WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 So we continue in our series on the servant songs. There are five of them in Isaiah and these are songs. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:20.000 They're poems and they're about the servant. And the New Testament repeatedly identifies the servant as Jesus Christ, the Messiah. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:30.000 And as Derek prayed just a second ago, there are even aspects of the servant songs that tell you more about Jesus, about the Messiah than the Gospels do. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:42.000 And so what we have here is we've said from week one, we have a Christology in music and song. Christology is a deep study of Jesus Christ and thinking about who He is and what He did. 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:52.000 And this is a Christology in music. Even in this passage actually there are places and it stands as that rhyme in Hebrew. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:58.000 Of course when you translate it, it doesn't rhyme anymore. But it did. It used to rhyme and when it was in its original language. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:11.000 And the point at the center here in this passage is really the same point that we've been making. It's the same point as week one in Isaiah 42. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:24.000 And it's a paradox of the servant king. In Hebrew, servant is the word evid, slave. Servants, the nicer translation. It's the slave king. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:35.000 And it's two concepts that don't go together. The paradox is that the king of all the world should be the slave of all the world. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:43.000 And so this is the climax. This is Isaiah 53. This is Isaiah 53. This is the climax of the servant songs. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:02:00.000 It's really the climax of prophecy itself in the entirety of the Old Testament. So it's solemn. It's holy ground. It's the kind of passage that a preacher wants to preach and doesn't want to preach from at the very same time. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:13.000 I've got, we've got several books downstairs that we've been using on the servant songs and two or three of them, three 400 page books are exclusively on Isaiah 53. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:20.000 And what that means is there's a lot here to see and there's even more to miss in 30 minutes. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:30.000 So we're going to at least do two weeks on it. We're going to break it down a little bit. So this is holy ground. Take off your shoes with me. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:40.000 Come and worship Jesus with me as we think about it. We're going to look at four things. Let me say this first. The song is in five stanzas. 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:52.000 If you flip, if you have a Bible and just look at verses from verse four, which should be on a new page, if you have one of our Bibles, you'll see that at the end of verse six, there's a gap between verse six and verse seven. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:03:00.000 And then that happens again at the end of verse nine. Those are the stanza breaks. And there, this is literally a song and there are five stanzas to it. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:13.000 I'm going to look at the first three stanzas tonight and we're going to do four things. We're going to look at the reasonable servant, the unexpected servant, the ordinary servant and the voluntary servant. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:18.000 Okay, so first the reasonable servant. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:31.000 Isaiah ministered in the northern kingdom, sorry, in the southern kingdom talking about the northern kingdom 700 years before Jesus was born. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:44.000 700 years before Jesus was born, seven centuries. For some people, this and for some scholars, the text of Isaiah written here in the servant songs, they suggest wasn't actually written down until much later than that. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:49.000 My personal view is that I think that this was composed during the time of Isaiah's ministry when he was alive. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:04:04.000 But the latest possible day that any scholar has ever given for the servant songs actually being written down if they were passed on from Isaiah through music, through oral tradition and music is the year 400. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:15.000 And that means at the latest possible scenario, these songs were written down 400 years before Jesus was born. And I think they were written down 700 years before Jesus was born. 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:24.000 And that means that there is no getting around this passage immense predictive power. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:39.000 In verse 12, sorry, verse 13, behold, my servant shall act wisely. This passage is about a servant. And the question that gets asked is who is the servant? Who is the servant in this passage? 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:51.000 And there's traditionally been three answers to that question. Some have said that this isn't about some future Messiah. This is about Israel. 00:04:51.000 --> 00:05:00.000 This is a collective servant. And sometimes in the book of Isaiah, Israel, the people of God are indeed called the servant. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:07.000 Some people say this is about Isaiah, because sometimes in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah is actually called the servant. 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:13.000 And then of course, Christians for centuries have said, no, this is about the Messiah. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:25.000 And so the reason that some people pick Israel or Isaiah is to get around the predictive power, the prophetic power of this passage. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:34.000 Because when you read it, you can't help but see the parallels between the Gospels and what's happening here in Isaiah 53 that was written 700 years before Jesus was born. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:41.000 But let me just show you briefly. It can't be collective and it can't be Isaiah. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:48.000 If you look down at verse one, everybody agrees in 53 one that Isaiah is speaking here. