Who is the servant? The hub on which the wheel of the Lord’s
saving activity turns in this passage is a nameless, chosen servant (v. 1).
Who is it? Is “the servant” a designation for a messianic individual
or group? Does it apply to the prophet Isaiah himself? Could this servant
simply be an imaginative reflection on what it means to be the chosen and
called people of God? The answer is “yes.”
Isaiah 41:8 initiates repeated addresses that contain the key
words, “servant” and “chosen” (41:9; 43:10; 44:1, 2; 45:4).
The clear designation for the “chosen one” who is “God’s
servant” in many of these passages is simply the people of God. Some
passages, like Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12, have obvious messianic
implications, but the overall tenor of the servant references do not necessitate
that we limit the focus to a single figure. Isaiah’s prophecy reflects
upon the nature and activity of all whom God has called or chosen as His people.
This, of course, includes the prophetic ministry of Isaiah and the messianic
life of Jesus but is not limited to them. As Paul D. Hanson writes in Isaiah
40-66 in the Interpretation series (John Knox Press), “The original readers
also found more than a biographical sketch of a particular person or group.
We suspect that they also found in the description of the Servant’s vocation
an invitation to reflect on the responsibility of all those who acknowledge
God’s sovereignty and recognize the dependence of all creation on God’s
order of justice” (p. 41).
What then is the nature and activity of all who acknowledge
God’s sovereignty and answer His call? Our passage defines the servant’s
nature as Spirit-driven: “I will put my Spirit on him” (42:1). The
servant’s identity and power trace back to the gift of God’s Spirit.
Isaiah continues by describing the servant in images of compassion and gentleness
(42:2-3). The servant’s ministry will not push aside the weak or rally
the masses on its way to power. Rather, as we will learn in Isaiah 53, the
servant will suffer and bear the brokenness of the nations as the instrument
of God’s saving activity. Thus the servant’s nature is compassion
embodied. Another description Isaiah uses to talk about the nature of the
servant is the word “faithful.” The servant is diligent in the activity
to which God has called, neither faltering nor becoming discouraged in God’s
assignment (42:3-4).
What is that assignment? The activity to which God calls His
servant has to do with justice, deliverance, and covenant. The servant is
an instrument for bringing and establishing justice on the earth (42:1, 3-4).
The right of God’s way or law is to become the way of the nations through
God’s servant. God also springs newness into existence through His servant.
Blind eyes are opened, prisoners set free, and captives released from their
dungeons and darkness through the activity of God in His servant (42:7). Freedom
and deliverance are to be trademarks of God’s servant being present;
so is restoration. Through His servant, God is entering into covenant with
the nations (42:6). Outsiders are becoming insiders. Those far away are being
brought near. The fulfillment of the promise to Abraham is taking shape, as
all people on earth are being blessed through the servant of God. This is
the nature and activity God speaks for His people, for all who hear His call
and discharge the faithful witness assigned to “the servant.”
Privilege without responsibility—the adolescent struggle
to have one without the other—colors our culture. We desire luxury without
work or wisdom, so we charge ourselves into bankruptcy. We seek pleasure without
first finding purpose, only to lose ourselves in dungeons of artificial stimuli.
This careful avoidance of responsibility displays itself in our societal structures
as well. We create institutions to insulate us from the brokenness of the
world around us. Children are suffering abuse, so we invent the Department
of Human Services. The poor are begging on our street corners, so we create
the welfare system. We can have the privilege of compassion without the responsibility
of actually interacting with hurting people.
The danger is that this immature and short-sighted approach
has a tendency to creep into the living patterns of the people of God. We
may call it the rescue mission, but it looks an awful lot like a welfare system
and can function in the same insulating kind of way. We say we believe Jesus
is the hope of the world, but we live day-to-day as if we are the end all
of God’s saving purpose. Instead of witnesses for Christ, we are content
to privatize the blessings of our faith. This is a fundamental violation of
what it means to be God’s people. We shouldn’t be surprised the
Lord isn’t willing to allow us to drift through life in this misguided
manner.
Instead, the Lord defines throughout Scripture what it means
to be chosen as His people. Isaiah 42:1-9 is an example of some of His best
work. Here we encounter a picture of responsibility that actively witnesses
to the world the saving intent of God’s heart. The key words are “servant,”
“Spirit,” “faithful,” “justice,” “covenant,”
and “free,” and they outline the nature of our calling as the people
of God. We are to be the hope agents through which God accomplishes His saving
purpose among the nations. Jesus is the one who has filled full this calling,
but He has not exempted us from it. We who have received the hope of God (chosen)
and bound ourselves to the person of God (servant) are now to become the instruments
of God by which He launches His saving activity into the nations. We are to
be agents of God’s hope.
Notice the key word, “be.” Isaiah 42 is not a divine
pep rally, designed to stir in us a determination to try harder and play the
Christian game better. The text invites us into the saving activity of God,
where the Lord makes us the servant in whom He delights. Notice the emphasis
on God’s shaping of the servant’s identity in the text, “I
will put my Spirit on him” (42:1); “I will keep you and will make
you to be a covenant for the people” (42:6). God’s servant looks
like an agent of hope. This is how God shapes those He chooses. Our response
is to be pliable in the Lord’s hands so our contours match His calling.
Our task is to embrace the responsibility, the pattern, and the life lived
out before us in Jesus and to allow God to shape it in us. Willful resistance,
fearful hesitation, or a negligent “passing of the buck” are the
threats to the process we must avoid if we are to answer the call. When we
do, we might just find Jesus’ words to be true, “Anyone who has
faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things
than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).
(For the full manuscript of this sermon
go to www.preachersmagazine.org and click on “Sermons”)
The text creates a vision of God at work in creation and history.
Justice is being established as God’s way; it is brought to the nations.
Freedom is becoming reality as light splits the darkness, blind eyes are opened,
and prisoners set free. Outsiders are suddenly found to be insiders as God
creates covenant for the Gentiles. God is making possible an amazing newness
on the horizon, and even in the speaking of it, it is springing into being.
Hope for a new day flows from this text.
As we read the text we are invited to participate in that hope.
We look with eager expectation for the servant of God through whom the Lord
will accomplish His salvation. We hunger and thirst for this Spirit-anointed
and empowered servant’s coming. We long for His faithful persistence
in establishing justice. We await the opportunity of covenant with God that
we will find in this chosen one. We reach for God’s newness in Jesus.
When we do, we find that we aren’t reading the passage
anymore. We are living it. We have been drawn into the servant song until
it has become our song. We are no longer just a seeker after hope. We have
become an agent of hope as well.
Isaiah 42:1-9 functions in this way. Our task as the preacher or communicator
of this text is to recreate that function in the sermon. We are to draw our
hearers into God’s salvation dream as it is brought to fulfillment in
Jesus, until we surprisingly find ourselves singing the song of God’s
servant to the world.
