The words around which our thoughts are going to be gathered
today are at the beginning of the forty-second chapter of the
prophecies of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 42, verse 1: "Behold, My
servant, whom I uphold; My chosen, in whom My soul delighteth..."
and for the moment, the first clause: "Behold My servant". And we
are going to be occupied with: "the servant of the Lord", that is,
with the nature, the method, and the means of the service of God.
What is True Service to God?
How, and by what means God is most truly served; I'm sure that we
are all concerned with a matter of this kind, that our being here
on this earth, our passing this way only once (and when it comes
near to the end, it seems to have been so short, so swift) but
that it shall have meant that in some vital way, the Lord shall
have been served by our being here. That, I say, surely goes to
the heart of every one of us, and therefore we will respond to any
help that may be given in the understanding of how that
can be. And that is the thing that the Lord has laid on my heart
for this time.
For those who have but a superficial knowledge of the Bible, it
only needs to be mentioned in order for it to spring into life and
recognition, that the idea of service, the law of service, is a
dominant one throughout all the Scriptures. When we open our Bible
and begin, we find that man was not only made - himself as
something to satisfy a Divine idea - and not only was he given a
great wealth of things to enjoy and by which to profit, but he was
given a trust. He was put in trust by God, he was called
immediately into a vocation. And from there, right on through the
Bible, that law of vocation, that principle of service, is a
golden thread running through the whole fabric, till we reach the
end of the Bible. And among the last words are these: "And His
servants shall serve Him, and they shall see His face".
Abraham's election and call was, above everything else,
vocational. The same was manifestly true of Moses, who goes down
in history with the title: "Moses, My servant" - the servant of
the Lord. Israel's very constitution and redemption was on the
basis of: "Let My people go that they may serve Me." The Lord's
service governed their very beginning, and remained the law of
their life; it determined everything where they were concerned. It
is very clear that this is true of David, and of all the
intermediary servants of the Lord: the priests, and the kings, and
the prophets, and the nation. They all represented this Divine
idea of a purpose to be served, a vocation to be fulfilled, a work
to be done for God.
And when we pass into the New Testament, this truth is so
self-evident that we should be perhaps wasting time to stay to
point it out. There is a great phrase with which we are very
familiar, used by the apostle Paul: "called according to His
purpose" - and that is a very comprehensive phrase. But we must
interpret it aright. "Called according to His purpose" does not
just mean 'called to be something', although it does mean that;
or, 'called to have something', although it means that. It means
supremely: 'called to a great vocation'. "Called according to His
purpose" relates to a work to be done; something in which God
Himself is to be served.
The idea of service, and servanthood, runs through these
prophecies from which we have extracted this fragment, the
prophecies of Isaiah. And in a certain section of this book, this
idea comes out as being the very core, and the very sum of
everything else in the book. You will think about it, and go back
to it with this thought in mind, you will find that all that is in
this book (and there is much in it) circles around this vocation
of the servant of the Lord. Much of the tragedy that is recorded
here, is simply the tragedy of the Lord's people in their failure
in this very matter of vocation. And all the hope and the prospect
that is presented, is closely bound up with the recovery of this
vocation.
There is a great deal here; I would like to spend time with this
book, taking you right through with this word "servant". I think I
shall not do that, although I have underlined in this book the
word, and am myself tremendously impressed (and you would be also)
with the large number of times that the word "servant'" occurs in
these prophecies. If you have not noticed it, I suggest that you
do what I have done, that you lift the book of Isaiah right out,
and then read it in the light of this one word, the word
"servant". And you will come to the same conclusion that I have
come to, that the core of everything here, the sum of everything
here, is servanthood, or the service of the Lord.
Now, when we do consider the book in the light of this dominant
factor, we find that it resolves itself into three aspects. First
of all, the fact that:
This Servant Vocation was Fundamental to the Choice
of the Whole Nation.
That is, the people of God as a people. Let me repeat that: it is
made perfectly clear that this conception of servanthood was
fundamental to their election, to their choice and separation,
their calling, and their constitution. In a sense, a very real
sense, this book reveals that their existence was hanging upon
this one thing: a Divine vocation - their service to God. And,
should they fail there, there is no longer any justification for
them being that nation. But then that is exactly what did happen.
There is the fundamental calling, or law of their calling:
service, or servanthood - but, as a whole, as a nation in
entirety, they failed in this very thing. And because of that,
they are put aside. And this book sees the nation, at least for
the time being, set on one side, put out of its place, and totally
inoperative in relation to God - a time of suspended usefulness
and poverty, right out of the way, and all because of this one
thing, failure in the very constituent of their existence: the
servant of the Lord.