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:53.000 Who has believed what they heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 00:05:53.000 --> 00:06:01.000 This is a prophet speaking. And he's talking about the revelation that God is speaking about the servant here at the end of 52. 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:08.000 And the pronoun that Isaiah used, we're just going to do a little grammar for just 10 seconds and we'll be done with grammar. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:15.000 The pronoun that Isaiah uses is the first person plural throughout the whole passage. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:18.000 So he says, who has believed what they heard from us? 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:25.000 Or he says he has borne our infirmities. He has borne our sorrows, our trespasses. 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:31.000 Meaning he, Isaiah, is speaking for the collective. He's speaking for Israel. He's speaking for the whole. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:36.000 And he's talking about a hymn the whole time. He has borne our transgressions. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:42.000 He's the masculine. It's first person singular. It's third person singular. It's he. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:48.000 So it's a collective group talking about a singular person who is masculine, who is male. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:55.000 It has to be about the Messiah. It has to be about somebody in the future, a man that is to come. 00:06:55.000 --> 00:07:06.000 And that's why in Acts chapter 8, the Ethiopian eunuch is traveling down from Jerusalem back to Ethiopia. 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:13.000 And Philip comes upon his carriage and the Ethiopian eunuch is reading Isaiah 53. 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:18.000 And he turns to Philip and says, and Philip asks him, do you understand what you're reading? 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.000 He says, I don't. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:27.000 And it says that Philip then told him the story of Jesus Christ and all the things that had happened in Jerusalem. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:33.000 And the Ethiopian eunuch turns to Philip and says, there's water over there. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:37.000 Baptize me. Baptize me. What are we waiting for? Baptize me right now. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:42.000 I don't need to. You don't have to convince me anymore. And why? Why does he want to be baptized so immediately? 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:49.000 And it's because he read Isaiah 53 and then he heard the story of Jesus Christ and he saw the predictive power of this prophecy 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:53.000 that was written 700 years before Jesus was ever born. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:08:01.000 And so he concluded, it's very reasonable to believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:07.000 It's very reasonable. It's very rational based on reading Isaiah 53. 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:15.000 It means that Jesus is the Messiah and the Messiah is Jesus and it's all true. It's all true. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:19.000 Okay, so that's the first thing. He's the reasonable servant. 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000 Okay, so now let's dive into the stanzas. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:27.000 Secondly, he's the unexpected servant. 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:36.000 Now, if you look with me at 52 verse 13, he says, God speaks and says, 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:40.000 Behold, my servant shall act wisely. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.000 There's a footnote there and if you just look at the footnote, it says, or prosper. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.000 This is a Hebrew euphemism. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Literally it means, Behold, my servant shall succeed. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 He shall prosper. He shall win. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:02.000 The servant will win. He can't be stopped when we talked about that in the first week. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:08.000 And then it goes on, he shall be high and lifted up. He shall be exalted. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:13.000 The servant will win. He won't fail at his task. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:20.000 And then you'll see in verse 14, as many were astonished at you and there's a dash. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:24.000 You see the dash? If you look down at the Bible, there's a dash. 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:28.000 And that means that the thought of verse 14 continues. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:32.000 The thought, sorry, verse 13 continues in verse 15. 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:35.000 So my servant shall be exalted. He shall succeed. He shall prosper. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:40.000 He can't be stopped. And then verse 15, so shall he sprinkle many nations. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:45.000 Sprinkle, that's a term from Leviticus 4, which means to cleanse the temple. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:50.000 He shall cleanse many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of him. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:55.000 In other words, they won't know what hit him. That which has not been told of them, they now will see. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:01.000 The servant will be exalted. He can't be stopped. He's going to be victorious. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:06.000 And when he comes, even kings will have to shut their mouths because they'll never could have guessed. 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:11.000 They never could have expected this servant, this king, who this man is. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:15.000 Why? How? What does that mean? 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000 And that's why the dashes are there. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:24.000 The dashes in the middle of this passage about the exaltation of a king to come. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:29.000 There is a parenthetical comment, an interruption. 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:31.000 And what does the interruption say? 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:36.000 How will he be so unexpected this king? And this is what it says. 