Good Friday
Preaching
Preaching and Reading the Old Testament Lessons:
With an Eye to the New
This is the fourth and final Servant Song in Second Isaiah, and because of its content, it has been called the Suffering Servant Song. As with the Servant Song that we dealt with on Passion Sunday, it was originally a prophecy considering an idealized Israel. Second Isaiah set before the exiles in Babylonia the task of giving their life for the sake of the world. Israel was despised and rejected in exile, cursed by all who saw her plight. But there would come a time when God would deliver her from captivity and exalt her among the nations. When other peoples saw her salvation, then they would realize that God had subjected Israel to judgment in order that he might manifest his power to save her before all the world. Israel would become the living testimony to the God of judgment and of salvation, and by that testimony, all peoples would be led to worship the Lord.
That is the dialogue that is carried out in this song. The Lord speaks in 52:13-15. Then the foreign nations take up the speech in 53:1-10, and finally God ends the speech in 53:11-12. The foreigners are utterly amazed that the people whom they thought had been rejected by God were instead delivered by that God and raised on high. Israel was as good as dead in exile, and yet God gave her new life. Surely God must have had a purpose for doing such a thing, and the nations realize that Israel went through suffering and death for their sake, that they might be saved.
Second Isaiah is thus calling his people to a missionary task in this poem. But as in all the Old Testament, it is not the task of actively going forth into the world and proclaiming the ways of God. Rather, it is the task of being God's true servant, willing to submit to his will, even unto death. It is the task of truly being God's people, in order that the nations may see God's work in Israel and turn and worship the Lord.
If we were to translate that into our life, our God-given task as the church would be truly to be the church, so dedicated to the service of God that we would be willing to die in order to carry out God's will. We would be willing to give up everything -- our money, our building, our programs, our reputation -- if such sacrifice would further God's purpose of saving all peoples.
There have been Christians who have done that -- Kagawa of Japan who gave his eyesight and finally his life to live among the poor of Japan; Mother Teresa who gave up all to take the dying off the streets of India and to comfort them with the love of God in their last days; Martin Luther King, Jr., who braved prison and scorn, police dogs and beatings to turn around the conscience of a nation; Albert Schweitzer who left a promising career as a musician and theologian to minister to the sick in the jungles of Africa; dozens of women and men who everywhere have given up this world's goods and status to serve Christ in slums and hospices, orphanages and storefront churches across the land. And yes, faithful mothers who spend hours with their disabled or retarded children, and faithful husbands who exhaust themselves in the care of a spouse with Alzheimer's. All have been suffering servants of their Lord, willing to surrender everything to serve him.
When you talk to such people, most of them are not joyless, however. Rather, their hope is in God, whom they know will finally say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you." And such persons are powerful witnesses to the workings of God, aren't they? Like the Suffering Servant drawing all nations to God, faithful souls draw others to him, to find the strength, the hope, the joy that so illumine their faithful lives.
There was One, however, who outdid us all in sacrifice and joy as the Suffering Servant. When the disciples and apostles and authors of the New Testament strained to tell who Jesus Christ is, they could do no other but describe his life and death and resurrection in terms of this Suffering Servant song.
Everywhere throughout the New Testament, the words of this song sound forth. Jesus is the one who gives his life as a ransom for many, says Mark (10:45) and who is silent before his oppressors at his trial (Mark 14:61). Jesus is reckoned with the transgressors, writes Luke (22:37), condemned as a criminal and hung on a cross between two thieves. He is like Second Isaiah's lamb that is led to the slaughter, in the Book of Acts (8:32), but he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, in John (1:29). Jesus' grave is made with a rich man called Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:57-60), yet certainly he had committed no sin and spoken no guile (1 Peter 2:22). And like the nations in the Suffering Servant Song, we have come to realize that our Lord is the one by whose stripes, whose whipping, we were healed when we had all gone astray like sheep (1 Peter 2:24-25).
The final, true servant of God is our Lord Jesus Christ. He became in his death what Israel was always meant to be. His trial and unjust sentence by Pilate, his death on the cross between two robbers, his burial in a borrowed grave fulfilled the words of our prophet. But we must remember why that death took place -- to take upon himself our sins and to suffer the punishment we deserved from God for our evil ways.
On this Good Friday, perhaps we all should adopt the role of the foreign nations in our Servant Song, and confess with them that Jesus "was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Christ died in our place, taking upon himself our wrong. He gave his life for our sakes that we might not die. For "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), and you and I are sinners.
There was something else, however, that the foreigners realized, according to our passage. They came to understand that "it was the will of the Lord to bruise" the servant, and that it was God who had put the servant "to grief" (v. 10). It was God's will that our Lord Jesus die on the cross of Golgotha. Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that, if possible, he not go to the cross. But our Lord realized that such was the will of his Father. And so he gave up his life willingly, because that was the plan of his Father. Not because his God was some sort of abusing Father. Not because God desired vengeance and blood. Heaven help us if those are our thoughts! No, it was the will of God that his Son die on the cross, because God loves us and wants to save us. God took upon himself our sin in the person of his Son. God himself bore our iniquities instead of holding us accountable for them. And that was pure love and pure mercy extended to us by our heavenly Father. Surely, our only response can be the one that we sing in Isaac Watts' great hymn: "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."
