The Servant – From Forgotten to Remembered

 Isaiah 49:8-18

Thus says the LORD, "In a favorable time I have answered You, And in a day of salvation I have helped You; And I will keep You and give You for a covenant of the people, To restore the land, to make them inherit the desolate heritages; Saying to those who are bound, 'Go forth,' To those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.' Along the roads they will feed, And their pasture will be on all bare heights.  "They will not hunger or thirst, Neither will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them, And will guide them to springs of water.  "And I will make all My mountains a road, And My highways will be raised up.  "Behold, these shall come from afar; And lo, these will come from the north and from the west, And these from the land of Sinim."  Shout for joy, O heavens! And rejoice, O earth! Break forth into joyful shouting, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people, And will have compassion on His afflicted.

But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, And the Lord has forgotten me."  "Can a woman forget her nursing child, And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.  Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.  Your builders hurry; Your destroyers and devastators Will depart from you.  Lift up your eyes and look around; All of them gather together, they come to you. As I live," declares the LORD, "You shall surely put on all of them as jewels, and bind them on as a bride.

Sermon for Lenten Wednesday #4                                               03/06/24

The Servant of Isaiah
The Servant – From Forgotten to Remembered

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Our Servant text for tonight depicts the whole Gospel for us once again in the person of the Servant.  The servant is called "Zion" at one point in our text, and several Gospel allusions dot the prophecy before us tonight.  Tonight we will look at the Gospel, and our Servant of the Lord, under the theme, "The Servant – From Forgotten to Remembered".

The prophecy is filled with images we have come to associate with the Gospel, for example, "the day of salvation", the covenant given to us in the person of Jesus, the springs of water, Jesus called it "living water . . . a well of water springing up to eternal life", mountains being brought down to become a road and valleys being lifted up, being inscribed on the palm of His hands, and the bride.

All of these images are familiar in both the Old and the New Testaments.  Because the Gospel is the victory of Christ, which He has already won, it is easy to pass right by the pain and trouble of our Lord in getting there.  Our prophecy tonight reminds us of what it must have been like for the Servant of the Lord.  Isaiah gives voice to the Servant, But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, And the Lord has forgotten me."  We know that this speaks about Jesus because we remember His cry from the cross, "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?"

This is the sorrow that filled the heart of our Lord as He bore the wrath of God against our sins.  He was alone, and although He is God, the Son was utterly alone, abandoned by the Father and the Holy Spirit in His agonies on our behalf.  Surely He felt forgotten.  He must have known, somewhere deep inside of Him, that God would not abandon Him, and yet He had to bear our human nature, too.  He had to bear that sense of being alone, forsaken and forgotten, which, for one Person of the Trinity, forever One with the Father and the Holy Spirit, must have been exquisite torment.  And He was alone, for He was facing the wrath of God over sin, and enduring our penalty in our place.

But He was not forgotten, and He had not forgotten His Father.  When His task was complete, and He had finished all that He had come to do, He commended His soul into the Father's hands, and died a truly human death.  He died the same sort of death every man, woman, and child must one day face - the separation of body and soul.  And the resurrection proves that He was not forgotten, but remembered.  Isaiah describes it in this prophecy in these words, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you."

The questions are rhetorical.  Of course a woman who is nursing her child ordinarily cannot forget the child, and mothers are notorious for their patience and compassion when it comes to their children.  Sometimes they are too patient and compassionate.  Yet God says that even a mother is more likely to forget her child, sitting in her lap and nursing, than God the Father is to forget His Son, and He will be more compassionate than a tender-hearted mother.

Here, next, is where the prophecy becomes difficult.  The prophet swings from talking about the Servant to talking about the people of God, and he makes that change quickly and without any segue.   Sometimes the same words seem to be spoken about both the servant and the people of God.  That is because the Servant is the one-man representative of the entire people of God.  He is Israel, and He is Zion!  And yet, so are we.  When Isaiah writes, Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me, I cannot help but think of the marks of the nails in the palms of Christ.  We have truly been inscribed on the palms of His hands.  The walls which the prophet describes as standing continually before Him are the walls of Zion, the city of God, and the temple of God, which is to say, us.  Peter says it explicitly in His first epistle, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  We are that temple, and we are that Zion, and just as the Servant cannot be forgotten by the Father, so we too are indelibly etched on His hands and never to be forgotten.

The Servant, once forgotten and forsaken, is remembered, and we are remembered with Him.  It is that which makes this the day of salvation in which our Lord has helped us, as Isaiah spoke.  The Servant has made us the people who will neither hunger or thirst, as Jesus illustrated by His feeding of the five thousand on one occasion and the four thousand on another.  He makes all His mountains a road, as Isaiah describes it, because He does not bring things down to our level, but raises us up to His level by the gifts of grace and by bringing us at last into His glory in eternity.  Out of the bitterness of being forsaken and forgotten, He has brought us into the glorious light of His glory.

Shout for joy, O heavens! And rejoice, O earth! Break forth into joyful shouting, o mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people, and will have compassion on His afflicted.  The compassion of the Lord rescues us from the death we have earned by our sin.  He comforts us with the promise of resurrection from our graves and life everlasting.  We are the ones spoken of by Isaiah, Say to those who are bound, 'Go forth,' To those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.' Along the roads they will feed, And their pasture will be on all bare heights..  "They will not hunger or thirst, Neither will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them, And will guide them to springs of water."  The bondage is the bondage of the funeral attire.  It was familiar to the ancient Israelites because they would bind their dead with cloths before burial.  We read about those bindings in the account of the raising of Lazarus, and in the burial of Jesus.  The darkness from which the prophets says we are to be released is the darkness of the tomb.  The blessedness he then describes is the blessedness of paradise, beyond death and sorrow and all of the difficulties of this life, beyond hunger or thirst, beyond scorching heat so familiar to those who lived in the arid middle east..

The final note from this prophecy of Isaiah is where Isaiah writes,  As I live," declares the LORD, "You shall surely put on all of them as jewels, and bind them on as a bride." Here he is speaking of those who gather to worship Him.  The image is not identical to the one we are accustomed to, but it strongly suggests the New Testament image, patterned after much in the Old Testament, of the Church as the Bride of Christ.

Our theme is, "The Servant – From Forgotten to Remembered".  We have made the transition with the Servant.  He was forgotten so that we might be remembered.  Now He has remembered us, and the promise set before us tonight is that we will go forth in joy with Him for eternity.  All of our hope and confidence rests upon the Servant, spoken of in Isaiah, and made flesh in Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)