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:44.000 His appearance was so marred beyond human likeness. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:51.000 And his form beyond that of the children of mankind. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:56.000 How, why will all the kings of the earth shut their mouth? 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:04.000 Marvel totally not expect who's about to come, the servant that's being talked about here. 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:13.000 And it's because when this king comes, he will be so disfigured that he will not look human. 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:19.000 He will become so marred that he will be subhuman. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:24.000 It's a king that no one could have expected. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:32.000 I saw a photo this week from, once again I've seen this photo before and probably you have too, if you see it. 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:45.000 It's a picture from April the 4th, 1945, when the American forces went into Buchenwald outside of Weimar and liberated the concentration camp there. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:52.000 And these American troops turned a corner and outside of a labor building, 00:11:52.000 --> 00:12:00.000 there was a pile seven feet high of bodies just stacked one upon each other like Legos. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:11.000 And when you look at the picture, they are so malnourished and thin and skinny that you can't tell which one of them, which ones are children and which ones are adults. 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.000 They're so small, all of them. 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:19.000 And when you look at the picture, it makes you nauseous, it makes you sick. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:24.000 And in verse 14, when it says, as many were astonished at you, 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:31.000 before it talks about the servant who would become subhuman, who would be so marred that he would look less than human, 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:42.000 that little word astonished there is a verb that literally means shattered or bent over to vomit. 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:50.000 Sometimes it's also used for what happens to a ruined city, a city gets shattered, ruined. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:59.000 So what it's saying here is that when you see him, when all the kings of the earth see him, they will be bent over and sick and nauseous, 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:06.000 because the king of the world has come and become so marred that he looks like he's less than human. 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:17.000 Now, what does that mean? Well, the word marred here is the term that in your Bible most of the time is translated as blemished. 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:23.000 So if you read the first five books of the Old Testament, all the time when they're talking about the law, 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:30.000 they're saying you cannot bring a blemished lamb to the slaughter, to sacrifice. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000 The lamb cannot be blemished, right? 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:42.000 And it's taking that same term. God would not accept a blemished lamb to come into his altar in the time of the Old Testament in the tour of the first five books. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:47.000 But here it's saying the servant will be marred. It's the exact same word. He will be blemished. 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:54.000 He will be like the sheep that weren't even allowed to go to the slaughter for the sacrifice to God. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:14:00.000 And why does he use this term? Well, I think he does because at the end of our passage in 53.6, 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:11.000 it says that the servant will come for us. We who were like sheep, lambs, gone astray, rebel lambs. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:19.000 Now, I'm not a shepherd. I've never been a shepherd. Although I did spend a summer right next to a bunch of sheep. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 That's for another time, that's for you. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:31.000 But shepherds tell me when I talk to shepherds that sheep are very dumb animals. 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:35.000 And some of you probably have worked with sheep before. Sheep are really dumb animals. 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:44.000 And what they do is that when they're in their group, they veer off and they go their own way, completely isolated. 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:51.000 And that's why Jesus in the Gospels uses sheep as a metaphor for the church so many times with the people. 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:54.000 They're dumb, they go their own way, they veer off on their own. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:01.000 And the only thing that the shepherd can do is go after them and save them because they're totally helpless unless the shepherd come and get them. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:08.000 They'll never come back. The sheep will not return to the herd without the shepherd actually going out and getting them. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:13.000 And at the end of this passage, it says we, all of us, are like sheep gone astray. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:19.000 We're like dumb sheep, if you will, that have ventured away from the way, the path that God has set out for us. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:31.000 And here it's saying that Jesus has to become like the blemish, the marred sheep in Israel, the sheep that had strayed the most away. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:35.000 But to become something less than human even. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:41.000 And what that means is what we're looking at here is the principle of substitution. 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:50.000 The king became the marred lamb. Not even a good one. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:16:04.000 This king did not come in the weight of glory like other kings would, but wearing the weight of our blemishes and it drove him all the way to being something less than human at the cross. 