Servant Songs Part 1: War of the Gods

The servant songs in Isaiah tell the story of humanity’s need for a Saviour and God’s plan to send one.  In telling the story of the first servant in Isaiah 42, we find that just like the Israelites of Isaiah’s time we are in the position of facing up to the consequences of the choices we make in life.  We feel the weight of other peoples’ choices affecting our lives and often carry guilt and shame about how some of our choices have affected others.
There’s good news for people who don’t always make great choices.  God promised to send someone who would begin a transformation of humanity and would not stop until the work is finished.  A transformation that does away with sin and all it’s consequences so that only goodness remains.  We can count on this servant to be successful in His mission because God has proven time and time again that He’s not like the other things we often chase after in life.  He is all powerful, all knowing and completely reliable to do what He says He will do.

Servant Songs pt 1:
War of the gods

Isaiah 41:21 – 42:9
02/04/2017

 

Introduction – Why do people do dumb things?

• Freeway merging
  • zipper… yeah right! Why is it that the freeway chokes up and merge points then opens right out once we clear?
  • I’m trying to do the right thing and feeling pretty good about it, but then comes the guy who races up to get his bumper in front! Me closing him out is just as stupid as his aggression!
  • People can’t seem to see outside their “me-first” mentality.
• Basketball
  • refusing to pass does not get you more of the ball, it gets less for everyone!
  • everyone rushing to defend the guy with the ball means there’s four guys open to receive the ball!
  • everyone rushing to get the ball brings all the defenders to the ball too!
  • Why won’t some kids change their behaviour? It’s because they think what they’re doing will achieve their goals?  It’s dumb, but it’s the same ingrained stupidity that chokes up our freeways.  It’s in everyone!
• This is where things get more serious though. The stupidity of sin affects more than games of basketball and how long it takes to push through traffic at peak hour.  The same patterns are crippling lives and shattering relationships all over our world all day, every day.
• The same “me-first” mentality sits behind corruption and oppression all over the world. Bribery, slavery and theft in all their forms stem from the same stuff that we’ve been talking about.
• The same wrong-headed thinking about what will meet our desires sits behind every form of substance addiction, warped sexuality, materialism, hedonism, narcissism and most other ‘isms’ you can think of!
• An example:
  • I think most people are aware of the incredible damage that pornography does to people and especially to children and teens whose brains are still developing.
  • Regular exposure to pornography has been linked to riskier sexual behaviour, increased likelihood to pressure others for sex, greater openness toward being sexually unfaithful to a partner, increased performance anxiety and body image anxiety and so on.
  • One Australian study[1] reported 61 percent of males and 12 percent of females of those surveyed at a music festival had viewed pornography at least weekly.
  • 97% of boys who participated in an online survey had accessed pornography on the internet. Of these, 23% had tried to stop but could not.[2]
  • Porn is clearly bad for us. A lot of people hate the fact that they look at it but they still do it.  Why? It’s not because we are dumb, it’s because we are human.  All humans get caught up doing dumb things sometimes.
  • Some steal, others gossip, others hoard wealth or chase recognition… we do dumb stuff that in our more self-aware moments we wish we didn’t do!
  • The question isn’t “Why do people do dumb things?”, it’s “Why do we do dumb things?”
  • That’s why we need to hear this servant song from Isaiah 41&42.

²¹         “Present your case,” says the Lord. “Set forth your arguments,” says Jacob’s King.

Verse 21 sets the scene for what is happening in this passage:

Gods at war for the hearts of people.

