The Lord stands as the Judge in a dramatic courtroom
scene. All the idols and gods of this
world are brought before Him to decide if they have the power to foresee the
future or to bring to pass the things they say will happen. Every promise of salvation, power and meaning
that is not from God is brought before him and every one of them fails
miserably. Every idol of this world is exposed
as incompetent and impotent – they cannot do what they claim and lack the power
needed to fulfill their promises. So, it
turns out, “they are all a delusion” (Is. 41:29).
So the next step is a dramatic one: “Behold my servant,
whom I uphold.” God takes our attention
off the constant failures of this world to His Man, His will, His Servant – His
Son, Jesus Christ. In direct contrast to
the manufactured gods of wood and stone (and marketing and circuitry), God
wants us to consider and understand how His Servant will be different. And it is the difference between the light
and the dark, between the false and the true, between life and death.
To begin with, God’s Servant is upheld by His power. Every other false god may claim a certain
kind of power or potency, but all of them fail to have the divine power within
them. Jesus is not just the Servant of
God, He is the very presence and power of God among us. He is, as Isaiah says elsewhere, Emmanuel –
God who is with us. We cannot escape the
reality of the power of God because it was the literal presence of God on earth
in the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Servant is God’s chosen to perform His will. God knows we fail and falter even when we are
at our best as we live out this life of a disciple, so His chosen Servant will
not fail. We are faithless, He will be
faithful. God’s desire for this world
will be done, and it will be accomplished through the Servant.
And surprisingly enough, the Servant is the focus of God’s
delight on earth. Early in Jesus’
ministry, He went to John the Baptist to be baptized and it was one of the rare
moments in the New Testament when the heavens opened and God spoke
audibly. He said, “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well
pleased.” God delights in his Son; God
delighted in the birth of his Son on the first Christmas day.
And the Servant will be lead by the power and wisdom of
the Spirit of God. Jesus told the
disciples that the Spirit of God would be their comforter and guide in all
truth and the will of the Father. It
turns out he knew the same Spirit. If we
return to Jesus’ baptism, we see God the Son rise out of the water, God the
Father speak His delight, and God the Spirit descend upon Christ in the form of
a dove – a wonderful image of the Triune God in harmony. We read nearly the same scene in Isaiah
42:1. God the Father speaks of His
delight in the Servant, God the Son, upon whom God the Spirit will rest.
We cannot ascend to the Father through any achievement,
speculation or desire. We cannot
construct an ideology, a movement, or a program that has the power to guide and
heal the human condition. Every one of
our hand-crafted idols is a false hope, so we need a true Savior. Because we could not ascend and become like
Him, He descended and became one of us.
Because we live in the visible and material the invisible and immaterial
God stepped into human flesh taking on the form of a servant.
In the birth of one infant on the first Christmas day we
are able to behold the Servant of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment