“1 Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. 2 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. 3 He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” 4 But I said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” 5 And now the Lord says—He who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to Him and gather Israel to Himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength—
6 He says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
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It was a cold night in the south of France. Winston Churchill sat by the fire watching the logs pop and listening to them crackling. “I know why logs spit,” he said. “I know what it is to be consumed.”
Churchill was thinking about his time in the political wilderness. He had risen to fame early in life through a daring escape from a prisoner of war camp. After his time in the military, he had entered politics and became known as a man of the people. Even though he was young, he was in charge of the entire navy during World War One. He lost that position after a disastrous campaign and spent the next decade and a half as something of a young has-been. No one would listen to him. No one would listen when he started sounded the alarm about the Nazi threat. He was in the political wilderness. Churchill poured all his impressive energy into trying to prepare for a war that no one in his country wanted to prepare for. It all seemed pointless. That feeling was what was on his mind when he looked at that fire and said, “I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.”
Maybe you know what it is like to be consumed. Maybe you know what it is like to be willing to do anything and everything to achieve something good, true, and beautiful. Jesus knew. He could say, “I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.” He did God’s will to often seemingly no apparent result. His chose to keep trusting. Doing God’s will often appears futile because God—and only God—controls the outcome. The way forward is to trust God’s power and plan, which will prove superior. That’s the claim of this sermon: Doing God’s will often appears futile because God and only God controls the outcome. The way forward is to trust God’s power and plan, which will prove superior.
We will study this in two points. First: the servant’s word. Second: the Lord’s word. In verses 1-4, we will study the servant’s word about himself and his work. In the second shorter point which only covers verses 5-6, we study the Lord’s word about the servant and his work.
First: the servant’s word. This is the second of the four servant songs in Isaiah. These prophecies speak of the coming Christ. We are studying them in preparation for Christmas. Last week we saw that God delighted in this servant and that this servant was proof that God is the God of the many and not the few. Now we hear from the servant himself. We see that the servant expects his words to carry world-wide authority; verse 1, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations…”
That’s some audacity. That’s the equivalent of, “listen up, world.” Throughout the book of Isaiah, only the Lord speaks with that sort of authority. Only God claims to have a message the whole world needs to hear. These words, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations…” are the first hint that this servant is something more than a that mere man. He is the God-man even here in Isaiah.
The God-man wants the whole world to hear what he has to say and what he has to say has to do with his name; verse 1, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth He has made mention of my name.” Other translations end this sentence with, “He named my name.”
This is dramatic build up to us hearing the servant’s name. Movies use build ups regularly. A goon shooting a gun wildly into the air shouting, “who are you?” is just a built up for the hero to appear out of nowhere and say, “I’m Batman.” This call to the whole world to listen in verse 1 is a build up to the servant’s name.
The build-up to the servant’s name continues with a description of his deadly effectiveness; verse 2, “[God] 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.” A sharpened sword is a nasty weapon for up close fighting and a polished arrow is a deadly accurate weapon for fighting from a distance. This is a way of saying that this servant whose name we are about to learn is like God’s secret weapon. This language is as intimate as it is deadly in the shadow of His hand, concealed in His quiver. God keeps this servant close in the same way a cowboy always carries his gun.
The warfare that this servant would unleash would be a warfare of the word; verse 2, “He made my mouth like a sharpened sword.” This is what we see with the work of Jesus. His authority was bound up in what he said and how he said it. The people held Jesus in esteem because he taught as one who had authority—almost as if he was talking about his own law rather than the law of Moses. When the Pharisees tried to arrest Jesus, the guard they sent came back and refused saying, “no one has ever spoke the way this man does.”
We should never fault any teacher for failing to speak like Jesus. He is the God-man. His words were a secret weapon to cut through the defenses we sinners build up around our hearts. They are still that weapon. “[Christ’s] whole authority,” as Calvin put it, “consists in doctrine, in the preaching of which he wishes to be sought and acknowledged; for nowhere else will he be found.” Jesus’ authority is wrapped up in his words—hearing his words, understanding his words, and believing his words. “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free,” as the master put it.