Well, you will be recalling some of these passages which I have
not stayed to quote or turn to, which relate this very phrase "My
servant", to Israel. "Thus saith the Lord to Israel, Thou art My
servant..." To Jacob, "Thou art My servant". That is a collective
term, so it was. That was the first thing, that the idea of the
people of God, as a corporate whole, is that of servanthood. Let's
hold that, because we have got to come back and say much more
about that.
The second thing, because of the failure of the nation as a
whole, we find a transition.
A Transition from the Nation to a Single Person
Person spelt with a capital 'P'. Whereas in the first instance
the nation was termed, "My servant", that was taken away from the
nation and transferred to this Individual, this Person. And so we
could take up a second series of passages from the book, which
bring that Person into view: "My servant, My chosen, in whom My
soul delighteth". That is a contrasting picture with that which
has ceased to satisfy the soul of God. There begins then, this
presentation and unveiling of this Servant of the Lord as related
to the Messiah, the Christ - all these Messianic prophecies about
the Lord Jesus as the Servant of Jehovah. In that Person, all the
original, full, perfect thoughts of God as to servanthood - the
essential meaning of it - all that was taken up, exemplified, and
fulfilled in this Individual, in this One, "My Servant". That's
the second thing that this book brings so clearly into view.
The third:
The Reappearance and Perpetuation of the Idea
in a Remnant.
Lost in the whole nation, saved in the Individual,
deposited in a remnant. A remnant constituted on the basis
of the Individual, taking its character from The Servant
of the Lord, as that one Person. The word "remnant" occurs some
dozen times in this book, but we know so well that it runs through
most of the prophets. It is a governing idea in the
prophets: "a remnant shall return"; "the Lord will preserve unto
Himself a remnant". And that remnant becomes the repository of
this Divine law of servanthood. One of the last things said about
the remnant in the Old Testament is: "My peculiar treasure". "My
peculiar treasure", and not because of what they were in
themselves, but because of the purpose which they served in recovering
the Divine thought of servanthood.
So we have here these three things: the nation, its
calling on the principle of servanthood, and its tragic failure.
The Person introduced - and what an introduction in
chapter 9 - what an introduction of the Servant! Everybody is
familiar with the words descriptive of Him there - "Wonderful,
Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace" - He
is introduced in full terms. Chapter eleven: "Unto us a
son is born; unto us a child is given..." and so on. Here He is
described in the following verses of that presentation, as to His
spiritual nature and character; we will not stay with all those
details at the moment. Here He is introduced, appointed, tested
through suffering. For remember, at the heart of Isaiah 53 is: "My
righteous servant..." - "My righteous servant shall justify many"
- tested through suffering, and triumphant: "My servant shall be
very great, very high." And then the remnant - purged, purged also through
suffering, and finally attested: "My peculiar treasure".
Let us
step back a moment. This book has a very great deal in it about
the judgment of the nation, that nation. Its judgment fills many
pages, and while worldliness was the cause of the
judgment, it was the vocation that was the crux of the
whole matter. We must ever remember this, that the vocation of the
people of God rests entirely upon their separateness from this
world. Therefore, to destroy to nullify, to paralyse their mighty,
God-given vocation, the great enemy will always seek to create a
link between them and this world. That was the burden of the
prophets: the link that had come about between this nation
and the other nations and this world, resulting in their being
found totally incapable of fulfilling their vocation in the world,
and among the nations. The judgment was not only because of
condition, but because of failure in the very object of their
existence. If something ceases to fulfil the purpose for which it
was created, it may still be that object, that entity, but with
God, it no longer stands where it did stand in His acceptance,
when the purpose of its creation is lost. Well, that of course, is
something quite obvious, but you know there's a principle wrapped
up in that. We all ought to recognise, what matters to God is not
just that we are Christians, called God's people; it is that we
are fulfilling the purpose of our existence as such, the
vocational purpose, and walking "worthily of the calling wherewith
we are called".
As to the Person, it is quite clear from what I have said, and
from the reading of this book, that He is central, He is central
to everything. It is impressive that so early in the book, at the
point marked by our division of chapters as chapter 9, so early He
is introduced, as though He is placed there to dominate all that
follows. A great deal is going to follow, but it will all be under
the shadow of this One, whom God has Himself appointed. He is
central.
As to the remnant, all we at this moment would say, but we've got
a lot more to say presently, is that the remnant represents the
abiding principle of God's purpose and God's method. We are
familiar with this fact, that when the large, the main, the big,
the extensive thing fails God, His reaction is not to abandon His
purpose, but to take it up in a representative company, called in
the Old Testament the "remnant". That is God's principle and God's
method of continuity. He has followed that all through history.
Now, when we pass to the New Testament, for it is possible that
you have been thinking: "Well, that is all Old Testament; that's
all Israel; what has that to do with us?" Well, listen. When we
pass to the New Testament, what we find, in the first place, is
that that nation, as such, is displaced. There's no doubt about
it. You open your Gospels, that nation is no longer in the place
of Divine favour; it's no longer standing in the place of Divine
vocation. It is under judgment, which judgment is coming near to
fulfilment. It is displaced.
But secondly, we find this Person, not now in prophecy, but
actually present in all the terms of the prophecies. Here He is;
He is present. And all that the prophet and the prophets said
about Him is now actually on the spot. He is here, with all the
features that have been foreshadowed about Him.
But thirdly, a new nation is being brought in. To use Peter's
description - and mark you, Peter was not speaking of the
Israel after the flesh, he is speaking concerning the church: "Ye
are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for
God's own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of
Him who brought you out of darkness into His marvellous light."
That's a summary of calling and the purpose of calling, and the
nature of the call. A new nation is being brought in. In the
fulfilment of one judgment phrase of the Lord Jesus to the old
nation, "The kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you, and
given to a nation bringing forth the fruit thereof" -
vocation. And so, with the New Testament, the new nation is
introduced, and on the way to being made up, added to. But, the
shadow comes in too soon.
The fourth thing that we find before we are through our New
Testament is incipient decline and apostasy; worldliness again -
that devastating thing - creeping into the church. And judgment of
the church now being foretold and begun. As a whole, this new
nation is beginning to fail in the purpose for which it was raised
up. And this, in general, is nigh unto - to use the very
unpleasant phrase, but it's Scripture - being "spued out of God's
mouth". It is a terrible thought concerning a holy nation, but
there it is. But that is not the end of the Old [New] Testament.
There is God's acting again, and His old law and principle being
followed out - the remnant - "he that overcometh".
I was impressed in reading through Isaiah again, and coming to
the later chapters, where the servant idea is in the plural so
many times. I think, if I remember rightly, some eleven times in
the later chapters, after chapter 54, that here it is in the
singular - that is "servants", "servants", right up to that point
it has been collective, and now it is individuals - "servants,
servants... My servants". Now, let us be careful, that does not
mean that the Divine idea of collective servanthood has been
abandoned, as we shall see in a minute, but it corresponds to what
we have in those early chapters of the Book of the Revelation: "He
that hath an ear to hear..." see, it's personal. And, as in the
last chapters of Isaiah, so in those first chapters of Revelation,
the corporate is made up of individuals who have got the idea!
Now it is not something just general, vague and indefinite, now
it is people - individuals, if you like - who have seen
what God intended, who have grasped the Divine meaning in the
existence of the church, and who have made a personal response to
stand for that; and they've become the new representation of the
Divine intention. They are corporate by reason of their
one vision, their one apprehension.
Well, it's like that, it is like that today, isn't it? In general
there is a very uncertain and indefinite apprehension of God's
eternal purpose.
Multitudes of Christians are very vague about the immense thing
which lies behind their calling of God; what it is they are called
unto. Let me put it like this. How many Christians, perhaps how
many in this very company, could give an answer to a question on
those various fragments of Paul's prayer for the church: "That you
may know what is the hope of His calling".
Can you write down what that is, "the hope of His calling"? Could
you answer an examination on what's "the riches of His inheritance
in the saints"? Not your inheritance in Him, but His in you, in
the church. And what could you say about what's "the exceeding
greatness of His power to us-ward who believe"? What do you know
about it? It is not a judgment, but a statement of fact that
multitudes of Christians do not know; haven't any idea of the
meaning of their salvation, in terms of God's great eternal
purpose; what it means to Him to have a church through the ages of
the ages. But there are, here and there, those who "have an ear to
hear what the Spirit says", scattered individuals who have
glimpsed it, who have grasped it, who sensed it; the eyes of whose
hearts have been enlightened by a Spirit of wisdom and revelation,
and have some, even if only a small, measure of apprehension of
what God is after. That is how it turns out at the end of the
prophecies of Isaiah; that is how it is in the day of general
declension in the New Testament: the remnant company of those who
have an ear to hear what the Spirit says.
So we have here again, to summarise: the church, the elect vessel
of the timeless purpose of God. We have here the Servant. The
Servant, exalted through faithfulness and suffering, constituted
the example, the pattern of all service to God for the church. And
the remnant that takes its character and its purpose most truly
and most fully from that Person. You see where that leads us - the
necessity for seeing the Servant, for knowing the
principles of His Servanthood - understanding the nature of the
service of God in the light of The Servant in whom God's soul
delighted.
But that lies ahead. I am going to finish by drawing your
attention to an arresting and very important feature of this whole
presentation. And I ask you therefore to seek grace to grasp this
arresting and so important feature of the whole matter.
Now then, the nation and the church (the nation in the Old
Testament, Israel, and the church in the New) is always visualised
as a single entity, a corporate person. It may be comprised of
many tens or hundreds of thousands, but it is one servant - My
Servant. In the thought and mind of God, it is a single entity.
If, at any time, or anywhere, the plural is used, "servants", all
are looked upon as parts of this one entity. And the thing which
constitutes this singleness of identity, is the vocation.
If any part falls out of the vocation, it falls out of its life
with God; it is relegated to a position where it is out of the eye
of God for all good. So one is this Servant of the Lord - it may
be a nation; it may be a remnant. It is always spoken of in this
way of being a single entity.
Now, in the Bible (and this is a very interesting and impressive
thing) the nation is sometimes narrowed down to perhaps a single
person, and, for that time, in the mind of God, that person is the
nation. That individual is the nation, in representation. And God
deals with that individual on the basis of the nation. God's
dealings with that individual are just as though He were dealing
with the whole nation. I say that is a tremendously impressive
thing; an arresting thing. Sometimes the High Priest is looked
upon as the nation. You remember the High Priest clothed with
filthy garments, he stands there before God as the nation; it is
the nation in its uncleanness that is represented. And when God
says: "Take away the filthy garments, and put a fair mitre upon
his head", He is speaking collectively concerning the nation,
because at that time, the nation was in weakness and defeat
because of its defilement, and satan, the Adversary, stood at the
right hand of the priest to resist him. And the power of the Evil
One could not be undone until the filthiness of the nation was
removed, as in the person of the high priest. And then, when the
filthy garments were taken away, and the fair mitre was put upon
his head, the word was: "The Lord rebuke thee, satan, even the
Lord." You see the individual as the nation.
Sometimes it is the king; so bound up with the nation, and the
nation so bound up with the king, that God deals with the king as
a kind of national entity. That was true of David when he numbered
Israel. Sometimes it is the prophet. How some of these prophets
had to be put through 'national' experiences, in order to fulfil
their servanthood. They were 'national' individuals. Or, to take
this principle from another standpoint: what about Achan? Achan is
one man in a nation; Achan sins, and the whole nation is arrested
in its onward march of victory, and brought into defeat. And, when
the search is made, the Lord answers: "Israel has sinned" - not, "Achan
has sinned" - "Israel hath sinned". This thought is
in God's mind, that there is this corporate entity; every part is
so much a part of the rest, in God's mind. Now, that is true in
Israel, as can be so clearly seen, and that is what is so fully
taught in the New Testament: "The body is one... yet having many
members" - it is one! And it is one by reason of its function, its
vocation - what it is called to do.
This not only applies in the Bible to individuals, but this
principle is seen to apply to the few; it applies to the remnant.
In that day of the remnant, God looks upon the remnant as the
nation. That is for the moment, to God, the nation. That is for
Him, for the time being, the whole. It embodies everything in
God's thought. What I am trying to get at is this: this matter of
vocation or servanthood, is corporate; it is not just individual.
I wonder, with all our teaching of the nature of the church, the
Body of Christ, if we have yet grasped the reality of this. It is
essential to servanthood, essential to vocation, essential to the
kind of service that God requires: it is not just individual, it
is corporate. Representation and responsibility are much bigger
than the individuals. God does not deal with you and with me just
as individual Christians. God deals with us because of our
relatedness to all the others, in the great vocation of the
church.
If you and I, as individuals, default, and fail, we affect the
vocation of the church in some mysterious way; we weaken the
whole. The strength, life, and effectiveness of any company of
believers, is affected by the individuals that make it up. Make no
mistake about it: you cannot live in sin, you cannot fail the Lord
in any way, and it remain with you, and you go on like that, as
just one, and say: "Well, I am only one, it does not matter so
much!" It cannot be. This law is written through the whole of the
Divine revelation: that what is true of the individual, affects
the whole in the realm of the Holy Spirit. A company may be held
from blessing, from effectiveness, from fulfilling the vocation,
or from God's approval, because somewhere there are individuals
who are out of touch with Him, who are wrong, who are in sin. Now,
if you have any doubt about that, you go to your New Testament
again, and see how true that is.
