In chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel, the evangelist showed us the open hostility that had developed among the Pharisees and religious leaders against Jesus. That was the turning point for His ministry… for as the leaders go, so go their followers. Eventually, even the crowds that have been running in wonder after Jesus will side with the Pharisees and cry out: “Crucify!” Thus is set the stage for the culmination of the Mission of the Messiah. Soon there will be no turning back from the way of the cross. How did Jesus prepare His disciples for this? How do we prepare ourselves?

The most important thing we can do is prepare ourselves to recognize Him. This is not hard to do… because, as I have said before, the Heavenly Father’s Voice has never stopped calling us to Him.

In Jesus’ day, His people had that Voice written down for them for thousands of years… sounding out most clearly through the prophets.

Isaiah’s call

The prophet Isaiah lived at the time when the Kingdom of Judah reached its own turning point. The Assyrians wiped out the northern Kingdom of Israel. A few years later they also attacked the Kingdom of Judah. And though God miraculously delivered them, they still continued sliding farther and farther from Him.

Isaiah’s prophecy is full of warnings to these people, calling them to repentance, lest they reap what they have sown. But it is also full of glimpses of the time past their downfall when the Lord will restore to Himself a people from the remnant that will be left.

To me, one of the most poignant passages in Isaiah is in chapter 26… It speaks of a moment when the people’s eyes will be opened and they will finally recognize that their only Hope is in the Lord. That passage speaks to us today just as well as it spoke to them back then.

It turns out that before we can rightly recognize the Messiah what we need is restoration. To be able to see, we have to leave our self-imposed blindness behind. And the first step on the way to restoration is to recognize that the gods, the lords we have served in this world, have accomplished nothing for us; because they are, themselves, nothing:

Isaiah 26:13-14 Jehovah our God, other lords than thee have had dominion over us; (but) by thee only will we make mention of thy name. [They are] dead, they shall not live; deceased, they shall not rise: for thou hast visited and destroyed them, and made all memory of them to perish.

I think that that first sentence is interesting: The people acknowledge that those other lords that they sought after to rescue them (instead of Jehovah) ended up oppressing them. But the reality is that those lords wanted more than just their subjugation, they wanted the people to believe that Jehovah had abandoned them, that Jehovah had failed them. We get a witness to this in one of the Psalms of the exile:

Psalm 137:1-3 (NASB) By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors, jubilation, saying, “Sing for us one of the songs of Zion!”

However, here in Isaiah, the people – awakened into reality by the pain of their exile – refuse to do that. They tell the Lord: “Only You can tell us how to make mention of Your Name.” And once they do that, once they make that confession of Faith (meager as it may seem) then they see even more clearly that those other lords are nothing… they are the ones that are truly powerless before the Lord of All.

The beauty of letting God open our eyes is that He will continue to do it as long as we are willing. And that leads to the second step on the road to restoration: to recognize that all the good we have ever received has come from the true Lord. He is Holy and He has always Loved us…

Isaiah 26:15a Thou hast increased the nation, Jehovah, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified.

Therefore, when faced with the consequences of our own sins there is still Hope because that Loving God is willing, even eager, to forgive. All we need to do is to turn to Him again, call to him from the midst of those consequences, acknowledge that we deserved them, but still ask for mercy:

Isaiah 26:15b-16 Thou hadst removed [it] (the nation into exile) far [unto] all the ends of the earth. Jehovah, in trouble they sought thee; they poured out [their] whispered prayer when thy chastening was upon them.

That is what the chastening is for. God doesn’t punish us to be mean or to destroy us. Rather, He lets us reap the painful consequences of our sins so that we can be shaken awake and realize that this pit really isn’t where we want to be. And in the middle of that pain, no matter how terrible it feels, we can call out to Him. Even if all we can manage is a whispered prayer… He will hear.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

A whispered prayer of Repentance, God will never ignore… And the most important part of repentance is owning up, acknowledging our sins:

Isaiah 26:17-18 As a woman with child, that draweth near her delivery, is in travail, [and] crieth out in her pangs; so have we been before thee, Jehovah. We have been with child, we have been in travail, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought the deliverance of the land, neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

This is the verse that has always stuck in my mind because it spells out clearly the root of our disobedience:

Pride.

We thought we could do it on our own. We don’t think we need God. We think we can solve our problems and the problems of the world by our own power by our own wisdom…

It is the most ancient of all lies; from the lips of the serpent in the Garden: “ye will be as God”.