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:12.000 And he was marred beyond human likeness. He was marred so I wouldn't have to be. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:18.000 He was marred so you wouldn't have to be. And that means he's our substitute. 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:28.000 And so Isaiah at the beginning of the next stanza just to close the second point out, he says, who has believed what they have heard from us? 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:30.000 Who has believed what they had heard from us? 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.000 And I think that they've rendered this in English to be poetic. It's kind of tricky. 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:39.000 In other words, who would have ever expected to get a prophecy like this? 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:42.000 That's what he's saying. You look at the very next line. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:48.000 To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? The arm of the Lord there means the power of God. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:54.000 To whom in all of history has the power of God ever been revealed like this? 00:16:54.000 --> 00:17:01.000 The King of all the world, the one who upholds the cosmos by the word of his power, become marred like a blemish sheep. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:08.000 So disfigured at the cross that we have to turn our eyes away. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:14.000 Who would have expected it? And so he's the unexpected servant. 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:20.000 All right, third of four. He's also the ordinary servant. 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:27.000 Now what we've been talking about, Jesus Christ being marred or blemished, 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:34.000 is what theologians have traditionally called an aspect of Christ's humiliation. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:41.000 That Jesus throughout his life was humiliated. 00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:44.000 And there are many aspects to that humiliation. 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:47.000 Being marred or blemished is one aspect. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:51.000 But there's another aspect here in the first stanza in 53, 1-3. 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:54.000 And you see it right at the beginning of verse 2. 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:59.000 For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:05.000 He had no former majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:07.000 Now this metaphor, this is a metaphor here. 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:12.000 He grew up out of the dry ground like a young plant. The New Testament repeats it. 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:17.000 What this is saying here is that he was ordinary. 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:22.000 He grew up, he was a fledgling just like you and I. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:33.000 He was sinless, but he was a baby that cried and he had to be fed and changed. 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:39.000 And as he grew up, his mother taught him how to read. 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:45.000 He's not like a computer who plugs into the divine mind and downloads omniscience. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:50.000 Jesus was not omniscient while he walked this earth. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.000 He clearly doesn't know everything in the gospels. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:00.000 He stood beside his father's workbench and learned to use the tools of carpentry. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:07.000 He probably went out with his dad and fixed houses that needed repairing as a carpenter. 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:13.000 Nobody noticed him. He had no beauty or form that anybody would notice. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:19.000 He wasn't a pretty person. He wasn't gorgeous. He didn't stand out in a crowd. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:27.000 And the gospels basically show up 29 years into his life after just the very beginning. 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:30.000 And for 29 years, he wasn't noticed. 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:37.000 And the reason we know that is because in Mark 3 and Luke 5, when he goes to his hometown 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:43.000 and he reads the scroll of Isaiah and says, I am the anointed one that Isaiah is talking about, 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:47.000 everybody's like, that's Joseph's boy. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:49.000 He lived down the street from me. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:54.000 Like, there's no way. I mean, he's normal. He's ordinary. 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:57.000 He's a kid I knew when he was growing up. 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:02.000 This is why Bill Lane, a commentator in Mark says this in Mark 3, 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:09.000 the eyes of the people could not penetrate in this moment the veil of his ordinariness. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:15.000 They couldn't penetrate the veil of how ordinary he was to see the divine. 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:21.000 This is why Nathaniel, at the beginning of the gospel, when they say, come and follow Jesus, 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:24.000 we found the Messiah, he said, and they say, where is he from? 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:29.000 And they tell him, he's from Nazareth. He says, there's no way the Messiah is from Nazareth. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:31.000 Nazareth is a terrible place to live. 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:34.000 Like, it's one of the worst villages in the whole of Judea. 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:37.000 Like, there's no way the Messiah, he was ordinary. 00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:39.000 He was lower class. 00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:43.000 His family actually was among the poorest substratta. 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:49.000 We know that because when it comes time to make the sacrifice after she gives birth, 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:56.000 she offers a pigeon, which was the lowest level of sacrifice you could offer for the lowest level of income. 