows upon it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.
But the word of our God stands forever. Get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news. Lift up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news. Lift it up, do not fear. Say to the cities of Judah, Here is your God. Behold, the Lord God will come with might, with his arm ruling for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. Like a shepherd, he will tend his flock. In his arm he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead. the nursing youths.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in the balance, or the hills in a pair of scales? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has informed him, With whom did he consult and who gave him understanding? And who taught him in the path of justice and taught him knowledge and informed him of the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales. Behold, he lifts up the islands like fine dust. Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than nothing and meaningless. To whom, then, will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare with him?
As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, a goldsmith plates it with gold, and the silversmith fashions chains of silver. He is too impoverished He who is too impoverished for such an offering selects a tree that does not rot. He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman to prepare an idol that will not hotter. Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the vault of the earth. and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. It is he who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but he merely blows on them and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble.
To whom then will you liken me that I should be his equal, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars. The one who leads forth their hosts by number, he calls them all by name. Because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power, not one of them is missing.” Why do you say O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and the justice due me escapes the notice of my God. Do you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired? His understanding is inscrutable.
He gives strength to the weary. And to him who lacks might, he increases power. Though youth grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary.
Father, we may well end our comments and words right at this point, for your word speaks of itself, and we pray to you here. Lord, we ask, therefore, that in the spirit of what has been said by you through your servant Isaiah, we may speak and listen tonight, and build us up, Lord, that our faith may not fail in the face of adversity or any other obstacle. We pray it in the name of the one whose faith did not fail, in the name of that one who persevered, the Lord Jesus Christ, your servant, par excellence. Amen.
The servant songs of Isaiah have been our theme, and appear in chapters forty through sixty-six. Some have said there are four in number, others have suggested five, if the opening verses of Isaiah sixty-one are counted. But the fourth, Isaiah fifty-three, is certainly the most famous of the servant songs. By the time we have arrived at this portion of the prophecy, we are prepared for it, to be sure, having given ear to all that has preceded, listening intently, especially to what has been said in the three previous servant songs.
But we have been prepared as well by the tone the tone throughout the prophecy, and we have been prepared specifically for what then appears before us in this prophecy by the tragedy that is recorded for us right before the chapter that we read this evening. I have pointed this out to you on occasion.
The tragedy involves the figure of Hezekiah, the king. In that thirty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, it is almost as if, humanly speaking, Hezekiah represented the last grand and great hope for Judah. However, in that thirty-ninth chapter, he crumbles under the weight of messianic delusion, and then congratulates himself that at least calamity has been stayed during his reign, even though it will be visited upon the reign of his children. In contrast, then, to this dismal end of Hezekiah, what the Lord has to say in the chapters that follow appear all the more glorious.
Added to their glory is the fact that Judah herself must be seen at a glance in the company of her king. The king’s history is Israel’s history. Israel’s guilt, she, like him, has brought upon her head the just deserts of all her sins. And that is precisely why The message of Isaiah 40 through 66 is so startling.
For as you look at the opening refrains of the 40th chapter, announced to you there is not what you might well have expected, namely judgment. Instead, announced to you is comfort. Announced to you is the cessation of warfare and hostility. God at war with his people. We are told, as we read down through that chapter, God is coming, God himself. Therefore, the imperative goes out. Make a highway for him, and when he comes, he comes with justice and with tenderness. His reward is with him, and like a shepherd he will tend his flock.
How shall we measure such a message as this? We will measure it in the terms of the prophecy itself, for this message is nothing less than gospel good news. What a magnificent word given by the Lord. But even this message now, the gospel, see it spoken of there in the ninth verse? Get yourself up into the high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news of the gospel. Lift up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news. Lift it up, don’t fear. Say to the cities of Judah, here is your God.”
But even this message, this magnificent message, as welcomed as we might think it would be, it is thoughtful of difficulties. The first difficulty is the people to whom it is directed. For these people have been ruined. Now there is an argument as to how it is they have been ruined and what the root of their ruination is. Are we to conclude that the root of their ruination is actually their idolatry? Some have suggested that. but it may well prove that the idolatry was merely the symptom of something far deeper, something more distressing yet in the heart of the people. You see, these people, to be sure, have been ruined. But how ruined?
They have been ruined by the failure of their faith, so that you see Isaiah chapter forty through sixty six with the servant of the Lord at the center is a call to faith. A review of the faith of Israel, the failure of her faith and the triumph of the faith of another.
Here, then, We are concerned with a divine reading. This is prophecy. This is the word of the Lord. What I mean to say by this is. It’s not that we find. Lack of religious awareness amongst the people. Lack of religion, religious devotion or even dutifulness on their part. but a divine reading of these people perceives within them a paralysis of heart. These people, despite their outward performance, are stricken in their hearts by unbelief. Their hidden questions of the heart are actually assaults upon God. against him and against his veracity. Hear what they say. Verse 27. My way, they say in their unbelief, my way is hidden from God and the justice duly escapes the notice of my God. What good is he?