• Why does it use two different phrases to tell us who is speaking? “the Lord” and “Jacob’s King”?
• “the Lord” is not a title like it reads in many of our English translations. It’s actually God’s personal name YHWH (Jehovah).  He’s using the name that the Israelites were commanded never to misuse so some took the precaution of never saying it aloud!  This is a name that was never given to anyone or anything else; and that’s important, because in this passage God is exposing the fact that they have in fact been putting other things in His place.  They’ve been treating other things as though they were God.  They’ve been relying on other ‘gods’ for guidance’.  They’ve been relying on other ‘gods’ to keep them safe.  They’ve been asking other ‘gods’ to make them prosperous and successful.  The one true God is now calling for a showdown to see if these false gods can really compare with Him.
• The second name is also really important: Jacob’s King. God reminds the nation of Israel who they come from and how they became a nation in the first place.The name “Jacob” means ‘deceiver’ or ‘supplanter’, and that’s the kind of man he was!  He manipulated his older brother Esau into giving up his inheritance.  He fooled his father Isaac into blessing him with the blessing the firstborn son should receive.  He fooled his father-in-law with an elaborate scheme to get the strongest flocks while his father-in-law kept the weakest offspring from his own herds. (Granted, his father-in-law was also a cheat!!)All this deception made people angry!  Both his brother Esau and his father-in-law Laban would have happily killed Jacob if God had not gotten him out of the mess he created.  Jacob’s desire to get ahead himself broke the bonds of family and nearly led to murder.  I imagine that all the time Jacob was probably justifying his actions to himself and feeling hard done by because of his circumstances and the actions of others.  (If I had only been delivered 5 mins earlier.  If Laban had not been so sneaky in how he treated me…)

  That seems to be human nature!  But it was heading to disaster.

  Yet God saves him and makes him into a great nation.  God blesses him not because he deserved it but because God had a plan to bless all humanity through him.  A plan that gets spoken about in the following verses.

  Just like Jacob, our actions demonstrate what matters most to us.  They show what we truly rely on for our security.  They show what we are prepared to do almost anything in order to get.  They show up the idols in our hearts that cause us to live in ways that do not honour our rightful King or treat people the way He tells us to.

• God calls the people of Isaiah’s time to account for how they’re doing that.

²²  “Bring in your idols to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come, ²³ tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods. Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.

This is the showdown – ask your idols to explain everything that’s been happening so you can understand what’s really going on and do something about it.  Or get them to predict what is going to happen next.  Then if things turn out as they predict, it will show that they really are gods.

In fact, get them just to do anything impressive to prove they have some power that can compare to mine!

To give you a bit of context here, archaeologists have discovered idols to more than 3,000 different gods who were worshipped in the broad area around Judah.  Some of the Israelites had taken up worshipping these idols in the hope of getting some kind of benefit from them.  These false gods had false priests and prophets who would make sacrifices, proclaim blessings and tell fortunes.

Both in the worship of idols and in the disobedience to God’s other commands, these Israelites were showing that they did not love and trust God with their whole hearts.  Other things had become more important to them.  This led to all kinds of evil behaviour.

What is God to do with that?

Time to zoom out!

Basketball and Freeway illustrations – how do we change bad behaviour?

• Freeway: How do we change that? Education?  Cameras at every merge point that can measure distance and issue automatic infringement notices? Will $20 each time get people’s attention or will it need to be more?
• Basketball: Talking it over hasn’t helped, old habits reassert. Solution – every time it happens the player gets subbed off!  They have to learn that selfish behaviour doesn’t actually deliver what they want!
• In both cases, an authority has to get involved to enforce boundaries of behaviour.

That’s what God was doing with the Israelites.  He’d warned them in advance – many times!

He’d been patient, sending many prophets, priests, judges and kings to guide, correct and rebuke the people when needed.

Still the hearts of the people inclined toward idolatry.

So the kingdom of Judah was experiencing troubling times.  The Assyrian Empire had threatened them and almost wiped them out, however God saved them in a spectacular fashion.  They should have seen how much they depended on God, yet they still looked for life elsewhere.

The Babylonian Empire was now in the ascendancy and God had announced that they would one day overthrow the kingdom of Judah and take away its rulers and treasures.  Unlike these false gods with their false prophets, God had the power to announce what He was going to do and actually follow through.

²⁴ But you are less than nothing and your works are utterly worthless; he who chooses you is detestable.

But His announcement didn’t end with judgement, it also included restoration.  (A bit like the basketball player being sent back on court!)

²⁵ “I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes— one from the rising sun who calls on my name. He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, as if he were a potter treading the clay.

After announcing judgement through the Babylonians in chapter 39, God then begins to speak of another king – Cyrus the Great.  It would be the unexpected overthrow of the Babylonian Empire by the Medes and Persians that opened the way for the Jews to return to their homeland after 70 years of exile.

God is speaking of things that would happen over 100 years in the future so that when they happened people would again see that there is only one God.  God wins the showdown.

²⁶ Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know, or beforehand, so we could say, ‘He was right’? No one told of this, no one foretold it, no one heard any words from you. ²⁷I was the first to tell Zion, ‘Look, here they are!’ I gave to Jerusalem a messenger of good tidings. ²⁸ I look but there is no one— no one among them to give counsel, no one to give answer when I ask them. ²⁹ See, they are all false! Their deeds amount to nothing; their images are but wind and confusion.

Here’s where it gets really exciting.  God’s not done yet.  He’s just proven again that He is the only true God.  He is beyond compare in both His power to do exactly as He says and His patience with people who keep doing dumb things.  People whose hearts keep chasing the wrong things.

Even His discipline is kindness.

But He’s not finished.

He announces an even more wonderful plan than the fact that He will bring the nation of Israel back to the Promised Land after disciplining them for their sin.

A plan that would finally stop the repeating cycle of sin and discipline.

A plan that will finally do away with selfish drivers and basketball players but more importantly, things like pornography, slavery, bullying, abuse, greed, corruption, slander & gossip, neglect – every way that people do dumb things to each other will finally be done away with.  Everything that has come before is the introduction, now the First Servant Song begins.  Listen:

¹“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. ² He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. ³ A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; ⁴ he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.”

The focus of the incomparable God now shifts roughly 700 years into the future where a special servant would begin the work of restoring justice to the whole world.

He will not give up until the job is done, even though it will require of him much more than any of us will ever understand.  Something we will reflect more upon in coming weeks.

He will not do it with forceful discipline, with controlling the behaviour of others – rather it is His own faithfulness that will bring about change.

⁵ This is what God the Lord says— he who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: ⁶ “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, ⁷ to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

God speaks to His chosen servant nearly 700 years before the servant started His mission so that everyone who reads this Scripture could now that Jesus’ ministry was no accident.  Jesus came to make a new covenant by which all people on earth could become children of God.  He came open the eyes of those who are blind to God’s existence, His character, His promises and His presence.  He came to free people bound up in sin – people like you and me who do some things that we shouldn’t do and fail to do all the things we should.  People whose hearts go after the wrong things sometimes.  People who trust the wrong things to guide, help, satisfy and protect us.  People who have idols in our hearts just like ancient peoples had idols of stone and wood.

That’s the beauty of this servant song.  It promises a Saviour to free us.  And we get the benefit of looking back in history to say “and He has come!”  And we get to be part of His spreading justice to the ends of the Earth.  We get to worship God without guilt or shame coming between us.  Our sins have been paid for by Jesus.  We get to treat other people the way God tells us to because we are no longer controlled by sinful desires that make us do dumb things.

⁸ “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. ⁹            See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”

 

The War has been Won!!

The war for the hearts of people has been won in Christ.  Only in Christ are our hearts made new so that we can worship God without being drawn away to idols.

 

The question for us today is twofold:

1. Have you received the gift of sight and freedom?
   You have reconciliation and eternal security.
2. Are you receiving the gift of sight and freedom?
   You have the power of God through His Spirit, Word and Church to help you live out your salvation. You can be free from the things that have bound you up, compromising your worship of God and your treatment of people.

[1]http://www.burnet.edu.au/news/435_burnet_studies_shed_light_on_sexual_behaviour_of_teenagers

[2] http://enough.org/stats-youth-and-porn

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