Sunday 22nd March – The Spoils – Pastor Adrian Kitson

Have you ever been pleased to sacrifice something precious for a greater good?

I guess the parenting journey is a daily sacrificing of your own energy, time and heart for the greater good or raising confident, compassionate and contributing kids.

I guess habitually gathering with fellow saints in public worship for forgiveness, encouragement and teaching instead of sleeping in or going out or getting stuff done around the house is a happy sacrifice.

I know cancer patients sacrifice their wellbeing undergoing treatment that sems worse than the disease in order to get on top of the disease.

I wonder what kind of sacrifice it would take to not only cure a cancer of a person or even whole group of people, but one that would heal both the broken and damaging human heart?

This is what Isaiah speaks into in this Servant song.

God’s dilemma is this: He loves his people, but they are so wayward and wondering. They continually fail at this life-long covenant relationship. He promises an old guy and his wife that from them will come a great nation whose job will be to be God’s instrument of blessing for all people (Abraham).

God creates a rag-tag enslaved people into a nation as he frees them, gives them a way to continually access his forgiveness for their sin-problem (the sacrificial system/tabernacle/commandments) so they can fulfill their calling – to be the people through whom the Lord blesses all people.

Later, God gives in to their request to anoint a king. Saul is the first and he fails miserably. David goes pretty well, despite his terrible behaviour at times. Solomon starts out wisely but fails and then comes that long list of ‘anointed ones’ who occasionally get it right for a while but generally get wrong when it comes to faithfully trusting the Lord’s presence, power and covenant promise to love and protect them.

It gets so bad that Exile is announced through Isaiah and then fulfilled.

Now the nation seems no more; the mission dead. The covenant of love with its promise of name, land, people and calling seems lost as they sit by the rivers of Babylon and weep.

So, what does God now do?

In Isaiah it starts out looking like God is calling the whole nation to be his anointed one – his Messiah; his Servant in the world.

But in the end, that is ruled out. The people show cannot do it.

So what does God do now? He is not going to destroy his people. But what is he going to do?

What do you do with your wayward children who have shown they just cannot honour their relationship with you and continually break it by chasing after the wind and loving the wrong things way above the best things?

Enter The Servant of Isaiah.

God says there will be a new king, a new anointed one, a new Messiah and he will do the unthinkable. He will take all the unfaithful wandering and rebellion and pain on his shoulders for the very people doing the wandering and causing the pain.

And how will this king do it? Not like we are seeing now in Iran or Israel or Lebanon. Not like we known all our lives since the two world wars and the Cold War and the Vietnam war or any war.

This messiah king anointed one is called The Servant for a reason, His name describes his mode of operation – serving.

And there is another name attached to it – ‘Suffering Servant’.

Isaiah tells us that this new king will not bludgeon bodies with drones, but change the so far, unchangeable human heart with his Word, and he will suffer for it.

It takes all that the Father can give to get us back and get his mission back on track.

It takes the crushing of the Son to renew the people to bless all people.

How could it be that a Father would willingly sacrifice his own son?

I know it happens. Dad or Mum chasing the money and so, being hardly ever truly present with his kids. Parents in pain: acting out of emotional unhealth, or some terrible character trait or psychological wound or addiction?

But we are talking about a holy God here.

The reason to crush a son must be serious, needed, essential to get to love and joy and life again.

Here we have those reasons.

This suffering Son’s life will be one big sin offering for all the sinners that ever were and would be.

As the late Joseph Ratzinger, previously known as Pope Benedict the 16^th said

Now I know why this parent did it. The Father crushes the Son so billions of sons and daughters like us aren’t.

The Father pays this enormous cost to bring all his sons and daughters back to love by the sacrifice of giving up his own Son.

This is the offering prescribed in Leviticus to find forgiveness for anyone sinning against ‘the Lord’s holy things’ (Leviticus 5:15). These are the sins of mistreating those things set aside for worship of the Lord (prescribed sacrifices, holy places like the Holy of Holies, holy things like the ark of the covenant, the sacred furniture).

But more to the point, this is also sins against people made in God’s image, because the guilt offering also covered sins offences against your neighbour (Leviticus 6:1-3).

So, this Son’s suffering and dying was a ‘compensation’ offering. It was a substitute given to make atonement for the wrong done – a lamb sacrificed in a human being’s place, and it was a reparation payment to the Lord for the loss he suffered as a result of the wrongdoing.

This is why God gives the enormous cost of his own Son. To compensate and to provide reparation payment for all of humanity by placing their win on his Son and fulfilling his holy justice’ once and for all’, for all, as the writer to the Hebrews repeatedly declares (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, and 10:10-14).

Jesus has compensated the Father for all the wrong done through all the centuries.

But how can you trust it? How do you know this Suffering Son did enough for you to be free and close and sure in God?

For the first time in Isaiah we hear this:

For the first time we hear that the Suffering Son-King will do more than suffer. He will rise. He will become a ‘Hall of Famer’. He will share the spoils of victory not only over a sickness or a conflicted relationship or even a war. He will share the spoils of victory over death itself for all of us.

God raised him from that grave. That’s the proof that Jesus did enough for you. If God raised his Son from human death, then that shows that the offering of Jesus has been accepted and all sin has been dealt with rightly and fully for everyone.

Our guilt is covered. Reparation has been made. Compensation provided. All the demands of God’s holy law have now been fully satisfied. All justice has been served. The proof is the empty tomb of the now resurrected Servant.

Friend, whenever you know the pain of a broken relationship, whenever you turn off that screen in bewildered disgust at the decisions being made and the extensive damage being done to the innocent in these world events, whenever you feel the insecurity of income and high costs and interest rates and season and fuel, whenever you know that weight of guilt and shame for wrongs done by you or to you, when you feel that nagging guilt of conscience, that frustration and shame at failing again, look at the Son serving in suffering and rising in victory for you over it all.

Look at the cross and see the full depth of the Father’s love on display for all his sons and daughters. See his mission to work through all of us to let his Kingdom come. Look at that cross and know in your bones that this offering was good enough, full enough wide enough and perfect enough for the Father to fully accept you today.

From the English colonist in America, Thomas Morton, in 1650 …

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