Isaiah [Part 10] - The Servant of the Lord

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. We did two lessons on Isaiah chapter 40 because it is a very important chapter that starts kind of a new phase of Isaiah: a prophetic phase, a prophetic phase that deals with the future and with the Messianic aspects of the book of Isaiah. Now we are in chapter 41 of Isaiah, and I'm going to start from verse 8. I'm going to read verse 8 through 13 in order to be able to gather the thoughts in our hearts. May the Lord enlighten us all with His Holy Spirit, quicken the word of Isaiah in our hearts and in our minds, and help us all learn what practical aspects of the teaching of Isaiah, that was done in the 8th century BC, can apply to us and can enlighten us and equip us to do the work of the Lord. So here it comes: Isaiah chapter 41, from verse 8 to verse 13.

The main point of this text is that this is the first time that we see a clear appointment of Jacob (Israel) as the servant of the Lord. This is very important. Why is it important? Already in verse 8, we see this use of both the name Jacob and the name Israel together. What does that mean? Normally speaking, when the text in the prophets, especially in the prophets, it uses Jacob, in the shadow of Jacob's sneakiness, of Jacob's sometimes less than honest behavior, like with his brother Esau and the inheritance, and like with his mother Rebecca, who put furs on his hand and made him pretend that he is Esau and take the blessing from Isaac, who was practically blind. Then the word Israel, which is the name that the angel of the Lord gave him when he was striving with the angel of the Lord in the river Yabok, one of the tributaries of the Jordan River. Israel is the one who strove with God and survived and won the battle. God's choice as a nation is of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the renewed Jacob, the Jacob who is now the nation, the only nation that God has ever chosen to be His representative, His agent down here on Earth.

Here in Isaiah chapter 41, from verse 8 to 13, God says, “I’m going to be with you. I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you survive. I’m going to help you, you know, take the best of your enemies. Your enemies will not win the battle over you.” It’s an important point because, in the book of Isaiah, we see that there’s going to be a switch of who is the representative of Israel, the representative of Jacob that will be the ultimate servant of the Lord. We’ll see that in chapter 49 of Isaiah. But after saying all these wonderful things and promises, “Fear not, I will help you,” verse 14 of chapter 41, there is a switch:

All right, so after all these wonderful promises, God is going to take care of Jacob, of Israel. He’s going to be with them. He’s not going to lift them. He’s going to give them victory over their enemies. Then He turns to “worm Jacob.” “Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel.” Yes, it’s a parallelum membranum. That means that all of the prophecies of Isaiah are written in poetry form, in song form. So 'Jacob the worm' is parallel to 'you men of Israel'. "I’m your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." Okay, you call me a worm, and now you’re my Redeemer. Yes, sir, that’s true, that’s true. God is picking us up from the dirt. He’s picking Israel up from a situation that they were sent to exile, that’s in the first half of Isaiah, till chapter 39. And He calls them “worm Jacob.” And verse 15 says:

Now, if you haven’t seen an ancient threshing sled, let me describe that for you. It is made out of strong wood, and little holes are made in it, and flintstones are embedded there and glued in the bottom of the threshing sled. The threshing sled is made flat with the lip that goes upward. So when the animal pulls it over the wheat, the dried wheat, then it breaks the wheat to pieces. The farmer comes to the threshing floor, takes a wooden fork with broad teeth, and throws the mixture of the grain and the straw into the air. The chaff, the wind takes the chaff, and the grain falls to the ground because it’s heavier. Then it collects the grain and takes it to the mill and makes flour and bread to eat.

So the threshing floor is a part of the machine that the animal pulls, whether it’s donkey and ox. Sometimes the Canaanites use the donkey and the ox. The Law of Moses forbids that because it’s kind of cruel, because one goads the other and makes them work harder. So that’s the threshing floor. God says to Israel, to Jacob,

What do we have here? We have a kind of very special promise of God to Israel that, first of all, Israel would survive its many enemies. Israel has always been surrounded by enemies. On the one side, on the west side, we have the Mediterranean Sea. But on the east side, on the other side of the Jordan, we have the nations of Ammon, the Ammonites, the Midianites, the Moabites. In the southwest, we have Egypt; in the northeast, we have Syria and Babylon and Tyre. Until today, that’s our situation. So what is God telling us? God is telling us that we are going to withstand the enemy and that He will take care of us in front of our enemies, and He will scatter them, and we will survive in the land. That’s what God is telling us.