But we have never been equal to the task. The destruction that sin has ushered into this world, famine, hatred, sickness, wars… they are all beyond our power to fix… Why? Because we are the problem.

And as the people acknowledged there in Isaiah, the fact is that – after all the pain and travail that we go through thinking we can fix it, trying as hard as we can – all we have ever given birth to is wind… We have not fixed anything…

…or come anywhere close to defeating the enemy.

But with God… oh, there is no comparison! Because with God, there is no problem that He cannot fix. There is no power He cannot overturn. There is no enemy He cannot defeat. Even death is nothing before Him:

Isaiah 26:19 Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing in triumph, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is the dew of the morning, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.

Isaiah did not only address the people of his day or those that would be caught in the soon coming exile, he also addressed the people of Jesus’ day 700 years in the future.

Isaiah saw the life of the Messiah and wrote down the signposts for us…

Jesus quotes many times from the writings of Isaiah because, of all the prophets, Isaiah seems to have been singled out to get the clearest glimpse of the coming Messiah. He wrote it all down so that we would recognize when it happened and, therefore, recognize Him.

Isaiah 29:13 And the Lord saith, Forasmuch as this people draw near with their mouth, and honour me with their lips, but their heart is removed far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught of men…

Do you remember when Jesus quoted these very words in Mark 7:6-7? It was when the Pharisees complained about the disciples eating with unwashed hands. And He rebuked them there for their hypocrisy: They were pretending on the outside to be champions of righteousness but in their hearts, they were subverting the spirit of God’s Law. They forgot that God always sees the heart because that is what He cares about.

So, Isaiah continues with a rebuke:

Isaiah 29:14-16 therefore, behold, I will proceed to do marvellously with this people, to do marvellously, even with wonder, and the wisdom of their wise [men] shall perish, and the understanding of their intelligent ones shall be hid. Woe unto them that hide deep, far from Jehovah, their counsel! And their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?

[Oh] your perverseness!—Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay, so that the work should say of him that made it, He made me not; or the thing formed say of him that formed it, He hath no understanding?

And, thus, the prophet gives us a deeper insight into the scope of the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. They considered themselves the wise ones, the intelligent ones, righteous because they kept all the rules that their “wisdom” required of them. BUT that was all for show. For Isaiah tells us that, inside, they tried to keep their counsel far from Jehovah, that their works instead of being works of Love were works of darkness; that they lived as if they thought God could not discover this doublemindedness.

In thinking they could hide their hearts from God, they were making God out to be like them, mere human. But God is more than human, way beyond everything we can imagine… and He knows us through and through because He made us. There is no hiding from His understanding.

Now, do you remember what happened next in Mark chapter 7? Jesus led His disciples to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile nation. In so doing, Jesus was foreshadowing the rejection of His own people and announcing that God’s mercy will indeed be poured to all peoples. This is the wondrous work that God speaks of in Isaiah 29:14; the work that the Pharisees, for all their wisdom, could not even fathom.

Look at how Isaiah continues:

Isaiah 29:17 Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest?

Lebanon in the time of Isaiah is the region of Tyre and Sidon in Jesus’ time.

And then in Mark, after Jesus repeats this message-by-example by going also to the Gentile Decapolis, He then returns to Galilee.

Mark 8:22-26 And he (Jesus) comes to Bethsaida; and they bring him a blind man, and beseech him that he might touch him. And taking hold of the hand of the blind man he led him forth out of the village, and having spit upon his eyes, he laid his hands upon him, and asked him if he beheld anything. And having looked up, he said, I behold men, for I see [them], as trees, walking. Then he laid his hands again upon his eyes, and he saw distinctly, and was restored and saw all things clearly. And he sent him to his house, saying, Neither enter into the village, nor tell [it] to any one in the village.

Thus, Isaiah tells us next:

Isaiah 29:18-19 And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and, out of obscurity and out of darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see;  and the meek shall increase their joy in Jehovah, and the needy among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

That, succinctly, is a summary of the mission of the Messiah: The deaf hear, the mute speak, the blind see, and the meek and needy rejoice; all because they hear the words of the book.

This was the repeating pattern of Jesus’ Ministry: He would travel somewhere, the people would gather, and then He would teach them the Word of God. Then, He would heal them.

And not only did Isaiah tell us about the events in the life of the Messiah, but he also gave us a description of His character…

The gentle Messiah

Isaiah 42:1-4 Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect [in whom] my soul delighteth! I will put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment according to truth. He shall not faint nor be in haste, till he have set justice in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.