It is precisely the same attitude of which I have repeatedly reminded you, appearing in Isaiah 49, verse 14, and we have used that as the foundational text for our preaching in our latest messages from this prophecy. That verse says, But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me. and the Lord has forgotten me.” Here is the divine reading, the divine appraisal of the heart of Israel, the people of God. The failure of faith. So then, looking at Isaiah 40 once more, That failure of faith in and by Israel is responsible for the Lord’s remonstrance. From the twelfth verse on, he then, not so much in deference to the idols of the nations, but is an indictment against his faithless people. He reminds them of his greatness. of his incomparable nature, who has measured the waters in the hollows at hand? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales. To whom will you liken God? Can you imagine it? What likeness will you compare with him? Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? So the remonstrance by God proceeds. Israel’s failure of faith necessitates God speaking in this way.
Because of their unbelief, Because of their unbelief, they are unprepared to believe what God is about to do. They can’t even receive the comfort. They cannot greet Him when He comes. Because they are stricken by the paralysis. of unbelief. My way is hidden from the Lord, and the justice duly escapes the notice of my God. And that being their habit of mind and heart, they will not, they will not receive even the message of comfort, even the gospel, the So it is the good news, the gospel receives no hearing. In their hearts, the people have given up on God.
But you see, there’s another factor that we must take into consideration as we make our way through these chapters and these verses. For as true as it is that Israel was to be that people of faith, ready, poised to receive the Lord at his coming, she was in that posture described as nothing less than the servant of the Lord, collectively, as a people.
And of this, the Lord repeatedly reminds her in this prophecy. Look, for example, to Isaiah 41, verses 8 and 9. “‘But you, Israel, my servant,’ he says, how the Lord describes the people as a whole, “‘but you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham, my friend, You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called from its remotest parts, and said unto you, You are my servant.” Israel was the servant of God, the servant of the Lord, for an appointed end. In order that she might be a witness to the Lord before the nations concerning the greatness of the Lord of heaven and earth, against all of the nations and their pretender gods, the idols, the strange deities of the alien lands. Look at Isaiah 43, verse 10.
You are my witnesses, declares the Lord. And my servant, there he is once more, my servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, and there will be none. After me, I, even I, am the Lord, and there is no Savior besides me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, and there is no strange God among you. So you are my witnesses, declares the Lord. I and I am God.” Even from eternity I am he, and there is none who can deliver out of my hand. I act, and who can reverse it?”
Israel then, that one who was to receive God at his coming, but found now having a paralysis of unbelief in the heart, Israel, to be that servant intended to be the witness for God before the world. But not unlike Hezekiah out of Isaiah thirty nine, who failed in his own faithfulness and became faithless, Israel now proves to be no servant at all. As the Lord says in Chapter forty two verses nineteen and twenty, who is blind but my service? as the messenger whom I sent.
You have seen many things, but you do not observe them. Your ears are open, but none hears.” How pervasive. How pervasive the blindness, the deafness of Israel. How pervasive the paralysis of heart, the failure of faith. on Israel’s part. That pervasiveness ends in the realization that she has no one worthy to deliver the good news.
Not only will she not receive it, she has none who is worthy to deliver it. There is no messenger Think of the humility that this speaks of Isaiah himself, for he is also one who is counted unworthy, even as he is constrained to write down these words. And this presents us then with the second difficulty. The first being the people, and now the second being The Lord said to Zion chapter 41 verses 27-29, I will give a messenger of good news, but when I look, the opening of that declaring his intention, may be better read along these lines. I would give a messenger of good news, but when I look, there is no one and there is no counselor among them who, if I ask, can give an answer. Behold, all of them are false. Their works are worthless. Their molten images are wind and empty.
The inability of Israel as messenger is her inability as witness and as servant of the Lord. And in light of that failure, not just a failure of faith, but a failure of service, the Lord now introduces his servant, the true servant, the perfect servant. As you move on from the conclusion of the 41st chapter into the 42nd, and look at those first four verses, what a magnificent picture it is of the coming servant of the Lord, the one who steps into the bridge. Behold, as if with surprise, behold, even As you concluded the forty first chapter, and no one was there to be found who could present himself as the messenger of good news. Now, the Lord said that the opening of chapter forty two, behold, like the sun rising on the clearest of mornings. Behold, my servant, whom I oppose My chosen one in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him.
He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not extinguish. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not be disheartened or crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his blood.”
However, as we prepare to enter Isaiah 53, we understand that the servant of God’s righteousness and that servant that has failed in her faith, Israel, are on a collision course. Because Israel is not poised to believe, because she is poised to reject, the true servant of God will be despised and abhorred by the nation. He will become a slave, abused and misused by the world.
Remember what is said in the second of the servant songs, those verses that open the forty-ninth chapter? Thus says the Lord, from the Redeemer of Israel and its Holy One to the despised one, notice Isaiah forty nine percent. To the one afforded by the nation, not plural, singular by the nation, what nation? The nation infected by the paralysis of unbelief. To the slave or servant of rulers.