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:01.000 Verse 3, it goes on, he was despised and rejected by men. 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:11.000 Now, this word despised actually, it literally means to make light of, or to mock, to make fun of. 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:17.000 So it's saying that while he was on this earth, he was often made light of. 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:20.000 He wasn't taken seriously. 00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:27.000 And so for that reason, he was just rejected, thrown out by many. 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:35.000 And Isaiah says, in Isaiah 53.1, this is the revelation of God himself. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:41.000 This is the word of God, the very speech of God set forth. 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:45.000 And he was incredibly ordinary. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:55.000 It could be very important for some of us tonight here to know that Jesus Christ, the God-men who walked this earth, was ordinary. 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.000 And that he wasn't a pretty person. 00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:01.000 He wasn't gorgeous. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:04.000 And most people aren't gorgeous. 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:06.000 And he wasn't impressive. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:11.000 He wouldn't have done well at many of the job interviews we go to. 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:14.000 He wouldn't have had all the marketable skills. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:18.000 He didn't have a formal education. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:27.000 He wasn't a successful person by any sense of human standards. 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:29.000 And most people aren't. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:30.000 Most people aren't. 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:31.000 He was ordinary. 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:39.000 But there's also, I think, an ordinariness about Christianity itself that follows on from Jesus' life. 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:46.000 When you first become a Christian, you want change fast. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.000 You want to be changed quickly. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:57.000 And you want the sins that are indwelling in your heart and the things that you know are so messed up about you to go away as fast as possible. 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:05.000 And the picture that we actually get from the New Testament is that it doesn't work like that most of the time. 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:10.000 Now some of you are older than me. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:13.000 Some of you, I can see. 00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:15.000 Not many, but some. 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:23.000 And, you know, I'm not that old, but as I get, as the seasons go by in my life, the few that have, 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:41.000 I do know that true change comes about through ordinary people reading the Bible in ordinary ways day in and day out and letting it speak through you from the inside out. 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:48.000 Ordinarily learning wisdom by just getting into the text prayerfully. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:58.000 And that's the ordinariness of the Christian life, and it follows from the ordinariness of its Savior, the lowliness of its Savior. 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:00.000 Change just doesn't happen fast. 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:02.000 It's a process. 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:17.000 And that's why Paul uses the metaphor of the athlete, the methodical athlete, who disciplines himself day in day out, week in week out, to finally get the prize. 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:20.000 Okay, so that's third and fourth and finally. 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:28.000 In the third stanza, we see a voluntary servant. 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:37.000 Now, all of these songs are about the servant, and the servant is an evad, servant, a slave. 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:49.000 And this, in Philippians chapter two, I think Paul is directly working, I've become convinced as I read these, with the servant songs in Philippians two, when he says, 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:53.000 I want all of you, the church, to take on the mind of God. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:25:06.000 And so what he does is he invites you into an extraordinary moment when he says, I'm going to take you up into the very mind of the Son of God and tell you what Jesus, the Son of God, before he became incarnate, was thinking. 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:17.000 And this is what Jesus was thinking before he became the Son of God, oh, sorry, this is what the Son of God was thinking before he became incarnate, Jesus Christ. 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:33.000 He did not account equality with God, something to be held onto, but he made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, a doula, a slave even, taking on the form of a slave. 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:47.000 And what that means, what Paul is telling us there, is he's thinking back about the servant songs, telling us, when you read about the servant here, you're reading about a servant that became a slave, very God himself, voluntarily. 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:55.000 It was his mind, it was his idea, it was his decision to take on the form of a slave. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:08.000 He did it voluntarily, and so what we're reading about in the climax of this servant song that we're about to look at just for two, three minutes, is it's voluntary love. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:17.000 So just listen to the voluntary, this love that you're about to hear is entirely voluntary on the part of God. 