Theme: The glory and the lowliness of Jesus
The book of Isaiah is by no means an
easy book to understand.
Not because its language is difficult,
because it uses long words or anything like that…
No – it is not easy to
understand because it is a book full of the deep things of God, and the mystery
of His ways…..
Listen to these words from the book of
Isaiah itself:
The
vision of all this has become for you like the words of a sealed book.
When
they hand it to one who knows how to read saying: Read this please, he replies,
I can’t for it is sealed. When the book is handed to one who can’t read, with
the request, Read this please, he replies, I don’t know how to read.
The book of Isaiah is not an easy book
to understand.
for generations in
Some
things are quite clear in the book of Isaiah, however. Some things stand out,
and we can grasp them clearly.
There
are four famous sections in Isaiah, chapters 42, 49, 50 and 53, And these
are very clear. All of them speak of a Servant, the Lord’s Servant, the One who would come to
In
chapter 49, the Servant of the Lord declares to us how He was called before His
birth, chosen to bring the message of the living God to
In
Chapter 50 we discover that though the Servant is rejected by
Finally,
in Isaiah 53, the people of
knowing that
they had rejected the Servant, who had come for their salvation,
knowing that
He was the One God had sent, who in His sorrows and His suffering, had given
Himself for them, taking all their sins
and iniquities upon Himself…..
These
moving words, these wonderful words, these Holy Words, concerning the lowly
Servant of the Lord, and His glory, and His loving lowliness are words indeed
of the greatest spiritual depth, and life giving meaning…….
so of course, we would expect their
message to be found in the New
Testament….which is, again, and again, exactly the case………..
A couple of weeks ago, during Advent,
We remembered how, the early church was
gripped by the words of Isaiah.
The great, deep, unique
theme of the glory and lowliness of the
Servant of the Lord. One despised and
rejected, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. A man of sorrows,
acquainted with grief, who would bear the sins of
many.
And
the New Testament, and the early Church, recognised that this is precisely
Jesus Himself. The words concerning the mysterious and wonderful Servant in
Isaiah 53 describe Jesus exactly. They describe Jesus exactly, the glory of His
lowliness, His life and His cross.
John’s gospel shows us the One who is
Lord, the Son, taking upon Himself loving lowliness and serving others. He
takes upon Himself the lowliest task, the work left
for the lowest servant in the house, and washes the feet of the disciples. This
is what He chooses – to wash the feet of the disciples in lowliness.. And as we gaze upon Jesus in the Upper Room, washing the
feet of the disciples in lowliness, we see what the living God is like. God
Himself has come in love upon the earth, to pour out His life for us in His
Son, Jesus.
so of course, we can see
why the early Church is marked by a longing for Him to return, looked for His
coming again in glory - the hope of the early Church. The One,
the Servant, the lowly One, who came among us, and has now been lifted, raised up by God into glory. This, in fact, is the earliest
message of the book of Acts: Peter says in a very early sermon in Acts: 2.33 – this
Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made….Lord
Despite
the opposition of the world,
despite the
indifference of the surrounding peoples,
despite its
own struggles,
the early Church
knew that
there is a
greater reality,
which is
this: that God has exalted Jesus Christ, the lowly One, to the highest place
and has given Him the name that is above every name………
So, we find our life, our strength
in looking to the risen ascended Jesus, the lowly One………for all authority, all
authority belongs to Jesus Christ the risen ascended Lord………the One who came in lowliness and was
raised up in glory.
How striking
then, to look at John chapter 1 this morning.
At
the beginning of his gospel, in these verses,
John
describes Jesus not as the lowly one who was to be glorified, but as the glorified one became lowly.
He
was with God in the beginning, declares John, but He left that glory, the glory
of the presence of God, just as those mysterious texts in Isaiah proclaim,
and became a human
being and lived among us. He was in the world, and though the world was made
through Him, the world in its blindness did not recognise Him. He came to His
own but His own rejected Him, just as those mysterious texts in Isaiah
proclaim.
So,
here John speaks of Jesus, who has come from the glory of the presence of God
to be here among us in lowliness on this earth.
But
John is telling us that though He was in the world, and the world in its
blindness did not recognise Him, that though He came to His own, and His own
rejected Him God’s loving purpose for the world cannot be deflected, or
stopped, or diverted……but will continue until all is completed
This
is the loving gracious work of God. And it is extraordinary - to all those who
believe in Jesus, God gives the right to become children of God –
and to receive one
blessing after another from the fulness of His grace
Here is
a message for us, for the year ahead…. for 2008,
the message of old,
of the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle John,
that God
has exalted Jesus Christ, the lowly One, to the highest place and has given Him
the name that is above every name………
So, as a Church, as a
congregation, as individual men and women,
we find our life, our strength
looking to the risen ascended Jesus, the lowly One… All authority has been
given to Him…and He will come again...
And
though the world in its blindness may not recognise Him,
though His
own may reject Him,
thanks be
to God, God’s loving purpose for the world in Jesus
cannot be
deflected, or stopped, or diverted……
but will continue
until all is completed.
This
is the loving gracious work of God in His lowly servant, Jesus Christ.
And
it is extraordinary
AMEN.