This is important because there are also prophecies in the Old Testament (and certainly in Isaiah) that speak of a time when God will finally judge the whole world. The One that will carry out that judgment is also the Messiah; Jesus acknowledged that:

John 5:21-22 (NASB) For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son…

Matthew 7:21-23 Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that does the will of my Father who is in the heavens. Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied through *thy* name, and through *thy* name cast out demons, and through *thy* name done many works of power? and then will I avow unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, workers of lawlessness.

So, it is true: One day, the Messiah will come as the Lion of the tribe of Judah; and evil and death will finally be destroyed. But I don’t think that is the future we ought to long for. Because the Messiah decided to come first as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – He came to be slain (by decree) since the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). He came first as the suffering Messiah.

That is the visitation Isaiah is speaking about at the beginning of chapter 42. That was Jesus, Son of God, made flesh; living and walking among us to speak to us face to face about the Love and Mercy of our God; to offer us then, and right now, eternal life.

If the life that He, as the suffering Messiah, gives us is eternal (that is, settles the issue for us once and forever), right now, then why would we long to see the day when He returns to destroy the world?

You might think this is a surprising question, that anyone that has seen the evil and injustice of this world would leap at the chance to see the devil and all his servants punished as they deserve. But I feel that there is a danger in that attitude… Yes, Justice demands that punishment, it will be righteous vengeance when it happens but…

Deuteronomy 32:34 Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.

It is His, not ours.

Why? Because only God can mete out vengeance in total righteousness; and only He can remain unchanged by that action.

But human beings, dragged down as we are by our own sins, whether they be confirmed or kept hidden in our hearts, we have no right to do any avenging… The moment we even think about it, the accusation and the guilt is turned back onto us:

Matthew 7:1-2 Judge not, that ye may not be judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.

I feel that when we dwell on the vengeance of that day, when we long for the destruction of the enemy, we are trying to vicariously participate in that event… the way the spectators of a sports event vicariously participate in the triumphs and trials of their favorite team out there in the field. And once we get into that frame of mind, thinking that we have a right to participate in it, we tend to bring that thinking back into our world. The result is that, eventually, we define our enemies to be God’s enemies; and we start to entertain the thought that we are part of God’s army and that it is our mission to fight against those enemies and defeat them… instead of saving them.

Nowhere in all the teachings of Jesus that we have recorded in the gospels does He ever assign to us that role of “soldiers in His army”. Instead, we are called to be like Him, nothing more, nothing less.

We are called to suffer like Him…

Matthew 10:24-25 24 The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the bondman above his lord. [It is] sufficient for the disciple that he should become as his teacher, and the bondman as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household?

…and to love like Him:

John 13: 35 By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves.

Because we have been sent like He was sent:

John 20:21-22 [Jesus] said therefore again to them, Peace [be] to you: as the Father sent me forth, I also send you. And having said this, he breathed into [them], and says to them, Receive [the] Holy Spirit…

So, indeed, there will come a day when the Messiah returns to destroy all evil but that is not the Messiah we long for. I long for the One that will have mercy on me and who will change my heart bit by bit, every day, so that it becomes closer and closer to His.

This is the Messiah that Isaiah is announcing in Chapter 42.

Isaiah 42:1-4 Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect [in whom] my soul delighteth! I will put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment according to truth. He shall not faint nor be in haste, till he have set justice in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.

And from that day when John the Baptizer baptised him, when the Voice of God sounded out from the Heavens and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him (as Isaiah says above), He fulfilled this mission. It is that mission that we have been called to recognize: a mission, not certified by miraculous powers, but rather recognized by its gentleness and its unrelenting proclamation of God’s Truth and Justice for all the earth.

This is the Messiah we all have been longing for.

To make sure His people – who carried with them His Word for thousands of years – would not miss that connection between Jesus and Isaiah’s prophecies, He declared it openly at the beginning of His ministry.

Luke 4:17-21 And [the] book of the prophet Esaias was given to him; and having unrolled the book he found the place where it was written, [The] Spirit of [the] Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to [the] poor; he has sent me to preach to captives deliverance, and to [the] blind sight, to send forth [the] crushed delivered, to preach [the] acceptable year of [the] Lord.

And having rolled up the book, when he had delivered it up to the attendant, he sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he began to say to them, To-day this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. (Isaiah 61:1)

Is there any other mission greater than this one?

Is there anything else beside it that is worth living (and dying) for?