That is the dialogue that is carried out in this song. The Lord speaks in 52:13-15. Then the foreign nations take up the speech in 53:1-10, and finally God ends the speech in 53:11-12. The foreigners are utterly amazed that the people whom they thought had been rejected by God were instead delivered by that God and raised on high. Israel was as good as dead in exile, and yet God gave her new life. Surely God must have had a purpose for doing such a thing, and the nations realize that Israel went through suffering and death for their sake, that they might be saved.
Second Isaiah is thus calling his people to a missionary task in this poem. But as in all the Old Testament, it is not the task of actively going forth into the world and proclaiming the ways of God. Rather, it is the task of being God's true servant, willing to submit to his will, even unto death. It is the task of truly being God's people, in order that the nations may see God's work in Israel and turn and worship the Lord.
If we were to translate that into our life, our God-given task as the church would be truly to be the church, so dedicated to the service of God that we would be willing to die in order to carry out God's will. We would be willing to give up everything -- our money, our building, our programs, our reputation -- if such sacrifice would further God's purpose of saving all peoples.
There have been Christians who have done that -- Kagawa of Japan who gave his eyesight and finally his life to live among the poor of Japan; Mother Teresa who gave up all to take the dying off the streets of India and to comfort them with the love of God in their last days; Martin Luther King, Jr., who braved prison and scorn, police dogs and beatings to turn around the conscience of a nation; Albert Schweitzer who left a promising career as a musician and theologian to minister to the sick in the jungles of Africa; dozens of women and men who everywhere have given up this world's goods and status to serve Christ in slums and hospices, orphanages and storefront churches across the land. And yes, faithful mothers who spend hours with their disabled or retarded children, and faithful husbands who exhaust themselves in the care of a spouse with Alzheimer's. All have been suffering servants of their Lord, willing to surrender everything to serve him.
When you talk to such people, most of them are not joyless, however. Rather, their hope is in God, whom they know will finally say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you." And such persons are powerful witnesses to the workings of God, aren't they? Like the Suffering Servant drawing all nations to God, faithful souls draw others to him, to find the strength, the hope, the joy that so illumine their faithful lives.
There was One, however, who outdid us all in sacrifice and joy as the Suffering Servant. When the disciples and apostles and authors of the New Testament strained to tell who Jesus Christ is, they could do no other but describe his life and death and resurrection in terms of this Suffering Servant song.
Everywhere throughout the New Testament, the words of this song sound forth. Jesus is the one who gives his life as a ransom for many, says Mark (10:45) and who is silent before his oppressors at his trial (Mark 14:61). Jesus is reckoned with the transgressors, writes Luke (22:37), condemned as a criminal and hung on a cross between two thieves. He is like Second Isaiah's lamb that is led to the slaughter, in the Book of Acts (8:32), but he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, in John (1:29). Jesus' grave is made with a rich man called Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:57-60), yet certainly he had committed no sin and spoken no guile (1 Peter 2:22). And like the nations in the Suffering Servant Song, we have come to realize that our Lord is the one by whose stripes, whose whipping, we were healed when we had all gone astray like sheep (1 Peter 2:24-25).
The final, true servant of God is our Lord Jesus Christ. He became in his death what Israel was always meant to be. His trial and unjust sentence by Pilate, his death on the cross between two robbers, his burial in a borrowed grave fulfilled the words of our prophet. But we must remember why that death took place -- to take upon himself our sins and to suffer the punishment we deserved from God for our evil ways.
On this Good Friday, perhaps we all should adopt the role of the foreign nations in our Servant Song, and confess with them that Jesus "was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Christ died in our place, taking upon himself our wrong. He gave his life for our sakes that we might not die. For "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), and you and I are sinners.
There was something else, however, that the foreigners realized, according to our passage. They came to understand that "it was the will of the Lord to bruise" the servant, and that it was God who had put the servant "to grief" (v. 10). It was God's will that our Lord Jesus die on the cross of Golgotha. Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that, if possible, he not go to the cross. But our Lord realized that such was the will of his Father. And so he gave up his life willingly, because that was the plan of his Father. Not because his God was some sort of abusing Father. Not because God desired vengeance and blood. Heaven help us if those are our thoughts! No, it was the will of God that his Son die on the cross, because God loves us and wants to save us. God took upon himself our sin in the person of his Son. God himself bore our iniquities instead of holding us accountable for them. And that was pure love and pure mercy extended to us by our heavenly Father. Surely, our only response can be the one that we sing in Isaac Watts' great hymn: "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."