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:37.000 Surely he has borne our griefs, surely he's carried our sorrows, but we esteemed him, we treated him as stricken, smitten by God, cursed, that's what that means, afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities, 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:43.000 upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, by his stripes we are healed. 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:53.000 The principle in all of that is, may for him, him for me, may for him, him for me. 00:26:53.000 --> 00:27:03.000 Donald MacLeod talks about a story from a missionary that he heard in several of his books, Donald MacLeod professor at, emeritus professor at ETS, 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:13.000 in several of his books where he hears of a missionary encounter with a man in Sub-Saharan Africa that knew very little English, but had encountered the gospel, 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:21.000 and when he first hears the gospel he simply responds and says this, he die, me no die. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:39.000 He die, me no die, him for me, him for me, me on him, you see he has borne our griefs, our sorrows, our inequities, our trespasses, he was wounded for us, him for us. 00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:48.000 He's the brother that went out into the far country to bring back his prodigal, his prodigal brothers and sisters. 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:58.000 He's the shepherd who goes after the dumb sheep that stray from the path, even when he has the wealth of 99 others. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:07.000 And so what we're reading about here, and I can only skim it for just a minute, is an ultimate voluntariness. 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:13.000 This is what he chose. This is what God chose to do for us. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:30.000 And the climax is that he was pierced by nails, the physical pain, and that he was crushed for our inequities, which is a spiritual verb, meaning he was forsaken. 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:40.000 He went under ultimate pain, being forsaken by his father, being ultimately abandoned, and that's voluntary love. 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:46.000 He wanted to do it. 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:52.000 I was in seminary and one of my professors was lecturing. I've told this once before here. 00:28:52.000 --> 00:29:02.000 And he stopped the class and he just said, guys, why does God love us? 00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:15.000 And the first super eager person that wanted to be impressive raised their hand and said, because of the impeccability of the divine decree. 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:23.000 And he said, no, maybe, but no. 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:29.000 The only answer is, I don't know. He loves us because he loves us. 00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:38.000 And this is the ultimate climax, the presentation of the voluntary love of God himself. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:44.000 Become something less than human, marred for us, for you. 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:49.000 And now the only question we can conclude with is why did he do it? 00:29:49.000 --> 00:29:55.000 And just to dip into the next passage next week, which Neil's supposed to preach from, I don't know if he even knows that. 00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:00.000 I'm telling him right now. Verse 11. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.000 Two weeks, sorry, two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:08.000 Verse 11. 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:13.000 Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:18.000 Out of what that's talking about is the cross. 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:26.000 The moment of the cross when he's being ultimately abandoned by his father, forsaken by his friends, marred in a way that we couldn't look at him. 00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:28.000 It made us nauseous. 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:41.000 Out of the anguish, the anguish of his soul being forsaken, he looked up and he saw and he was satisfied. 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:52.000 Do you know what he looked at? Do you know what he saw and was satisfied with in that moment of being ultimately forsaken by his father, crushed for our iniquities? 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:55.000 It was you. It was you. 00:30:55.000 --> 00:31:02.000 He was being crushed. He was being abandoned by his father and he looked up and he was satisfied even in that moment. 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:09.000 Because he was thinking about you. He knew you. Paul teaches that he knew you on the cross. 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:18.000 And the New Testament says it like this, for the joy that was set before him, the joy set before him, he despised the shame. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:28.000 He endured the pain of the cross and that joy, the writer in Hebrews makes clear, was his bride, you. 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:35.000 And it was so that he could give you verse five, Shalom, peace. Peace. 00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.000 He was marred so you wouldn't have to be. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:51.000 Do you know that, do you know, do you know that you were his joy when he was forsaken by his father at the cross? 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:55.000 And do you live in the light of that fact? 00:31:55.000 --> 00:32:08.000 Are you conscious of the love of Christ, the voluntary love of the Son of God who upholds the world by the word of his power, crushed for you when you wake up and you live your life day to day? 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:16.000 Is it a love that you're aware of, that you can taste? 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:30.000 Do you know that the servant king who knew you at the cross was only satisfied in his forsakenness because he wanted you? 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:32.000 What's prayer? 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:39.000 Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the prophecy of Isaiah 53 and its beauty. 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:49.000 And we ask that you would make it true for us, that you would make us believe it, that you would give us the eyes to see the love, to respond to the love of Christ, volunteered for us. 00:32:49.000 --> 00:33:13.000 And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.