Friday
Friday
The Servant of the Lord
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.
Isaiah 42:1
The second part of Isaiah contains four so-called Servant Songs, although there has been much debate about the servant’s identity. Some see him as an individual like Isaiah himself or Jeremiah, while others understand him as a collective portrait of Israel or of the godly remnant within Israel. But the New Testament sees the Servant Songs as fulfilled in Jesus. In his early sermons, recorded in the Acts, Peter four times spoke of Jesus as “the servant”; Paul wrote that he took “the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:7); and there are many quotations of, and allusions to, Isaiah 42 to 53 in the teaching of Jesus himself.
What the four Servant Songs give us is a composite picture of the servant of the Lord. In the first song (Isa. 42:1–4) the servant is portrayed as a teacher, teaching in a spirit of gentleness, endued with the Spirit, and reaching out to the nations.
In the second song (Isa. 49:1–6) the servant is portrayed as an evangelist. The emphasis now is on the distant nations. It was too small a thing, God said, for his servant to restore backsliding Israel; the Lord would also make his servant “a light for the Gentiles” and would bring his salvation “to the ends of the earth” (v. 6). Paul used this verse to justify his bold decision to evangelize the Gentiles (Acts 13:46–47).
Thirdly, the servant is portrayed as a disciple (Isa. 50:4–9). For it is recognized that we cannot teach if we do not first listen and learn. Hence the need for Yahweh to waken his servant’s ear “morning by morning” (v. 4). His ear must be opened first, before his tongue, even if what he learns and teaches is unpopular and provokes persecution.
In the fourth song the servant is portrayed as the suffering Savior (Isa. 52:13–53:12), who (speaking prophetically) was wounded for our iniquities and who bore our sins. It is truly extraordinary that eight specific verses of Isaiah 53 are quoted by New Testament writers, in some cases several times. No wonder that Philip, when the Ethiopian asked to whom Isaiah 53:7–8 referred, “began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35).
For further reading: Isaiah 42:1–9