“Here Is My Servant!” (Part 2 of 4)

• The reason was he didn’t want to precipitate a crisis. He was moving according to a calendar. He had a plan in view and he didn’t want people to get the wrong end of the stick and hail him simply as a miracle worker because the real miracle that he was about to perform was the miracle of being a savior for sinners. And so he said he didn’t want anyone to tell them.
• And then listen to how Matthew explains this. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight. And what is he quoting? Isaiah chapter 42 verses 1 and following. So these servant songs which are written into real time history 6 or 700 years before Jesus causing the people who are reading them to say what in the world is this all about? Causing a reader to say how am I to understand this? when the story unfolds out through and into the New Testament and by the time
• uh the gospel writers are taking all their discoveries of Jesus and theologizing them. What they’re doing is they’re reading their Bibles, namely the Old Testament, they’re listening and looking at Jesus and then they’re saying to themselves, “Well, this is clearly that.” That’s what we have here. Now, in this servant song, we know three things. Number one, God speaks.
• Number two, the servant acts. And number three, the reader responds as is true always. But God is speaking, the servant is acting. And the listener is responding. I begin with God speaking because it is this which gives a foundation to the opening four verses. When you read these this introduction to the servant, you find yourself saying,”Well, who on whose authority are we to take this and in verse five, God speaks.” God speaks.
• This is what God Yahweh the Lord says. He who created the heavens and stretched them out. Now, I want you to notice three things under this heading. First of all, God’s personhood, his personhood or his identity, if you like. Look at verse eight where he where he introduces himself. I am the Lord. That is my name.
• I am the Lord. That is my name. Now for homework you can go back into Exodus chapter 3 and the encounter of Moses with the burning bush and you can read that whole chapter and it will be very very helpful to you. For now I’ve choose not to go there. God says I do not exist incognito. The idea that is created in our universe is something like this.
• This is what people hear on the television and the radio all the time. Um the story of religion is the story of a god who is hiding somewhere. And it is the story of men and women who are out looking for God. And so we have all these programs all the time that are always set up and couched in dramatic terms about how uh uh these people have discovered God somewhere as they went off on their adventure, whatever it might have been.