Responsibility is in representation. That is, an individual may
represent the whole, as Achan; a small company in any one place
may represent the whole church, with God. It is a tremendous
thing, is it not, that that may be true. Oh, that in our local
companies, things were more as God would have them! What an
influence and effect it would have on the whole church. God must
have it; He must have His thought in fulness represented, in order
that it might be like the plummet, the plumb-line for His whole
church. This is something to take account of. And remember, God
deals with us in this way. His dealings with us individually are
not just His dealings with us as individuals. Have you grasped
this? He is dealing with us church-wise; holy nation-wise.
We have often said that that man, the apostle Paul, who was
particularly and peculiarly raised up of God to bring in the full
revelation of the church for this dispensation, himself went
through all the experiences of the church. "I fill up that which
is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, which
is the church." There is a man suffering - and what sufferings!
They look like the sufferings of any ordinary person in some ways:
shipwreck, hunger, nakedness, cold, treachery, perils and so on.
Yes, but he says: "They are sufferings of Christ for His body's
sake, which is the church." In those sufferings, the history of
the church is implicit. Today, you and I, in this place, are
benefiting from those sufferings of the apostle Paul and the whole
church has been affected by them. The history of the church has
passed into his constitution, into his very experience. He became
the dispensational embodiment of the truths that he was called
upon to enunciate. And that is not isolated to the apostle Paul.
If any company is going to be an example to the church of God's
full thought, that company is going to be dealt with most
thoroughly; it will get away with nothing that is contrary to
God's mind. Its experience will be one of travail, suffering,
discipline and purging. The history of the whole will come into
its experience; God's thought for the whole will be there in
operation. It explains a lot. Many an individual suffers, not
because they are so important in themselves; not because of their
weakness or failure; but because of their relatedness to the whole
purpose of God. Now, that is something that is arresting, and has
to be taken hold of. You can see it in the case of Christ, of
course.
Christ was baptized into the national history of Israel. He took
up in His own single Person all that Israel was called to, and
failed in, and the judgment following. His was the history of
Israel, summed up in a single Person. He went to the cross as
Israel. That is what many exponents found themselves incapable of
understanding in Isaiah; "Who is the prophet speaking about? Some
prophet? Some servant? Some unidentified person, some nation? What
is he talking about? It is all so mixed up!" The individual is the
nation; the individual's sufferings, as in Isaiah 53: "for My
people... for the iniquity of My people... for the
transgression of My people was He afflicted". He has taken
the nation into His experience, and the cross is Israel under
judgment in a Person. It is so very clear in the case of Christ,
and He, personally, is not one alone; He is corporate. The world,
not only Israel, was in Him on the cross. The whole creation was
there in Him at Calvary. He took up the purpose of the creation,
He took up the failure of the creation; He took up the sin of the
whole world. He took up the judgment of it all, and as the whole
creation, He suffered, He died, that there should be, by His
resurrection, a new creation.
It is creational; it is cosmic, that Cross; it is not just the
cross of an individual - it is corporate, collective. The church
cannot unrelate itself to the world in this way. While it has got
to be separate from the world-principle, and the world-spirit, and
that is perfectly patent in the Word, yet, in the matter of
vocation, you and I, and the church, cannot unrelate ourselves to
the world. We are to be in the world. Before God, the travail for
this world has got to be in our souls; the salvation of this world
has got to be a matter of anguish with us. The world has got to be
in our hearts. If God so loved the world, that same love has got
to be in our hearts. We cannot just be a church apart, or churches
apart, or individuals apart. This is a world thing. We represent,
and should exemplify, God's will and God's thought for the world.
It is collective.
Perhaps we have to be baptized into the sufferings and the
sorrows of men to fulfil our vocation. If the church, in the wrong
sense, becomes worldly, that does not break the principle; it is
judged with the world. The judgment on the world falls upon the
church, if it becomes worldly in the wrong sense. But, our
relatedness is such, so vital, that God would look upon us, as we
are on our knees, as He would look upon the world, and He would
say: "There is the world and its need, its need being suffered
for, travailed for!" The Lord give us larger vision.
I do want to underline this great law of the corporate nature of
vocation. There is far more bound up with this than we have
recognised. "No man lives unto himself... no man dies unto
himself". You cannot just be a separate individual if you are a
member of this holy nation, this Body of Christ!