Listen to the Servant of the Lord!

2nd Sunday after Epiphany, 1/19/14
Isaiah 49:1-6


Listen to the Servant of the Lord!
I. Because he speaks the word of God
II. Because he wants to save all people


It’s no secret that one of parenting’s biggest issues is getting your child to listen to you. Children learn at an early age that they can get what they want simply by not listening to what their parents are saying. And in the absence of appropriate negative consequences for failing to listen, a child also quickly learns that their parent doesn’t care enough or isn’t serious enough about what they say to carry out discipline when their child doesn’t listen and won’t listen. Every parent has experienced it. It’s frustrating to say the least.

And you only want what’s best for your child! I think I’m safe in saying that none of us has ever wanted one of our children to listen to us so that we can harm them. We’re only trying to help them. We’re trying to shape them into respectful children who will eventually become fine adults, people whom others admire.

If that’s true with us, how much more so it’s true with our divine parent, our heavenly Father! He’s the One who has known us by name and has loved us from eternity to eternity. And while our earthly parents can only take guesses at what the future holds for their children, the future—every event of it—is crystal clear to him. So when he speaks to us, he always and only wants what is best for us.

But like little children, that’s not always what we want. We think we know better. What he tells us isn’t what we want to hear. We’re busy. Our attention is elsewhere. We have a divine attention deficit disorder that flows from our sinful nature.

And yet our loving God comes again to us this morning and pleads for us to listen to him. In today’s gospel we listened to the account of Jesus beginning his preaching ministry. Isaiah views that same thing in these words of our text. The only proper thing for us to do is to listen. Listen to the Servant of the Lord. Let’s see why as Isaiah explains it.

Part I.

More than 10 years ago the investment firm of Merrill Lynch had a TV commercial that always caught my eyes and ears. It featured a room full of people and all of them were involved in conversations. It was auditory confusion. Then the TV camera would focus in on one conversation between two individuals. One person would indicate that he or she wasn’t sure about how they should invest their money. The other person would reply, “Well my broker is Merrill Lynch and he says…” And immediately the entire room fell silent and every individual craned their neck in the direction of that one speaker. In a confused world of investment advice, the officials at Merrill Lynch wanted people to trust that theirs was the most reliable.

We live in a confused world of religious information, so much so that years ago it became popular simply to listen to your own thoughts, your own ideas about the divine being, whomever that might be for each person.

Obviously that couldn’t be farther from the way that the only true God wants things to be. He wants every person to listen to him and he uses Isaiah to announce that he set things up so that it would happen. When you first start reading these words you might wonder to whom they refer. Is it Isaiah or someone else? But as you keep reading it becomes clear that the Lord has someone special in mind, much more special than Isaiah. It happens when he refers to himself as “the servant of the Lord.” That’s Isaiah’s term for the Messiah, the coming Savior, Jesus Christ. Let’s take a look at how the Lord set Jesus up as the one we should listen to. He says, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name.” At first that might not seem so unusual. The Bible also says that God knew us by name from eternity. But this passage states something special. It’s one of several passages in the Bible in which God states that Jesus was chosen to be the world’s Savior from eternity. Our salvation wasn’t a plan that God made up on the fly; it was planned eternally.

And in contrast to other speakers of God’s word, Jesus was God’s special messenger. He refers to himself as a sharpened sword and a polished arrow. Other speakers of God’s word speak God’s word for him. Jesus was God speaking God’s word for himself. He made clear what God wanted us to know. Jesus revealed God to us because Jesus is God.

As such he was God’s instrument to make known what God wants us to know. Early in Jesus’ preaching ministry crowds of thousands came out to hear him preach and teach. They quickly recognized his authority. He cut through the confusing human laws and regulations that the Jewish rabbis had added to God’s word and clearly shared God’s word in a way that even the common Jewish people could understand and take it to heart.

But he did so with mixed results. As I mentioned, his popularity soared in the beginning of his ministry but it didn’t last. It wasn’t long before thousands deserted him because they didn’t like what he was preaching. He didn’t live up to their expectations of what the Messiah should be. He wasn’t willing to give them the earthly blessings they craved. And it culminated on Good Friday when the crowds shouted, “Away with him! Crucify him!” Hear Jesus’ own comment on his preaching ministry, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.” But the results don’t change the fact that Jesus, the Servant of the Lord, was speaking the very word of God. He wasn’t merely sharing his religious opinion. He was God speaking God’s word to us.

So listen to him! Listen to the Servant of the Lord because he speaks the word of God.

God himself speaks his word and gets mixed results. Sounds rather modern, doesn’t it? You can go all the way back to our first parents and find examples of not listen to God speaking his word. Instead, they decided it would be netter to eat the forbidden fruit. And nothing has changed since. But it never ends up well. Not listening only brings hardship and God’s condemnation, not ease and God’s blessing. You would think people would learn! You’d think we’d learn! But our lives are a daily record of failures to listen. As I said earlier, we think we know better or we’re too busy or we simply don’t care. But we have the opportunity now to listen. Listen to that Savior call each of us to repentance and then hear that Savior announce his forgiveness—a forgiveness he won for us when he did what he said he would do and suffered and died for us. There’s the highest example of him only wanting what is best for us. So listen to him today. Listen to the Servant of the Lord because he speaks the word of God.

Part II.

The other day I was in a fast-food restaurant. As I walked away from the counter, I heard an employee say, “Hey, sir, this is for you!” I turned around to see him holding a bag of fast-food in his hand. At first I thought he was speaking to me, but then I noticed he was looking in the direction of another man. I thought he was speaking to me. I thought that what he had was for me. But I was wrong.

That was just an employee in a fast-food restaurant. Imagine if it had been God. Imagine if God were holding some great blessing in his hand and shouting that he has something for us, but he didn’t mean me. He didn’t mean you. How terrible!

How comforting to know, then, that his greatest of gifts isn’t meant only for some but not for all! How comforting to know it’s meant for you. It’s meant for me. Listen to Jesus describe it, “And now the LORD says—he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength—he says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.’” Jesus was never meant to be the Savior only of the Jews. There were some who thought that way when Jesus was here on this earth. They were under the impression that Gentiles were outside the grace of God, that God loved them less or not at all. But that was never the case.

God’s great glory is shown in the fact that Jesus won salvation for all people. During this season of Epiphany that’s exactly what Jesus reveals himself to be—the Savior of all. And that’s exactly what this Servant of the Lord announces to us. He speaks God’s word to us because that word is meant to save us, too. And by God’s grace, it has! That word has worked saving faith in Jesus in our hearts. That word feeds and strengthens that faith every time we hear and take it to heart.

And now he uses us to share that word with the world. How does that occur? We’ll see an example of it later in the WELS Connection video. Every month a portion of your offering goes to support the spread of the gospel all around the world. In that video you’ll see saving joy on the faces of your fellow Christians in Malawi. But it’s also a personal thing. It happens when we do what John the Baptist did in our reading from John’s Gospel. He simply pointed people to Jesus. He simply declared what he knew to be true about Jesus. That’s what happens when we listen to the Servant of the Lord. Then we know what to tell others because he wants to save all people. Listen to him and be blessed by him. Amen.