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“Servus servorum Dei”
Isaiah 42
1. Commission for Service
Behold My servant, whom I uphold.
A servant is one who is at the disposal of another—“a servant of the servants of God.” Christianity is the deification of this type of service. Jesus Christ Himself is the servant of all—“I am in the midst of you as He that serveth” (rv), and Paul delights to call himself “a bondservant of Jesus”†† (rv mg). If you want to know what a servant of God is to be like, read what Isaiah says in this chapter and the following ones about the great Servant, Jesus Christ. The characteristics of the great Servant must be the characteristics of every servant; it is the identification of the servant of God with the immortal characteristics of God Himself.
In service for God we have to be abandoned to Him, let Him put us where He will, whether He blesses us or crushes us with burdens, we have nothing to do with what it costs. God will bring folks round in order to see whether He can put anything on you to bear for them—“I can put the burden of insight on that man, that woman, they have only one interest in life, and that is Myself.” Would to God that we would get finished once for all with the experience of being rightly adjusted to God, and let Him begin to send us forth into vicarious service for Him! May God make us understand that if we are in His service He will do exactly what He likes with us. We are not saved and sanctified for ourselves, but for God to crush us with burdens if He chooses. What do we know about filling up that which remains behind of the sufferings of Christ? A servant of Jesus Christ is one who is willing to go to martyrdom for the reality of the Gospel of God.
2. Character of the Servant
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. (Isaiah 42:2)
This verse refers to the tone of the servant, self-effaced to such an extent that self is not thought of; nothing sickly or sentimental, but complete self-effacement so that Jesus only is known. The servant is absorbed in Jesus as He was in God. The mark of false service is the self-conscious pride of striving after God’s favour. “The Holy Ghost will glorify Me,” said Jesus.
“He shall not . . . cause his voice to be heard in the street,” i.e., he shall not advertise himself. Nothing is entered into for the sake of self-vindication; just as Our Lord never showed any desire to be found in the right, but only a strong desire that the right of God should have its way. Could we stand the humiliation Jesus stood of having words flung at us without saying “Now I must explain”? Men never heard His voice in the street vindicating Himself, but watch Him in the Temple, with a whip of small cords in His hand driving out the moneychangers†††; then it was His Father’s honour that was at stake.
3. Considerateness of the Service
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.
This verse refers to the quality of the service. The accuser of the brethren comes and says to God, “That man is a broken reed, don’t build any hope on him whatever, he is a hindrance and an upset to You; break him.” But no, the Lord will bind up the broken reed and make it into a wonderful instrument and discourse sweet music through it. Or Satan insinuates—“That woman is a perfect disgrace to You, she has only one spark of grace among all the fibres of her being, the best thing to do is to stamp out that spark.” But no, He will raise it to a flame. The whole conception of the work of a servant of God is to lift up the despairing and the hopeless. Immediately you start work on God’s line He will bring the weak and infirm round you, the surest sign that God is at work is that that is the class who come—the very class we don’t want, with the pain and the distress and limitation. We want the strong and robust, and God gathers round us the feeble-minded, the afflicted and weak. Pain in God’s service always leads to glory. We want success, God wants glory. Some of us have the notion, till God shakes it out of us, that we are saved and sanctified to have a holy hilarious time before God and among men. Never! We are saved and sanctified to be the servants of men—“ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
4. The Creator’s Call to the Servant
Thus saith God . . . , He that created the heavens and stretched them out; . . . I the Lord have called thee in righteousness. . . . (Isaiah 42:5-6)
Naturally we never look to Nature for illustrations of the spiritual life, we look at the methods of business men, at man’s handiwork. Our Lord drew all His illustrations from His Father’s handiwork, He spoke of lilies and trees and grass and sparrows. As Christians we have to feast our souls on the things ignored by practical people. A false spirituality blots Nature right out. The way to keep your spiritual life un-panicky, free from hysterics and fuss, free from flagging and breaking, is to consider the bits of God’s created universe you can see where you are. Foster your life on God and on His creation and you will find a new use for Nature. Read the life of Jesus—the calm, unhasting, unperturbed majesty of His life is like the majesty of the stars in their courses because both are upheld by the same power. Nothing happens in history or in Nature without God’s permission and under His direct control. When the saints say, “God gave us good weather”; “He overruled that disaster for my good”; “He changed the wind”—in the eyes of the world, it is absurd. None of these things happens by chance, they have a distinct permissive purpose behind, and the saint discerns this. Jesus bases everything on what looks ridiculous to the eyes of common sense if God is ignored. Take intercessory prayer—how ridiculous it looks for a being like you or me to pray and expect God to answer: is it? It becomes the sublimest truth when we get hold of these principles.
“To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” That is the “Beulah” of the saints, the land of rest to which the service of men will bring men when it is performed in God’s way. The law of God running all through the Bible is that every spiritual nature must be able to reproduce its kind, otherwise it abides alone; not produce the attitude of life, you can do that by your creeds, but produce your own kind. “Go . . . and make disciples” (rv), said Jesus, and you cannot disciple others unless you are a disciple yourself. God regenerates lives; we disciple those whom He regenerates.
“I am the Lord: that is My name.” The one test of a saint, which is another name for servant, is that he knows the incommunicable Name.
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