Do you ever ask yourself: is it all going to be ok?
As you look at the world around us: is it all going to be ok?
Perhaps it’s the endless list of crises on the news that concern you: the cost of living crisis, the Ukraine crisis, the Climate crisis, the Covid crisis. Pick your crisis, there’s a lot to be worried about.
Maybe it’s not the world out there that’s got you stressed – perhaps it’s the Christian world. As you hear about scandal after scandal in the Christian church, or the latest issue dividing those committed to the historic understanding of Christianity from those who want to move on, or just the pedestrian mess of our own congregation.
It may even be closer to home. As you look at your own life, your own past, your own family, and your own struggles, do you often ask the question: is it all going to be ok?
I’ve been reflecting on some passages in Isaiah and I want to share with you Isaiah’s answer to ‘is it all going to be ok?’
In the heart of Isaiah’s book are four passages that have become known as the servant songs (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-19; 52:13-53:12).
They sing of God’s servant, the one God delights in (42:1), and describe what this servant will come to do.
Establishing Justice
The first and second songs describe a Spirit-filled ruler who will bring forth justice to the nations. Read the first song and you won’t miss the repetition: ‘he will bring forth justice’ (42:2), ‘he will faithfully bring forth justice’ (42:3), ‘till he has established justice’(42:4).
The impulse for justice is very instinctive to us isn’t it? We long for justice, don’t we? Particularly when we see the many miscarriages of justice in our world today.
It’s not just Christians that think that. Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said:
‘It is our capacity to comprehend injustice, and our willingness to challenge it, that makes us human. Using reason, ethics, logic and science, we work out what’s wrong and protest to stop it… We would not be human without our instinct and drive to protest against things we disagree with. It is a key defining element of our humanity.’
It is certainly one of our culture’s preoccupations today: Gender justice, racial justice, climate justice, we long for things to be right and to be fair.
And yet we have shown throughout history that we are not very good at enacting it. In fact, we often contribute to the problem.
Peter Tatchell might say it is our sense of justice that makes us human, but you could make an equally compelling argument to say that it is our propensity towards injustice that defines humanity.
You’ll feel that even more keenly as you read the earlier chapters in Isaiah where we see how Israel’s idolatry has led to the breakdown of justice.
Remove God and you throw away the humanising justice that comes with him. You chuck the idea that all people bear the image of God and are worthy of protection, of care, and are of equal value. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. You chuck the idea that children born with disabilities have a right to life the same as those without. You chuck the idea that the powerful have a duty to use their power to serve the weak.
That’s bad for everyone, but it is particularly bad for women.
That’s what we’re seeing in our society: when God’s rule is rejected, the humanising justice that comes with that is slowly chipped away.
Until babies killed in the womb can be called good, until the desires of men are considered more important than vulnerable women, until the poor are considered a resource to be exploited rather than needing protection.
But the servant will establish justice.
The second song emphasises something else – that the servant will bring God’s wandering people back to him. Like a doctor, come for the sick. Like a loving mother, come for the wayward child; God sends the servant to bring people back to God.
This servant’s task is one of reconciliation – bringing what is lost back home.
Now you might be thinking, ok, so that’s a second job he’s got – the first is to establish justice, and the second is to bring people back to God.
But they’re really part of the same task.
Because the biggest injustice there is in the world today is this – and it will surprise us – it’s not making headlines, it’s not something that we stay awake at night worrying about or think of as being hugely unfair – it’s this: that God isn’t worshiped.
Jesus is so glorious, so wonderful, so wise, so beautiful, so powerful, so generous, so holy, so worthy that it is a crime that the whole world isn’t enjoying him! Delighting in his great steadfast love and kindness towards us! It’s such an injustice that if we don’t, the creation will – the stones would be shouting in worship if we don’t. Creation is groaning waiting for when everyone does.
And so this servant’s task of establishing justice and bringing God’s wayward people back to him are the same task.
A Rescue Mission
Then the forth song takes us on an unexpected twist for one who is supposed to establish justice and carry out a rescue mission.
In a minor key, the singer tells us his appearance was so marred (52:14)… and then that he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him (53:2).
We learn that he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised (53:3).
This doesn’t sound much like the ruler who will establish justice and launch a rescue mission, does it? So how will he do it?
The answer comes in repeated form so that even the dimmest of wits can understand: He has borne our grief,
Carried our sorrows (53:3)
He was pierced for our transgressions
Crushed for our iniquities (53:5)
That list covers all that mars our lives – doesn’t it? It’s quite exhaustive:
- Our griefs. That speaks of the loss that we all experience, whether it be through bereavement, or relationship breakdown, or something else.
- Our sorrows. The sadness that keep us up at night, the ill health that exhausts us.
- Our transgressions. The things we’ve done that have crossed a line, done intentionally or not that cause a weight of guilt to sit heavily on us.
- Our iniquities – that inner sense that we’re just not right. That our very will, wants and desires are broken.
The servant, how God delights in and loves, comes to establish justice and bring people back to God in the most unthinkable way: by becoming the sacrifice. Readers in Isaiah’s time would have been familiar with the language of sacrifice – of an animal dying in the place for our sin.
But unlike the previous sacrifices, the servant is so very like us: nothing particularly outstanding about his appearance, born like the rest of us… And yet hasn’t rebelled like us.
Doesn’t have the weight of guilt that we have
Hasn’t crossed the lines that we crossed;
Hasn’t the iniquity that we bear.
The third song reminds us of this – ‘the Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward.’ (50:5) Or 53:9 ‘And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.’
We’ve got a profile of the servant, but would we recognise him, when he stepped into history?
That’s the question that was asked one day in the first century, on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, as Philip met an Ethiopian man, a civil servant in Queen Candace’s government – he was in charge of the treasury. He was reading the prophet Isaiah, this very section of scripture, and he asked Philip ‘About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself, or about someone else?’ And as it is recorded in Acts, Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.
I’m not sure what that description of Jesus’ life looked like. But with the privilege of having the four gospel accounts in the New Testament we can summarise something like this:
His birth – Matthew 1 – Jesus, who was born to Mary.
Matthew also tells us (13:55) He wasn’t considered extra special just by looking at him. About whom Pontius Pilate (recorded in John 18:38) concluded: ‘I find no guilt in him’.
Who was flogged, mocked, tortured, made to carry his own cross to the place called The Place of the Skull where he was crucified.
There was a man who should have been there, called Barabbas.
Whose sins were many, whose iniquities were known, and who went free because Jesus bore his griefs, Jesus carried his sorrows, Jesus was pierced for his transgressions, Jesus was crushed for his iniquities.
Jesus who cried out on the cross: ‘It is finished’
Whose died amongst guilty men, and as John records in 19:38-39 laid in a grave by two rich men. Whose death didn’t just cover the sins of Barabbas.
But all who put their trust in Him.
The sin that haunts your past, and the sin that steals your joy in the present: Jesus willingly carries that – he takes it on himself – you bear it no more.
Jesus at the cross of calvary says ‘her sin belongs to me now.’
Your past, your mistakes, your brokenness – the things you’ve done, the things that have been done to you – Jesus says they’re not yours any more, they are mine.
So – is it going to be ok?
Yes. Not because we’ll sort it all out, but because of the servant of the songs – Jesus – died for us, and will return to establish justice in all the earth.
The natural reaction to this amazing news comes straight after the forth song: ‘Sing! Break forth into singing and cry aloud’.
