Sermon Tone Analysis

October 8, 2000                                                                                                                                                                                     Pentecost 17

Isaiah 50:4-10

*One Word Sustains Us*

* *

                One day this week, I was at the hospital trying to comfort someone in pain.

I did what I always do in that situation.

I pointed her to Jesus.

I reminded her of his love.

I talked about God’s promise that all of this will be for her good and for the good of her family, no matter how difficult it is to go through.

That’s what I always do.

And I firmly believe that it’s what God wants me to do.

But I’ll be honest.

It isn’t always easy to do.

Because I’m a sinner just like you are, there’s a part of me that wonders, “Am I helping you?  Am I comforting you?”  There’s a part of me that wants to do more.

Because there really isn’t any more I can do, I often feel frustrated and inadequate.

Do you ever feel like you need to say something really profound or comforting or something that will set everything right, and you just don’t have the words to do all that?

Today, God tells us what we’re supposed to say in those situations.

And it turns out, it’s exactly what they taught us at the seminary.

Whether we can fully overcome our own feelings of inadequacy or not, what God’s people need to hear when they are in trouble is the gospel.

That’s true, because there’s nothing like the message about Jesus to pick us up and strengthen us.

*One word sustains the weary: Jesus.

*

*I.*

When I come to comfort you in the hospital, there is only one message that can help you, only one person that can make a difference.

*Jesus, prepared to serve us, sustains the weary.*

This morning, we want to look at Jesus through Old Testament eyes.

If you’ll open you service folder, we will explore the mystery that God revealed seven hundred years before Jesus came.

A mystery the Christian Church is still contemplating 2,000 years later.

Isaiah begins talking about it like this:

 

/The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue,/

/to know the word that sustains the weary./

/He wakens me morning by morning,/

/wakens my ear to listen like one being taught./

Jesus is speaking here.

He’s talking about the greatest mysteries that human minds and hearts will ever wrestle with: the way that God deals with himself.

God entered the womb of the Virgin Mary and the child that came out was totally God and at the same totally human.

I won’t even try to explain how that can be.

What Isaiah sees here is how God the Father and dealt with his human and divine Son.

On Friday, my wife was watching a video of our children right after Benjamin was born.

This little blond toddler was saying the alphabet while her tiny brother sat propped up on the couch and looked around.

Jesus was like that baby once.

He was like that toddler.

He had to learn and grow and develop because he was a real human being.

At the same time, he was really God.

He knew everything.

He could do anything.

Throughout his life, God taught Jesus to know and love him, because he was a man.

At the same time, because he was God, Jesus knew and loved his Father perfectly.

That’s why the boy Jesus in the temple amazed the teachers of the law -- he was God and he knew everything.

Yet, the account goes on to say that he grew in /wisdom/ and in stature.

Today, Isaiah hears Jesus telling him how the Father carefully prepared his Son to be the Savior.

Just three years before Jesus died, God gave him the greatest preparation for ministry.

The Father sent the Holy Spirit to anoint him when John the Baptist baptized him.

From that day forward, Jesus moved and taught and comforted his people by proclaiming that the time had finally come.

Messiah was here.

God the Father gave his Son the word that sustains the weary -- the word he already knew.

And how many times don’t we see Jesus doing that?

From the moment he called his first disciples and told them they would see heaven opened until the last hours of his life when he looked down and asked his closest friend to care for his mother.

And during the years in between, when Jesus comforted the weary, healed the sick, and changed people’s lives by telling them that the kingdom of God had finally arrived.

He told them he was their Savior.

And he tells us the exact same thing.

When God instructed his Son in the hardships of being human and sent his Spirit to prepare him to preach and teach and heal and comfort, he wasn’t just looking at the people who lived at that time and in that corner of the world.

Untold millions of people have heard the word that sustains the weary.

95 or so of those people are here today to hear the message that day after day, God the Father taught Jesus Christ, his Son and Mary’s son.

What do we need when the wind goes out of our sails?

What do we need our pastor to share with us in pain and anguish and distress?

We need Jesus.

We need his love.

We need his message.

*II.*

There’s more to the story though than just that Jesus cares about us.

To really get the comfort that comes from Jesus’ love, we need to hear what he did for us.

*Jesus, unstoppable in suffering, sustains the weary.*

Let’s read the next few verses of Isaiah’s prophecy.

/The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears,/

/and I have not been rebellious;/

/I have not drawn back./

/I offered my back to those who beat me,/

/my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;/

/I did not hide my face/

/from mocking and spitting./

/Because the Sovereign LORD helps me,/

/I will not be disgraced./

/Therefore have I set my face like flint,/

/and I know I will not be put to shame./

When I was a kid, we had a refrigerator that had some kind of electrical problem.

If you touched the handle and any other piece of metal at the same time, you’d get a shock.

My older brother was always trying to get me to touch it just right.

Naturally, I got to be a little suspicious.

If he wanted me to touch something, my first instinct was to pull my hand back.

God the Father didn’t trick Jesus into anything.

He called him to serve in a way that no one else ever could or would.

Jesus accepted that call.

He laid his own body on the line for us.

Isaiah saw it all centuries before it happened.

Jesus told him about beating and spitting and mocking.

He mentions one thing that maybe you don’t recognize: he talks about his beard being pulled out.

If that literally happened, the gospels simply don’t tell us.

They don’t give us every detail they could.

But it’s also possibly that this expression is symbolic.

Once, when a foreign king wanted to insult King David, he shaved pff half the beards of his messengers.

Jesus’ point here may simply be that he let himself be humiliated and abused.