Undergoing that humiliation, moving on to the promise of God, King shall see and rise princes also bow down. because of the Lord, who is the holy one of Israel, who has chosen you. The collision force between Israel, the faithless one and the true and perfect servant, the righteous one. But even in the collision The true servant of God does not resist.
Moving back to that forty-second chapter in the first of the servant songs, verses two and three, that enigmatic statement, he will not cry out or raise his voice or make his voice heard in the street. That’s not referring to the refusal on the part of the servant to speak about the glories of God. That refers to the fact that when he is persecuted, he does not raise his voice against his tormentors. A bruised greed he will not break, and a dimly burning wit he will not extinguish.
Such is his meekness and his humility. Such is his own trust. Then, what is said in that third servant song, Chapter fifty verses four through nine. You know what he says. For instance, in verse six. He deliberately. I gave my back to the smiters. And my cheeks to those who pluck out the beard, I did not cover my face from humiliation and spitting.
So it is, you see, that the servant of the Lord here depicted does not resist even in the midst of the collision that occurs between him and the faithless servant, paralyzed apart through unbelief. Why? Why doesn’t he resist? Because he is the champion of some sort of philosophy of non-resistance and pacifism? Because he is an ancient Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.?
No. that the servant does this. Provides for that faithless servant. The only hope. Of her healing. You see. The faithless servant Israel. Has spoiled has spoiled herself for service, because through that unbelief which she has now embraced, she has given up on God. And by doing that, she has revealed the tragic truth concerning her own art, the tragic flaws of her own character. And why has she done this? Because in the midst of a world in which there was suffering, in the midst of a world in which that suffering overtook her, in the midst of a world in which sin is a reality, a sin as true as the heart that she had beating within her own breast, in the midst of that world In which, yes, it seems as if God inordinately delayed his intervention before the face of calamity. She had concluded, God is worthless. Why hope again? Why trust?
But now you see, God finally sends forth the true servant. And the message of the coming servant comes within the context, within the womb of the message of the approach of God himself. Make a highway for him, he’s coming, and justice is with him. And this God and that servant give themselves over to all that has been undone in Israel. This God and that servant gives himself over to suffering and to sin, taking it to himself. He even gives himself over to the way of his own intervention. Precisely in the midst of all of this, the suffering, the distress, the calamity, the sin, the delay. The true servant, as that third servant song says, verse seven of chapter fifty, sets his faith like Flint. In the certain knowledge of his vindication and his justification from none other than God himself.
He who vindicates me, he who justifies me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up to each other. Who has a case against me? Let him draw near to me. Behold, the Lord God helps me. Who is he who condemns? Behold, they will all wear out like a garment, and the moth will eat one.” This servant, in chapter forty-nine, verse four, says, “…surely the justice due me is with the Lord, and my reward is with my God.” Rather than giving up on God, the servant remains perfectly faithful. He can do nothing else if the faithless ones are to have any hope. Their precise failure was giving up on God. What hope for them is there if this one also gives up on God? How glorious the source of salvation he becomes, if in the midst of all of the calamities that the people have undergone, he remains faithful.
On the cross, Jesus says, Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit. And so it is, you know, as you move on through that servant song, Isaiah 53, and all of the talk about justification. This one who, in the midst of suffering sin and the delay of God’s intervention, remains faithful, he alone becomes the source of justification and the focus of the restoration of faith to all that have been faithless. they will be justified, vindicated, through, by, in, him, alone. Do you feel the power of the conclusion of Isaiah 40?
Some of you know it well and have rehearsed that section of scripture again and again for yourself. Maybe it was reinforced for you when you saw the movie Chariots of Fire and heard it read during the course of that movie. You see, the Lord concludes his case After Israel has presented her my way is hidden from the Lord, she says, and the justice do me escape the notice of my God comes back the Lord. Do you not know? Have you not heard the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the end of the earth? He doesn’t become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.
Then it is that vindication comes to those who, in the spirit of the servant, wait upon the Lord. For God it is who gives power to the faint, and to them that have no might increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord in faith shall renew their strength.” and they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Our Father, teach us the lesson of Isaiah’s prophecy. Make it plain to us. O Lord, the paralysis of unbelief that had afflicted Israel called forth from you your mercy and grace, by which you supplied them the servant that they themselves had failed to be the servant that they lacked. And what a servant he is. For not only does he come as witness to you, and not only is he one who is marvelously pliant to your will and obedient from his very heart, but he also takes to himself the fullness of the faithlessness of his people in order to show them what it means to stand faithfully and to never give up on you.
O Lord, may we not give up on you. May we wait on the And though we be weak, may we gain strength. And though we have the tendency to fall and stumble, may we run as the wind. And live, Lord, mightily before you. Hear us, Lord. We would be servants, in and through and by.
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