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   …in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
    and concealed me in his quiver.

Following his birth, and dedication in the temple, Jesus lived a fairly anonymous life until He was thirty years old. That is apart from one appearance in the temple when He was 12. He pretty much had thirty hidden years, followed by three years of intensely powerful public ministry.

It sems to me, and I understand it, that many leaders in the church secretly (or not so secretly!) covet a high profile. But how many want the (potentially) years of hiddenness it may take to prepare for such a role? As I read the Bible, it strikes me that God has done some of His most strategic work in people, at His ‘university of the desert.’ To have ‘private education’/’personal tuition’ provided by the Lord Himself is a precious gift. But it has to be said that it takes patience to endure the hidden years in the wilderness.

It should also be noted that not all obscurity is preparation for prominence. Many people will be called to serve in ‘hidden valleys’ all their lives, and if it is God’s call, it is something to be embraced, not resisted.

‘To pursue obscurity is simply to resist the magnetic pull of self-promotion and platform building and ”influence” that plagues so much of the contemporary culture, including the contemporary Christian culture…the better part of righteousness lies, as our Lord reminded us, precisely in its hiddenness and secrecy before our heavenly Father…’ R. Lucas Stamps.

He made my mouth like a sharpened sword…

Here is Jesus’ prophetic ministry.
 

In the first chapter of the last book of the Bible (‘Revelation’) the apostle John records a vision he was given of Jesus. Verse 16 includes these words: ”…and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword” (see also Hos.6:5; Ephesians 6:17).

A Christ-like ministry will, at times, have a sharpness to it. When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, the people who heard him ”were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37). Who do you think was ‘preaching’ through him?

I regularly pray for a prophetic cutting edge in my ministry. Only God can give this. Note: ”He made my mouth…” It’s not what we can make of ourselves, but what the Lord makes of us that counts:

“Follow me, and I will make you…” (Matt.4:19).

Before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.

From our vantage point in time, our distance in history, we have come to believe that ‘the Servant Songs’ are about Jesus. He came in fulfilment of these words. So it seems relevant that His birth should be mentioned. However, there is no indication here of there being anything remarkable about it. The point made is about His calling, somewhat reminiscent of Jeremiah’s:

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
    before you were born I set you apart;
    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:4,5).

We see repeatedly in the gospels that Jesus did not come in His own Name; He did not act on His own initiative. His delight was to do the Father’s will:

”Then I said, ‘Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll – I have come to do your will, my God.’ ” Hebrews 10:7.

‘If we are truly devoted to doing God’s will, pain and pleasure won’t make any difference to us.’ Brother Lawrence.

PRAYER: Help me, Heavenly Father, to seek only your will and not my own.’

Listen to me, you islands;
    hear this, you distant nations:

At the outset of another passage introducing ‘the Servant of the Lord’, we have yet again a sense of a global outreach. God’s Word and Work are not just for Israel, but for the whole world. (See also 42:1-4).

”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” John 3:16.

As the Samaritan people said to the woman, who had been so impacted by her encounter with Jesus:

”We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world” John 4:42.

Jesus Himself, marvelling over the faith of the Gentile Centurion, said:

”…many will come from the east and the west, and take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 8:11.

Barry Webb notes that the first essential for the Jews being addressed here ‘is to be reminded that there is a whole world out there waiting to hear the truth about God. Healing begins when we stop focusing on ourselves and our arguments with God and start looking outward to the world that he loves and that needs to know about him (6b).’ (‘Isaiah’, p.193).

PRAYER: Lord, please rescue me from parochialism. Help me to live on a world map.

Leave Babylon,
    flee from the Babylonians!

The great, mighty, fearful empire of Babylon was going to fall – and it did.

As we have seen before, in the Bible this once great kingdom also stands as a symbol, an emblem, of the current world system, organised without reference to God. It is going to come down one of these days. It is rotten to the core. As we have seen previously, the downfall is described (and exulted over!) in Revelation chapters 17-19. In the middle of these chapters we hear again the urgent call to leave:

”Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues…” (Rev.18:4a).

Once we sense the taint of ‘Babylon’ on anything, along with it we will hear the call to ‘leave.’

If God is calling you to leave anything behind, don’t hesitate to respond promptly.

I think about John’s words:

 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17).

Leave Babylon,
    flee from the Babylonians!
Announce this with shouts of joy
    and proclaim it.
Send it out to the ends of the earth;
    say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob.”
²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
    he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split the rock
    and water gushed out.

²² “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

Although it still lies in the distant future, Isaiah again writes about the deliverance of the Jewish captives from Babylon. Once more we see it depicted in terms of a ‘second exodus’. As the Lord led His people out of Egypt, and provided for them supernaturally on the way to the Promised Land (Ex.17:6; Nu.20:11), so He will bring them back through the desert from Babylon, and they too will know His remarkable, abundant and miraculous provision.