Jesus did his work with words. Even his miracles were about his words. He didn’t do wonders just to prove he could do wonders. He did them to prove his words. When Jesus told a young, paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven, the religious teachers thought this was blasphemous. So Jesus asked them, ‘which is easier: to say, “your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up and walk”? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’ So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home.’ That miracle was all about proving that he meant what he said when he said he could forgive sins. The wonders were about the words.
To take Jesus’ seriously, you must take his words seriously. That’s what God thinks, at least. On the Mount of Transfiguration, the Father’s voice boomed from the heavens, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” You might remember everything before “listen to him” from last week’s servant song, but I want to focus now on the “listen to him.” God is exasperated when people don’t listen to Jesus. Think about this in terms of a father who is exasperated with his children because they won’t listen their mother. When he is gone and they misbehave, all she can say is, “just wait until your father gets home.” That father doesn’t want that. He says, “this is your mother. Listen to her.” God doesn’t want Jesus to say, “just wait God comes back.” He says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Jesus deserves the right to be heard. So listen to him.
When it comes to Jesus, it all hinges on how well we hear. When it comes to us as the church in the world today, it all hinges on these same words. Jesus’ life and words are the sharpened swords and polished arrows of the church’s armory. Nothing else we lay hold of will make an impact.
That’s the servant. That’s the dramatic build up to his name; verse 3, ‘He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”’ The servant’s name isn’t given as Jesus. It is Israel. Now, we know this isn’t the nation of Israel because the last chapter is all about how hopeless Israel had become. Rather, Isaiah is saying that the servant is Israel as Israel is meant to be. He is the light for the nations that Israel was meant to be. Jesus spent forty days being tested in the wilderness and succeeded because Israel spent forty years being tested in the wilderness and failed. Jesus spent years training twelve disciples who would change the world because Israel had twelve sons who squabbled. It’s as if Jesus read the Old Testament stories, saw what went wrong, said, “let’s get it right,” and then got it right. That’s what it means for this servant to be Israel.
Jesus does the same for you. He takes on your flesh to get right what you get wrong. Israel’s only hope was that the servant would get right what they got wrong. Your only hope lies in the fact that Jesus got right what you get wrong. Stop hoping in yourself. Stop hoping in the possibility that you will one day be good enough to be loved. Hope in Jesus. Christmas is not only about him becoming like us. It is about him becoming us, or us as we ought to be.
That’s the servant. His words are deadly effective. He is us as we are supposed to be. He did whatever God told him but even for him, this obedience often seemed useless; verse 4, ‘I said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”’ If you want to take Jesus seriously, you need to take this feeling of futility seriously. You need to accept that Jesus could sit looking into a fire, thinking about his mission, and say, “I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.”
To take just one example, consider his feeding of the five thousand. Great miracle, right? Well, after Jesus fed those five thousand, he tried to push the conversation past food into spirituality. Not only did they take off but most of his disciples abandoned him as a result. “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”
Jesus did everything right and sometimes it seemed to have no effect. That’s a hard and fast truth about spiritual work. You can do everything right and it can seem to have no effect. Elijah knew that. He won a great victory against the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel and then left not primarily to save his life but because his victory at Mount Carmel had done nothing to change the hearts of the leadership. “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”
That’s how the servant would feel. That’s how Jesus did feel. What did he do with it? That’s the rest of the verse, “Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” Jesus responded to feelings of futility by trusting in God’s power and plan. Jesus did what he was responsible to do and left the results to God. That’s why as he watched those disciples walk away from him forever, he said, “no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
If you need God to do what you want Him to do with your obedience, you will stay in the first half of verse 4, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.” You need to remind yourself of the second half of verse 4, “Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.”