But the important thing is that He’s calling Israel, the nation of Israel, His servant. Why is that important? It’s important because later on, that task, that position of Israel being His servant because of Israel’s sin, is transferred to one individual. We’re going to get to it in chapter 49. That individual is described in Isaiah 52, 53, and onward, all the way to the end of Isaiah. The description of that individual, his task and his job, is corresponding to chapter 9 of Isaiah, in which a child is born in Jerusalem, in Israel, and his name will be a Mighty Counselor, a Prince of Peace, an Everlasting Father, a Divine Being, Son of God. Yes. So that idea, Israel is chosen as a servant, and then, like in the Olympics, one of the team, let’s say of the United States, wins a gold medal, and he stands on the podium. Next to him are the ones who win the silver medal and the bronze medal, but they play the national anthem of the United States. The winner of the gold medal is the representative of the whole nation. He represents the nation of the United States that receives the gold medal, not only him as an individual.

And so the case here is, now we see the big team, the nation, the national promises of God to Israel. Jacob, the servant of the Lord, promises of winning over the enemies. Promises of God not leaving them. Promises of God standing with Israel and not rejecting Israel. Yes, not rejecting Israel. The clearest text is in Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 35-37. He says,

Christians need to know that.

Then, in verse 17 of chapter 41, the prophet switches and is talking about the society, the people, not the national promises, but the people’s promises to the people: to the poor, the poor and the needy:

Now, you could take this text that I read from verse 17 to 20 as a parable. You could take it as reality. You could take it as a simile. It is all written in verse as poetry, as a song. And what does it tell us? The message of this text is one: I, the Lord, will take care of you. Even though you are living in the desert of the nations surrounding you, on one side the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, on all three sides you are surrounded by desert, by the Arabian Desert, one of the harshest deserts, not the biggest but one of the harshest deserts in the world. God is going to take care of you. He’s not going to forsake you. He will make your land, the desolate land, into a land of rivers and fountains of water and pools of water. The dry land will be full of springs of fresh water. God is going to plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, the myrtle tree, the olive tree, the cypress tree, the pine tree. I’m not sure that pine, the translators into English understood right. The pine, but cypress tree, yes.

The word that is used in Hebrew is translated in English as pine tree, because I don’t think that the people that translated the King James Version knew all the trees in the Middle East. The Hebrew word is "Tidhar" and the meaning of the word is elm, probably elm tree and not pine tree. But maybe the people in England that translated King James didn’t know the elm tree either. I don’t know, but for sure, not pine tree. But that’s how the translators translated the best they could do under their circumstances. Why? Why is God going to flourish the desert and provide water in the desert and make the desert fertile with trees, olive trees, and all these wonderful trees, including cedar trees that grew up in Lebanon? Why?

The Holy One of Israel has created this scene, this situation. God is in control. That’s what the prophet is saying. He’s in control of you and your poor and your miserable dry desert parts of your land. More than six-tenths of the land of Israel is desert. Yes, God is going to take care of it.

And then the prophet invites the readers of his prophecy. He said:

God is the King of Jacob.

God is inviting Jacob and Israel to contend with Him, to discuss with Him, to present their case to God. And God says, “Listen, if you choose the abomination, we have people to take care of it. We have the northern empires to take care of it. We have Assyria, Babylon to take care of you guys. I’m in control,” God says, “from the beginning, and you ought to know this from your history, from the history of your exodus from Egypt with Moses, from your history of the conquest of the land with Joshua, from the history of King David, the mistakes he made, Solomon, and the mistakes he made.” Because I am telling you right now, verse 27 of chapter 41,

In other words, in chapter 41, He chooses Israel as His servant, but by the end of chapter 41, He says that servant as a nation is not really going to work out. I’m going to choose somebody else to be My servant, to represent Israel, to be a part of Israel, to be the banner holder of Israel, but it’s not going to be the whole nation. It’s very important for us to understand this point because the rest of Isaiah, from chapter 41 on, becomes more and more and more Messianic. Read your Bible, pray to God, ask the Holy Spirit to quicken the word for you, and God bless all of you.