This rescue, however, is but a foretaste of the greater escape from the tyranny of sin, death and the devil, to be provided by Jesus in His death on the Cross. There He was wounded for us all and living water poured from His opened side (John 19:34; see also 1 John 5:6-12). It flows still for all who will receive it. This is what is ‘good’ about ‘Good Friday.’

But there was a preacher who used to point out that the gospel is ‘bad news before it is good news.’ The chapter ends on a note of severe warning. If we will not listen to God, and come to Him, and receive what He offers, we cannot experience for ourselves the goodness of Good Friday.’ Derek Kidner says ‘…the high price of self-will is stated and re-stated as nothing less than a farewell to peace (18,22).’ (New Bible Commentary’, p.660). The word ”peace” includes health, security, prosperity and above all fellowship with God and eternal salvation.

PRAYER: Lord, thank you so much that you have enabled me to personally enjoy the goodness of Good Friday. Thank you Jesus for dying for me. Help me to joyfully proclaim the great news of redemption.

This is what the Lord says—
    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God,
    who teaches you what is best for you,
    who directs you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ If only you had paid attention to my commands,
    your peace would have been like a river,
    your well-being like the waves of the sea.
¹⁹ Your descendants would have been like the sand,
    your children like its numberless grains;
their name would never be blotted out
    nor destroyed from before me.”

There is an ”If only” lament in this passage. So much is dependant upon listening to God and responding positively to His Word. See how much blessing we forfeit if we fail to pay attention.

I love this quote from Dallas Willard, and I long for it to be true of my own experience, don’t you?

”Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.”

Barry Webb writes about ”…the serious nature of failure to listen to God; it shuts us out from the peace of God. As in chapters 40-55 in general, Isaiah has been speaking here of a situation that was to emerge after his own lifetime. As far as the basic sins and failures he describes are concerned, however, he may just as well have been looking about him, or even speaking directly to the church in our own day and age. We need no great imagination to recognise ourselves in his stinging rebukes. Sadly, the sins of the people of God do not alter.” (Isaiah, p.192)

“Come together, all of you, and listen...Come near me and listen to this…”

”Deep calls to deep…” (Ps.42:7)

If you hear the call of God to come close (closer) to Him, don’t refuse Him. As we will see, to fail to ”listen” to God is to rob ourselves of much spiritual good.

Many years ago I was given a biography of a South African preacher, William Duma. (You can still read about him online). He had a powerful ministry in evangelism, healing and deliverance. But the thing I most remember from his story is that he had, what he called, his ‘trysting place’ up in the hills, and he would disappear for days at a time to just be alone with God. That’s where the power of his ministry lay. He knew it. So when there came a time in his life where, through over-busyness, he began to neglect his prayer life, he experienced a loss of power and knew why.

In his own words:

”Through the years, at 4.00 a.m., by appointment with my Lord, I had been fed by the Hand of God. The busyness of preparation ate into my early morning appointment with God. Less and less time was spent in deep communion with God. I told myself I was praying earnestly for the campaigns. Vaguely at first, I realized […] [it] had tailed off…

…I grieved for the spiritual capital which had drained away because my first eager communion with God at daybreak had been shortened, if not replaced, by campaign planning. Those recollections broke my heart and I wept into the pillows.”

Thankfully, that was not the end of the story. It is one well-worth reading. But it underlines how precious God’s invitation is to ”Come near…”Him.

“Come near me and listen to this:

“From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret;
    at the time it happens, I am there.”

And now the Sovereign Lord has sent me,
    endowed with his Spirit.

“Many men today are running on adrenaline and not anointing.” Larry Stockstill

Barry Webb points out that God’s people clearly needed something more than a change of address (i.e the return from Babylon), so it means they also needed something more than the mission of Cyrus. As we have seen previously, he could only be a ‘temporary messiah’. The way is thus prepared for ‘the Servant of the LORD’ to come to the fore again in chapter 49.

‘…the spiritual state of the exiles, which is highlighted as acute in chapter 48, is answered by the reappearance of the Servant of the LORD, at first enigmatically in 48:16, and then plainly in chapter 49.’ (‘Isaiah’, p.192).

The world needs Jesus.

Isaiah 42:1 begins like this:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.

If we are correct in seeing 48:16 as a reference to this ”servant” we note the reiteration of the point about Him being anointed by God.

As we often say, if Jesus needed the power of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfil His earthly ministry, how much more do we?

“There is no use in running before you are sent; there is no use in attempting to do God’s work without God’s power. A man working without this unction, a man working without this anointing, a man working without the Holy Ghost upon him, is losing time after all.” Dwight L. Moody