Isaiah 50:4-11
The Third Servant Song

I. How Do You React?
1. How do you react to a challenge? Maybe we need to be challenged more and challenge others more.
2. Maybe you react better to encouragement. Some of us react much better affirmation.
3. How do you react to criticism? The people who criticize often react the worst when they are criticized.
4. How do you react to suffering? Do you pull back, take the easy way out? Pain makes us recoil.
II. The Response of the Servant (50:4-6)
A. His Speaking
1. The Lord is called “Lord God” or “Sovereign Lord,” The ultimate Lord, the King of the universe.
2. The Servant is a good teacher, a skilled speaker. God has made Him an effective speaker.
3. He “knows how to sustain with a word him who is weary”. He’s skilled in speaking the truth in love.
4. He reacts to the weary and the broken with patience, with healing, with the right words.
B. His Listening
1. Every morning, Jesus was taught by the Father. He was quick to listen. He heard and learned.
2. Every day on earth, as the Servant, He awoke seeking to be taught. So He grew in wisdom.
3. The Sovereign Lord opened His ear. Pray that the Sovereign Lord would open your ears.
4. The Servant heard the leading of the Father and was not rebellious. He didn’t draw back.
5. Peter rebuked Jesus for saying He was going to suffer, be killed, and finally be raised.
6. On Palm Sunday the crowds hailed Him coming into Jerusalem as their soon-to-be king.
7. At Gethsemane, He prayed that this suffering could be taken from Him. But He didn’t pull back.
8. He “gave” His back to those who strike. He deliberately gave Himself to suffering, purposefully.
9. He gave Himself to those who pull out the beard, to cruel, sadistic abusers.
10. Jesus knew that’s what He was going to Jerusalem for on that Palm Sunday.
11. He hid not His face from disgrace and spitting. He wouldn’t dodge being humiliated.
12. The response of the Servant to the cross was to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
III. The Resolve of the Servant (50:7-9)
1. As He comes on Palm Sunday, He sees the lashes on His back and plucked beard that await Him.
2. The torment is described in Isaiah 53 (Good Friday), as so bad we’re asked, “Who has believed” this?.
3. He is able to see that, and yet, not step back from it, because, the “Lord God” helps Him.
4. With the vision of that exaltation ahead, He says, “I have set My face like a flint.” (cf. Luke 9:51).
5. “When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem.” (Lk. 9:51).
6. He went from a mountain top of glory to one with a cross and He didn’t pull back.
7. We set our face toward our comfort. We recoil from what’s hard because our comfort is our goal.
8. The resolve of the Servant was to go to the cross, to save His people.
9. He knows that He will not be put to shame. Eventually every knee will bow. He will be vindicated.
10. If He’s justified by God, who can contend with Him? If God is for Him, who can be against Him?
11. Who’s going to be His adversary, His accuser? Satan? He challenge everyone to accuse Him.
12. No one can accuse Him. He has no skeleton in the closet; no sin of His own to die for.
13. If we believe in Him, we are “in Him”. God is also the One who vindicates us if we were Him.
14. All our accusers won’t be able to separate us from God’s love because our sin has been taken away.
15. So, all those things will wear out. Even death is temporary. They’re like a garment eaten up by moths.
16. Only the Sovereign Lord, the Servant, God in all His fullness, and we who are in Him will be left.
IV. The Reverence for the Servant (50:10-11)
1. How do you react to Him? With reverence or with self-reliance? Faith is fearing, fearing is obeying.
2. “Who among you fears the Lord?” If your faith doesn’t produce fear of God, it’s not real faith.
4. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son” no life...” (John 3:36.)
5. “Who among you fears the Lord and — a reaction — obeys the voice of His Servant” Jesus? You?
6. If you can’t see the next step, then “trust in the name of the Lord”, the name of Jesus. Rely on your God.
7. The ways of obedience bring days of darkness. But trust God through those dark days.
8. But, if you kindle a fire, trying to make do-it-yourself light, security in money, instead of by faith . . . .
9. The Servant promises, ‘this is what I’m going to give you,’ “You shall lie down in torment”: hell.
V. Invitation: Now, do you fear the Lord? Do you react with reverence for the Servant? That’s the only rational response. He’s speaking to you. Has the Lord opened your ears to hear it? He gave His back to be struck for you; His beard to be plucked for you, so He could be the one who vindicates you and when even death itself is worn out and undone, then there will be no guilt separating you from the Sovereign Lord. How do you react to that?