Sunday 13th April – Face Like Flint – Pastor Adrian Kitson

I sometimes have to just turn off the media. I am a keen culture watcher, history learner and world events listener. I always have been.

I am interested in what is happening in the world. The more I know about what is happening the more able I will be to care for people, preach the good news of Jesus into this community, be aware of the dangers of human ego and lust for power in the world and in my own behaviour.

With all that has been happening in the world these last few years and now, as we speak, and with so many ways to hear of it, think on it, listen to opinion on it, I sometime seem to end up feeling powerless and deflated.

What is going to happen to our retirement fund with Mr Trumps apparently ‘needed mad medicine’ which most people cannot find any rhyme or good reason for?

What will be the Australia our kids and grandkids have to navigate as China navigate its ships and jets over and around us at will with no certain assistance from what was our trusted ally?

How many times does it have to happen. How many times does an individual seeking total authoritarian rule rise in the world only to bring what tyrannical rule always brings – injustice, suffering, war, oppression, violence ..

Why do the wicked prosper, O Lord? (Jeremiah 12:1)

How long, O Lord? (Psalm 13:1-2)

Switch off the podcasts, news feed, newspaper columns … Look around at those magnificent trees, that beautiful sky, those red roses, the faces of each other and our families. They are real.

But even they are not enough. They are battling just like me. They are flawed just like me. The flowers fade, the sky can turn violent, people are never perfect, trees drop limbs and die.

What will ever be enough for me and us to know hope, life, future bright for real, for sure, for now?

Into this sense of shared powerlessness steps this mysterious Suffering Servant. Isaiah speaks of him several times in this his second book.

We hear this Suffering Servant speaking this morning as we recall the Day Jesus entered his city to sounds of children laughing and singing along with the adults.

³⁸ ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’^[b]

‘Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’

This is ‘king’ language. They had seen all those miracles of late. They seem to have real help. This is he. A new king entering his battered city.

Like the people of old who were at the end of their forty years of enforces slavery to a foreign power (Babylon), these Jerusalemites sensed a change, a relief, a new hope, a new possibility for their lives.

This Servant is a compelling and strong person. He is straight and true.

He listens to God speaking and speaks of God in turn.

⁴ The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,

As he listens to the Lord he is sustained in his own weariness.

the word that sustains the weary.

The Lord is his alarm clock. The Lord begins the day

He wakens me morning by morning,

The Lord does this day beginning and shaping work for one reason: to teach, shape, instruct this person.

            [He] wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.

 

Then a radical shift in this poem about this Servant. Apparently his serving really cost him.

All the things of which the world speaks and wreaks – violence, lust for power, lust for fame, greed, self-advancement at the expense of anyone who gets in the way….. he knows them. He has been on the receiving end of them.

⁶ I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.

 

Whoever this is, he knows. He knows what it is to be powerless, defeated, in pain, treated with such ferocious hatred for no apparent reason.

Now I am listening. I know these things in part. I feel like this at times. This Suffering Servant not only knows me but knows the suffering of us all.

We can sense the Spirit whispering us toward Jesus now. We know what will happen within a week in this same city at the hands of these now adoring fans.

Faith: here it is.

⁷ Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
               I will not be disgraced.

 

In whatever happened to this Servant, there was faith; faith under fire; tested and found true.

Whatever happens and how ever powerless we may get, we will not be shamed because we have certain, sure and authoritative help.

I could imagine those exiled families longing for home, ongoing for relief drinking in these words of Isaiah as they dine around their tables… Whatever happens in this country, we will not be shamed because w have sure, certain and true help. This Servant is with us and for us and knows our struggle.

Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.

We can go on with confidence – not in ourselves but in this Servant and his Lord. Like flint resisting the strike of the steel, we are immovable, strong, resistant. Our faces are not hidden. They are set like flint in the face of anything that may come.

All because of this help, this promise – that we will never be left to the shaming crowd, unfriended, abandoned, left for dead, unnoticed, uncared for, unloved by some somewhere …

So, the Servant inspires us to face our accusers.

Who then will bring charges against me?
    Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
    Let him confront me!

 

Who are your accusers?

When you feel powerless, overwhelmed with all that you are hearing about the trouble of the world, when you are weary. When you are not listening and so are unclear, unsure, worried?

Guilt is easy to deal with. Guilt simply says, “I did something wrong”. Forgiveness is the tonic for guilt. W have that readily available in Jesus.

But shame is deeper and harder to deal with or even see. Shame says, “I did a wrong thing, therefor I am a bad person”.

Shame strikes at not just your behaviour but at you – your very self, your identity, your sense of who you are.

In low moments shame drifts in. As it was for Jesus, out there in the desert right at the beginning, so it is for his people all the time. It is the Accuser masterminding all this. His goal is crippled human beings clutching at straws to fend off shame.

But this Servant will stand face to face with his Accuser. He has the confidence to stare him down not because of his fantastic moral uprightness or his super intelligence or his family values or upbringing or nationality or colour or money in the band and security in the heart.

Everything about this Servant is dependent on Another. It is God who wakes him, God who teaches him, God who defends him, God who gives him all that is needed in all the wrong, conflict, anxiety of heart and mind.

⁹ It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
    Who will condemn me?

 

None can. No one will.

Isaiah goes for broke for these exiled families…

Let the one who walks in the dark,
    who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
    and rely on their God.

Friends, when it is dark, trust brings light – light enough to keep moving.

He kept moving through that crowd.

Jesus had an instructed tongue. Friends and enemies knew it. For some his words were like honey on their lips or water quenching this deep thirst for good, for God, for hope.

For others, his words were threat – threat to self, threat to power, threat to imagined control over life…

How weary must have he been? People not ‘getting’ him – even those so close. People throwing barbs at him in total ignorance. Hunger, Sleepless nights, desert rocks for a pillow. Grumbling friends. Misunderstanding family. The Accuser seeming to have them all in the palm of his hands without their really knowing. Losing loved ones. Facing powerful ones.

The moment he came down from that mountain of transfiguration (Luke 9) he set his face – he set toward this city. Like steeling yourself before going into that exam room or job interview or major surgery or difficult conflicted conversation, he set his face like flint towards this city and this day and the week coming.

He will need it.

They will assault him, damage him, shame him in full public view. He knows it and yet he enters the now happy dragon soon to be fierce.

There will come that moment – forsaken moment. All alone. Bearing the impossible weight.

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”

No one could ever go to the full depth. But he will.

He will do this though the accusations can’t stick. He is innocent.

Somehow, he trusts that all the huff and puff, all the human hubris, all the power and the greed and the gory details will eventually fade – all the accusers he faces;

… will all wear out like a garment;
    the moths will eat them up.

Maybe this week we switch off the media voice off – just to hear this Voice of the Servant leading you through the crucifixion of any shame, removal of any guilt and hope for this new life he calls us to live.

This crucified and risen King is your servant and satisfaction – a satisfaction and life that does not rot away under attack from the moths of Satan.

So, in this city he calls,

¹⁰ Who among you fears the Lord
    and obeys my word?

Let the one who walks in the dark,
    who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
    and rely on their God.

It is

^{7 …} the Sovereign Lord Jesus who helps us,
    You we will not be disgraced.

LATEST BULLETIN

LIVE STREAMS

PASTOR’S SERMONS

WORSHIP TIMES