Do you feel discouraged and faint at blank looks of colleagues and friends for whom you’ve prayed and to whom you’ve witnessed for years? Remember Jesus Christ has an overflowing fountain of sympathy and strength for all such troubled saints. It’s a mark of faithful servants to share to some small degree in Christ’s ministerial heartache.
Introduction
When Monday morning comes we often feel like that! There really was no point! All the efforts seem a waste! I’m exhausted in the work and think I’ve had enough!
Isaiah’s Second Servant Song
Take comfort faithful servant! Messiah had such thoughts! God had fully armed Him for His work! His preaching was power-packed! His Word was penetrating!
He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He hid me; He made me a polished arrow; in His quiver He hid me away. And he said to me “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified (Isaiah 49:2-3).
Yet, what was the result, for being shunned and spent? As far as Jews go, His message seemed, on the surface, at first, to have minimal, if any, impact.
Discouraged
We can almost sense His shock as His sinless, tender, heart is broken by lack of response! Few, if any believed. They just demand more signs. And when he heads to Zion, crowds start to take cold feet. This may be Jesus’ autobiographical summary of His three-year Galilean ministry:
But I said “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” (Isaiah 49:4).
Three words are brought together to that sum up feelings of saints gripped by biblical emptiness—an unformed, disordered mass like earth before daylight; the vanity of vanities that gripped the heart of the author of Ecclesiastes; as void and frustrating as blighted farmers crops in the book of Leviticus.
Can you picture Jesus looking down on the lake one last time, sitting on the hilltop, with his prayerful head in his hands? Momentarily, and sinlessly, Messiah shudders internally at this disconsolate thought—all His exhausting work, that left Him totally spent, has been a total waste, as judged by outward results.
Rewarded
“But wait a minute”, says the Servant, “I know that can’t be true.” That isn’t the full story, for beyond the immediate present, and Israel’s caustic response, is a satisfying outcome and full reward from God. The final outcome will prove the shrewdness of wholehearted personal investment. The end-game is the key that makes it all now seem worthwhile: He’ll save a Jewish remnant to shine Salvation round the world!
Is it too light a thing that you should be my Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel (a remnant preserved by grace); I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth – Isaiah 49:6.
As John Mackay so wonderfully points out:
He will not only announce the message of salvation; he will BE MY SALVATION…He not only provides light, He is the light…In this the Servant’s role is more than prophetic; He is both messenger and message! (249)