Now this is hard because we want to control the outcome. Parents want to control the outcome. We want to know the formula for producing well adjusted, Christ-following children—x plus y plus z equals a regenerate child—add c and you might get a missionary or you might avoid having your kid leave as a missionary if you don’t want them to go. That’s not how it works. You need to keep God’s commands as a parent, but you have no control over the outcome. The results are ultimately in the hand of God. That’s why Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
Doing the works of faith requires faith. You can’t make what you want to happen, happen. Failing to realize that will lead to despondency and/or manipulating others. Don’t do that. Be like the servant. Obey and trust God for the outcome. Now we see in our second point that God’s outcome is more than we ask or imagine. That’s our second point: the Lord’s word. It’s shorter because we are covering just two verses. Part of my goal in preaching is to stress what the Bible stresses to unleash its power not my own interests.
The servant’s response to feelings of futility was to trust God’s power and plan. The Lord’s response to the servant’s continued trust in the face of futility was to speak words about him to him; verse 5, ‘And now the Lord says—He who formed me in the womb to be His servant to bring Jacob back to Him and gather Israel to Himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength.”
The Lord spoke the truth about Jesus to Jesus. He reminded Jesus that he was the servant. He told Jesus that he was honored in His sight. He told Jesus that He himself would be Jesus’ strength. He reminded Jesus that it was all unfolding as planned. That will get you back into obedience; that’s verse 5. Jesus often went to lonely places to speak with his Father because he needed to be reminded of what verse 5 said. Each of us needs to regularly hear God speak to us about us or we will grow weary in doing good. Read your Bible, pray every day and you grow, grow, grow.
The Lord spoke to his servant about his servant. The Lord’s other response was not to lessen the scope of the work—“yeah, you’re right. This is going nowhere. Let’s try something smaller”—but to show that the scope was even wider; verse 6, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” That’s the confidence of God. “You feel like nothing is happening? Then I’ll promise even more.”
God’s goal in the servant’s work had to do with the Jews and the Gentiles. First the Jews. Jesus faced regular unbelief in his work among the Jews. After countless conversations in which he explained and re-explained his teachings, Jesus was still opposed by the Pharisees. After years of one-on-one time together, Jesus was still betrayed by Judas. Jesus’ own people group—the people most like him—periodically tried to and eventually did kill him. That would leave you feeling ineffective, but Jesus kept trusting his Father’s power and plan. You see that Jesus trusted his Father’s power and plan because when Jews finally start to catch on, Jesus didn’t praise them for finally getting it; he praised God that they got it; “Blessed are you Peter; you didn’t figure this out; my Father in heaven revealed it to you.” Jesus obeyed and trusted God to do what God would do. He trusted the Father to work out his life according to the Father’s plan. The Father did more abundantly than any of us would expect.
This more than we would expect is the whole world—the Gentiles; verse 6, “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” We are Gentiles—non-Jews who know the God of Israel. You are living proof that Jesus’ work was wildly effective. We as a church, by our mere existence, matter much more than we assume. We qualify as the ends of the earth, and here we are walking in the light rather than the darkness. Nobody in Isaiah’s circles was talking about the prairie lands of North America. “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus trusted God to the point of death—hanging on a cross is about as futile and ineffective as you can imagine, hanging on a cross—and God has done more with that obedience than any of us could ask or imagine. This sermon isn’t about us toughening ourselves up to the fact that we must obey and God or might not do something with it. This is about us realizing that we are to obey and that God knows best what to do that obedience. So if it seems like God isn’t doing what you want with your efforts, then He must want something better than you want for yourself. Trusting that is part of faith.
That’s the faith Jesus had. He is the author and the pioneer of it. He is the servant. Do what the servant did—obey, obey, obey, which is just another way of saying trust, trust, trust, and when it seems pointless, remember that it is God who is writing this story and not you. Surrender yourself totally to Him. “The real secret of an unsatisfied life lies too often in an unsurrendered will,” as Hudson Taylor put it. So, if you feel consumed by the seeming futility of what you are doing, ask yourself if you really are doing what you are doing for God. If so, your obedience is pleasing to Him, He will be pleased to do more than you ask or imagine with it, and when you look at what He has done, you will be most pleased. Amen.