Saturday and Sunday, January 12, 13, 2008

Sermon: "Servant of the Lord"

Scripture: Isaiah 42: 1-9, Matthew 3 : 13 - 17

Reverend Larry M. Gerber

 

Good prophets are not fortune-tellers, they're truth-tellers -- and God wants us to listen to what they say.

A new year is starting, and you've got to be wondering what the future holds.

Who will win the Super Bowl? Which nation will grab the most gold at the 2008 Olympics? Which candidate will reach the White House?

Most important - who will be the next American Idol?

We simply don't know. But it's always an amusing exercise to see what people thought would happen, but didn't. What was supposed to be "in" but instead stayed "out" -- remarkably out.

Take, for example, the inventions that some people predicted would surely have lots of fizz but fizzled instead. The immobilizing foam gun is a weapon that blasts a sticky foam at criminals, so sticky the bad guy can't move. It's sort of like being wrapped up in salt water taffy. Problem is, the foam also immobilizes a person's air passages. Thus the immobilized person becomes a dead person. Wasn't a big hit as was predicted.

Or the ferret locator, deemed essential in the UK where ferrets quite usefully chase rabbits into their holes but get lost. This device is a little black locator box which attaches to one of the weasel's legs and emits a signal helping the owner to retrieve his pet ferret. Also, not a big hit as was predicted.

There's virtually an inexhaustible list of invention and patent prognostications that went terribly bad. The dog umbrella, the automatic toilet closer, the finger toothbrush, and of course the beerbrella -- who wants his beer to get wet? No one, but it never became a big seller.

It's hard to tell the future, and yet there are market analysts, Pentagon wizards in Washington (When we get into Iraq we will find Weapons of Mass Destruction), and pseudo-prophets and soothsayers who do this sort of thing all the time.

I am referring, of course, to people like Jeane Dixon, astrologer to the Reagans, and the "Amazing Criswell" among others. Dixon made hundreds of predictions in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and wrote a horoscope book for dogs. According to mental_floss magazine (November-December 2006), Dixon was most famous for foreseeing the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- in 1956, and she also said a Democrat would win the 1960 election and die in office.

But her record was far from perfect. She also said that World War III would break out in 1958, cancer would be cured in 1967, and peace would cover the earth in the year 2000.

Criswell, a pop-culture fixture of the 1960s, appeared on The Jack Paar Program in March of 1963, and predicted that tragedy would strike President Kennedy in November. He got that right.

What he got wrong: predictions that a space ray would zap Denver, brain transplants would be sold in vending machines, mass cannibalism would break out in August 1999, and Mae West would be elected president. And that's not all: As president, Mae West would celebrate by taking her close friends to the moon.

Clearly, whether you're trying to predict what's going to happen in 2008, or attempting to predict the success of a new invention or simply making educated guesses about what is going to go down in the culture, you're in for a rough go of it. 

Except for what we find the biblical prophets doing. What we find them doing is not foretelling, but forth-telling.

Take Isaiah, for example.

In today's text, God delivers a message through the prophet Isaiah, "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1). Isaiah is a mouthpiece for God, and through him the Lord announces, ?I have put my spirit upon him' (v. 1) ... He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching" (v. 4).

Isaiah is speaking about a servant of God, and is making clear that this servant is chosen by the Lord, full of God's Spirit, and known for his justice and his teachings.

Mishpat and torah are the marks of this servant -- that's Hebrew for justice and teaching. The prophet Isaiah is announcing that God's servant is bringing justice and teaching right into the middle of all the chaos and confusion of day-to-day human life.

But just exactly who is this servant of the Lord?

Isaiah doesn't say. Like most prophets -- both bad and good -- he leaves the details vague. Jeane Dixon predicted that a Democrat would win the 1960 election and die in office, but she didn't say that it would be Kennedy. In fact, in the heat of the presidential election, Dixon said that Kennedy would lose.

So prophets, like inventors, soothsayers and charlatans, are wise to leave themselves a little wiggle room.

But not Isaiah. No wiggle room.

Isaiah speaks the truth about Israel. Isaiah is probably talking about the nation of Israel when he speaks of God's servant. He is reminding them that they are the Lord's chosen people, with a mission of sharing God's teachings with the world and establishing justice on the earth. "I have given you as a covenant to the people," says God through the prophet, "a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind" (vv. 6-7).

Did Isaiah get this right? Yes, he did. Israel did, in fact, prove to be a light to the nations, opening the eyes of people around the world to the teachings and justice of the one true God. Without Israel, we never would have been introduced to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel.

We never would have gotten to know God's Son Jesus, either.

Isaiah speaks the truth about Jesus. Here's where Isaiah's prophecy gets really interesting. It may have first revealed a truth about Israel, but it later unveiled the true nature of Jesus the Messiah. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). These words could have come straight out of Isaiah 42, in which God says, "Here is my servant ? my chosen, in whom my soul delights" (v. 1).

Clearly, what Isaiah got right is Jesus. He's the servant of the Lord with God's "spirit upon him" (v. 1), the one who "will faithfully bring forth mishpat ? justice" (v. 3). Jesus will be "a covenant to the people, a light to the nations" (v. 6), a savior who will "bring out the prisoners from the dungeon" (v. 7). Isaiah sensed what God was up to, and he spoke the truth about Jesus, the Messiah of God.

This reveals a key fact about good prophets, one that we need always to keep in mind. They're not supposed to be fortune-tellers who predict precisely what will happen in the months and years to come. Instead, they're supposed to be truth-tellers who speak clearly about what is happening right now!

A good prophet paints a clear picture of the state of the world, with all its pain and brokenness, sin and selfishness. A good prophet speaks the truth in love, and points people to where God is at work in the middle of all our human failings.

A good prophet is a truth-teller, not a fortune-teller.

Take Paul Ehrlich, a respected professor at Stanford University. In 1968, he wrote a book called The Population Bomb, which stated that people would have a lot of babies in the future. He saw the population growth around him, and he spoke clearly about it. That's truth-telling. That's good prophecy.

But Ehrlich went on to say that "hundreds of millions of people will starve to death," and he predicted that India would run out of food in 1971. That's fortune-telling. That's bad prophecy.

Isaiah is a good prophet because he paints a clear picture of the state of the world. He speaks the truth in love, and points people to where God is at work. He doesn't predict details of the arrival of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, but says that God's servant will "open the eyes that are blind" and "bring out the prisoners from the dungeon" (v. 7). Isaiah sees the world's problems, and identifies God's solutions.

That's truth-telling, not fortune-telling.

Isaiah speaks the truth about us. Even better, this kind of prophecy steers us in the direction that we need to go. Isaiah doesn't just get right that God's servant is coming -- he creates a template that we can use for our own actions and attitudes. Bringing forth justice and being a light to the nations are not just the responsibility of Jesus the Messiah -- they're also part of the job description of anyone who follows Jesus.

The prophet is speaking about us, right along with Jesus. What Isaiah got right is the need for servants of God to bring forth mishpat justice in every time and place.

 

In just a few moments you will have the opportunity to come to the altar and receive a sea shell as a symbol of the baptism of our Lord as well as an act of renewal of your baptism. The prophet, Isaiah, foretold the coming of our Lord who would bring peace and justice to the world. John came baptizing with water in preparation for the baptism that Jesus would bring, like a dove descending from the heavens.

 

Renewal of baptism gives us the opportunity to re-commit ourselves to followers of Christ whose mission it is to bring peace and justice to the world.

 

Please turn to page 50 in your hymnal for the preparation of Renewal of Baptism...