The Servant of God's Preparation in Is. 49

"Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. 2 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. 3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 4 But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.” 5 And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my strength— 6 he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” 7 Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

I. Introduction

This passage, comprising the second "Servant Song" in Isaiah, picks up perfectly on Is. 42, last week's reading. We recall that Is. 42:4 talked about the "coastlands" waiting for the teaching of the Servant of God. How does Is. 49 begin? With the message to the coastlands: "Listen to me, O coastlands" (49:1). The yearning of the coastlands, the regions far off, for the message of the Servant of God, is now fulfilled. The coastlands, figuratively speaking, "held their breath" for seven chapters; now the Servant of God will speak. But when the Servant speaks, he doesn't just proclaim the "Word of Yahweh," as if he is a thundering Amos-like figure delivering the exhortation to let justice flow down like the waters. Instead, the Servant's "message" is much more nuanced. In this passage we see that the prophet's message includes his autobiography. This is a great insight; the Word of God is not simply what a person says about others. It also includes how you conceive of and speak about your own life.

For years I have believed that scholarship in general would be enriched if it had an autobiographical dimension to it. After all, we study no phenomenon of nature or life as it truly is; we always study it refracted, or "bent" through the prism of our system of perception. This "system of perception" includes our past experience, our best mode of learning, our limitations and gifts in communication, etc. Why shouldn't we expect the experience the call to be the Servant of God to be understood and filtered through the Servant's own experience of living? Thus, even though I will be expositing a text of Scripture today, I want to encourage you to think of the ways that autobiography can be useful to aid in your teaching, speaking or writing. Certainly the talk is not always "all about you," but the truth of the matter is that every talk you give is partially about you. The prophet leads the way in helping us recognize this.

I am impressed by the following points from Is. 49:1-7; (1) the Prophetic Call (v. 1); (2) the Prophetic Tools (v. 2); (3) the Prophetic Frustration (v. 4); and (4) the Prophet's Further Ministry (vv. 6-7). The most remarkable thing that emerges from this passage for me is the way that extended or increased ministry is given to the Servant of God at the point of frustration. Rather than "building" from a successful small ministry to a larger one, which is the way we are told life is supposed to work, the prophet goes from a frustrating and unsuccessful small ministry to a larger one. He finally becomes able to paint his life and work on a larger canvas, the canvas of the world.

II. The Servant's/Prophet's Call (v. 1)

He begins his message to the coastlines with a reference to his own call, a call that began before he was born. What is a call? I like to think of it as an internal "insistence," a sort of internal "pressure" which makes us interested in certain things, avoid other things and seek to find our satisfaction in the direction of the "call." I think that "calls" happen all the time in the 21st century but that they often come in an inchoate or incomplete form at first. Or, to put it differently, it might be a series of calls that take us in different directions until we reach the broad place of service or purpose which is the goal of the call. Some people, admittedly, have a sense of call from the earliest days; for many others it only evolves as time goes on. For some it can be a sudden realization; for others it only dawns gradually. I think, however, that one of the most important tasks of our lives, whether we consider ourselves "believers" or not, is to listen for, try to ascertain and follow along in the direction of the call.

The author wrote about call in the context of a people who believed in the concept of the prophetic call or vocation. And, the Servant's call here is framed in language that Jeremiah certainly would have recognized. God said to Jeremiah :

"4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,
5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you; I
appointed you a prophet to the nations," 1:4-5.

Other prophets framed their call narrative differently. Isaiah told about an experience in the Temple, where his senses became overloaded and he heard the voice of the Lord asking who would serve God--and he responded, "Here am I; send me," (Is. 6:1-8). Amos was minding his own business watching the flock, when the Lord "took him" and sent him to prophesy to the powers that be. Calls come differently; and there is even an issue of the difference between the call itself and one's awareness of call. In any case, the Servant knows that he was claimed by God from before his birth.

III. The Prophetic Tools (v.2)

A call by itself is certainly important, but exclusive focus on call can obscure the larger issue of the equipment for the task to which one is called. Three things emerge from the passage regarding the "prophetic tools." First, the tool of choice was the Servant's mouth. Second, the prophet's whole person became like "a polished arrow." Third, it involved acts of divine protection as he is waiting to speak the Word. The Servant of God was a speaker. Knowing how to speak and what to speak is the challenge of a lifetime. Proverbs tells us that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver (25:11). Here the Servant recognizes that his mouth is like a "sharp sword"; i.e., it has to be ready to slice to the heart of things. There is so much prevarication, imprecision, confusion and outright misleading information "out there" in our world today that anyone who can speak with clarity, sharpness and pungency will be a sought-out person.

The duty and privilege of having a call which includes speaking is an immense challenge and gift. We often treat words as if they are "bricks"; i.e., a common building material to put together whatever verbal structure we are building. But we do injustice to ourselves and to the words themselves if we limit ourselves in this way. Words are the colors which streak across the verbal canvasses which we paint. We can paint with beautiful colors in a stunning way, or we can carelessly apply the paint in haphazard ways. If the call of God relates in some way to our mouth, we ought to take the most careful care of that same mouth so that what comes from it is as nearly as possible what we want to say.

I also love the words, repeated twice in v. 2, about being "hid away." The author uses two different Hebrew verbs (hechebiyani; hisetirani) which rhyme so nicely that I actually read the lines out loud as I was working through the text earlier today. The notion of being hidden away while the preparations to serve are underway and the tools are being acquired is found throughout the Scripture and is an important image to (re)capture today. We need protection, especially if we are people whose words might not always be the most conventional words spoken. We need to have quiet times to be shaped by the Word we hear from God, but we also need to be "hidden" by God in special places of divine oversight. Two of my more recent autobiographical essays explore the themes of being treasured and protected in my own life--two things that I think are very important to life and which I didn't particularly feel in my earlier days...

I have two more points to make..in the next essay.

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