Isaiah 49:3-4a
3 He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendour.’
4 But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
At first glance, today’s verse appears to be an argument between God Almighty, and the promised Servant. God is confident that the Servant will be glorious – he is the one God will use to display his splendour to the world. Yet the Servant seems to disagree – “I’m exhausted” he says. “I’ve poured out everything I have but there’s nothing to show for it.”
There’s nothing splendid about his experience. Yet this is not a disagreement in the heart of the Trinity. The Father and the Son are both always perfectly committed to their shared salvation plan. Rather, I think it’s an example of a paradox that we find repeated time and again in the Bible: Our God is glorified in weakness.
We see this most clearly at the cross. When Jesus is ‘lifted up’ to be crucified we see a weak, tortured, humiliated man. His life’s work seems to have come to nothing. He came to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God, yet now he has barely any energy left to speak. He is rejected by the religious establishment and deserted by his followers. What
does he have to show for his life of obedience to the Father? And yet, at the same time it is the greatest display of God’s splendour the world has ever seen. Never before has the extraordinary extent of God’s love and grace and generosity to sinners been so clearly visible. Jesus is not only ‘lifted up’ to die. He is ‘lifted up’ and highly exalted, for his saving work to be seen and marvelled at by all the world.
At the moment when it seems that evil and darkness have won, we see God reveal his glory. At the moment when the suffering Servant takes his last breath we see his majesty. To a world that doesn’t know God, splendour and weakness seem to be irreconcilable opposites. But for those of us who know him, they should be inseparable. The God who reigns over all things is the same one who took on human flesh to live as a servant. Born in poverty,
killed in pain and humiliation. Now risen and exalted and reigning in majesty for ever.
So today, let’s praise and worship the one who deserves all glory and honour because he so willingly poured out his life and strength so that we might be saved.
