Sunday 1st March – The Servant’s Suffering

When I hear this word from Isaiah, I think of gum tree saplings at our place.

Gum tree saplings start out small. They have no great ‘majesty’ in an area full of high green eucalypts.

It is nice to see those little green shoots, but the problem is they pop up in places you really don’t want them to be – like near your back veranda or right near a wall or near your front door!

But they are tough. They are hard to get rid of if you need to get rid of them. They can grow up out of the driest ground in full glaring sun all day right through searing summer heart.

I have to admit, they are ‘despised and rejected’ as I move to paint them with poison and kerosene to kill them.  Some of them are held in ‘no account’.

Isaiah is speaking of the Servant that the Lord will send. The Servant is like a little sapling popping up in difficult conditions and unexpected places to speak to a nation of God’s judgement and hope for the nation and the world.

Israel itself was regarded by the Assyrians as an expendable sapling. In 722 BC as overran the northern kingdom of Israel.

Isaiah has foreseen this. To the disquiet of the nation, Isaiah had said that that this event was God’s judgement on the nation for their chasing after the wind, over-relying on their own smarts and plugging their ears to the promises of God to keep his relationship with them alive and well.

God says that this tragedy via the Assyrians was ‘the rod of my anger’ (Isaiah 10:5).

But God was not playing favourites or being unfairly harsh on his people.

God warns the Assyrians not to get too big for their britches either. The axe that the Assyrians were using to lay waist to the northern kingdom of Israel could easily be the axe that slips and chops their foot off if they got too far out of control (Isaiah 10:33-34).

The result of God’s judgement for both nations is barren dry desolate lifeless land: like the land after a wildfire or scared by a full-scale war or long and hot drought – beautiful canopy of the trees gone, no shade, no water, just dead stump after stump as far as you can see.

If you were having a coffee with a good friend and they asked you how you are going, where would you say you are moving at the moment – under a shady green leafed canopy well shaded and supplied, or out there in the rocky hot no-shade space struggling to grow anything?

I seem to move between both places. Some days it all seems shady and green and well supplied. Other days, all I can see are dead stumps around me and feel like that I’s one of them.

My flawed eyes and ears have this tendency to get both places wrong. I tend to take all the credit for the shady green days, as if my well supplied life is all my doing, and get mad at people and God for the dry stump days, as if others and God are heartless and out to get me.

Isaiah wants us to see something new.

The little sapling of which he speaks is tougher than it looks and can handle the most extreme conditions. It also turns up in places that we don’t expect new growth to come. The growing sapling he speaks of is not a tree but a new and different king.

This coming king is the Lord’s solution to our wayward wandering heart that renders us incapable of loving him faithfully and fully.

It is in this wasteland of a dried up heart inside us and damaged relationships around us this king comes. He is named, ‘The Servant’: The ‘Servant King’.

He appears like one of those little gum saplings appears – small, not always easy to see, in unexpected places or maybe even unwanted places.

Where don’t you want Jesus to appear? Where don’t you think he could be in your life at the moment?

He is not the majestic, powerful charismatic alpha male or female leader we all want for PM. He is not the 500 year old 20m gum tree that lies at the centre of our trees at our place. No shiny white breakfast TV show host teeth. No million-dollar suit. Not even well- kept hair. Probably bad skin.

This king seems like a guy we would never vote for, appoint to run the business, even take on as an employee, or look to for anything important.

We might get him in if we needed something trivial done or we were desperate – some photocopying, carry our bags, drive us somewhere, give us some directions, fix a problem we are having … but we wouldn’t want to know his name; know him.

Isaiah sees the heart. He sees that this would be how the Servant would be largely treated.

We know Isaiah was right. This was the way many treated the King when he appeared in that stable, out on those roads, in that temple, in that city and out there in the rubbish tip, lifted up high in tortured shame for all to see.

The apostle John who walked with the King tells us.

So, yes. What about now and what about you?

Truth is, this is me too.

I have that same drive within me to find more measurable seeable recognizably powerful ways to fix my problems. This is because generally speaking, I tend to want to do life my way under my own steam meeting my own expectations of myself and others.

It is not that hard to relegate the king to someone you consult only when needed or resign him to unimportant things as I take care of all the important things.

But if you read Isaiah, the thing about this king is that he just keeps popping up! He is tough. He appears in places I am surprised to see him – like when I fail again, when I have a full head of steam racing into my next idea, when he speaks through a person unlike me, lower than me or just different to me.

Nicodemus found this out. Under cover of darkness he finds heart-changing hope from this unexpected teacher Jesus.

And in that night-time conversation the darkness of our lack of faith, low esteem for, killing off of the Servant is lit up like a Christmas tree.

Those immortal words come out of this new Servant King’s mouth for all time: words we do not despise or hold in low regard; wors we absolutely cling to with both arms because they are our hope in ages past and ages to come.

So

Us.

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