“TO YOU IS REVEALED THE ARM OF THE LORD”
Isaiah 53. 1-2
Lententide Midweek I: 8 March Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
“Who hath believed our report” wrote the Prophet Isaiah around 500 B.C. That was a true statement then; it was an accurate assessment 530 years later; it still stands today as the “Scandal of the Cross;” the affront of the “Suffering Servant.”
“Who hath believed our report” questions the Prophet. The answer of course was not very many people at all. Cain did not believe the report of the “Promised Seed” and so he murdered his brother, the Shepherd Abel. The Sons of Jacob also succumbed to their sinful natures, and in a moment of supreme doubt of the Lord’s goodness and future purpose, sold their brother, the Shepherd Joseph into captivity. The Shepherd Moses was conspired against, blasphemed, and persecuted by many, if not most, of the Israelites for 40 years.
To be sure, it is sometimes hard to distinguish a non-believer from a believing sinner. There is a difference. Moses believed in the coming Messiah even though he sinned every day of his life. He repented and asked God for forgiveness and greater faith. The same is true of Joseph, his father Jacob and the other patriarchs. But there were untold number of Israelites who even in spite of the great revelations of the Lord in power and might, in signs, wonders and miracles still refused to believe. We know this because the hallmark of unbelief is the hard-hearted resistance to trust. It isn’t that all of your daily actions (words and thoughts for that matter) must comport to the Decalogue or you’re a pagan scum. No, we all sin daily. But in Whom do you trust? Who do you look to for comfort, for solace, for help in time of need? If a person looks to the Lord God and His Messiah, than that person indeed is one who has believed “Our Report.” The “Report” to which Isaiah refers is the Counsel of God; the Proclamation of His Law and His Gospel.
At the time of Isaiah, and for hundreds of years prior, going all the way back to the death of Solomon, the Jews in Jerusalem and the surrounding country turned their collective backs on the Lord of their Fathers. The people of Judea did not believe in the Good News of the coming Savior. The Jews apostatized and begin worshipping Asherah poles, and burning incense to strange celestial deities on their roof-tops and in the other “High Places.” These Jews rejected the Lord and instead trusted gods of their own making, choosing, and desire. They emulated the heathen practices of those other peoples that they had never quite driven out from the Promised Land.
The Lord God sent Isaiah to the lapsed Judeans. God called and ordained Isaiah to be His pastor in Jerusalem; His Shepherd for the way-ward and lost flock; His spokesman prophet. Sinner though he was, Isaiah faithfully spoke the words which the Lord gave him to speak. Isaiah also wrote the text that was meant to be recorded.
How was the “Arm of the Lord” revealed to the Israelites? The Messiah continued to be shared with all “who had ears to hear” by the spoken prophecies of men like Isaiah. But the Judeans didn’t like what he was saying. Isaiah called their worship practices abominable; he told them to repent and change. Isaiah foretold a long captivity in a foreign nation if they refused to come back to the Lord. The people didn’t like being told they were sinners. The people refused the “Arm of the Lord” and instead choose their own arms, feet, wills, and actions.
Why did they resist the Holy Ghost doing His work through Isaiah? Why does anyone refuse to believe the Word of the Lord? Well, yes, sin is the answer; the enemy will of the “Old Adam” always struggles. But also mankind then, mankind at the time of Christ, and all of you today, rebels at the “kind” of Messiah that God deigned to send.
There was to be no new & improved King David that the Judeans could rally behind as he took them new triumphs and better victories. There was no “health and wealth” preached by Isaiah; there was no “name it, claim it” power of positive thinking given out by the Prophet. Both then and now your Messiah, your God is the “Suffering Servant.”
“For He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.”
This is the Scandal of the Cross. The Pagan man desires power, proof and positions of glory. The Lord God gives a Messiah born in a barn of a Virgin. The Lord gives a “deliverer” who has no outwardly kingly features, feats or fashions. And not only did Jesus appear as a “run-of-the-mill” Galilean Carpenter He allowed Himself (He with no form nor comeliness; no beauty) to become a convicted traitor to Rome and “Troubler of Israel.” The very Children of His Father that He came to Ransom back from Sin’s clutches refused Him; refused His Word; did not “Believe His Report.”
But you, you have heard the voice of God through the mouth and pen of Isaiah. You have had the Spirit of the Trinity convert your deadened and blackened heart. You have been plunged under the regenerative waters of Baptism and plunged into the Bloody side of The “Suffering Servant.” You have received your belief, your faith, in the “Arm of the Lord” by the Grace of God through the Scriptures and through the Sacraments. You believe the “Arm of the Lord” battled valiantly for you in a perfect life of obedience under the Law. You believe the “Arm of the Lord” i.e. the Hands and arms of Jesus broke bread for you in an upper room, were bound for you in Gethsemane and were punctured for you on a tree. You have faith in that “Report,” but even more you have the belief in the ever present Forgiveness and Strength that comes to you in the “Arm of the Lord.” The “Arm” which has sprinkled water on your head, which has absolved you of your trespasses and which feeds into your mouth the Body and Blood of the victim, priest, Lamb, Shepherd, God…”Suffering Servant.” To you is revealed “The Arm of The Lord.”
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost