Walking In His Footsteps (Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday)

WALKING IN HIS FOOTSTEPS

Text: Isaiah 50:4- 9

Isaiah 50:4-9  "The LORD God has given me a learned tongue, so that I may know how to sustain the weary with words. And morning after morning he wakens, and he wakens my ear to listen like those who are being taught.  (5)  My Lord GOD has opened my ears, and I did not rebel; I did not shrink back.  (6)  I gave my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not turn away my face from insults and spitting.  (7)  For the Lord GOD helps me, so I won't be disgraced. Therefore I've made my face like flint, and I know that I won't be put to shame.  (8)  The one who vindicates me is near. Who, then, will bring a charge against me? Let's face each other! Who has a case against me? Let him confront me!  (9)  See! It is the Lord GOD who will help me. Who is it that will declare me guilty? See! They will all wear out like a garment; moths will eat them up.

“Great Aunt Lucy was losing her hearing. A specialist suggested an operation to improve he hearing. But, she promptly vetoed the idea, by saying: “I’m ninety-four years old and I’ve heard enough”. (Michael Hodgin. 1001 Humorous Illustrations For Public Speaking. Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1994, p. 176). Though we laugh at that, it can be eye opening to the fact that regardless of age we have selected hearing. Just ask wives about their husbands, parents about their children or our Heavenly Father about our own selective hearing.

This is one of the four servant songs (Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1 - 13; Isaiah 50:4 - 11 and Isaiah 52:13-53:12) which show the Messiah to be God’s meek and gentle servant. (https://www.gotquestions.org/Servent-songs.html).

God spoke of being pleased in Jesus Christ His only begotten son at His baptism and again at Jesus’s transfiguration experience when God said, “This is my beloved Son, Keep listening to Him (Matthew 3: 17, and Matthew 17: 5). The reason that we should listen is because no one else in all of history can speak the life giving words (John 6:68) that can cleanse us (John 15:3). Jesus Christ the living Word---God’s Word made flesh giving to us the words of life through His learned tongue to help us from our weariness. Jesus was also given the ability to know how it is that we listen and obey or ignore and rebel (Isaiah 50:4- 5).

Today we will talk about hearing and heaven.

HEARING

What does the message of this servant song from Isaiah tell us?

1) Message and messenger: It tells us that Jesus is both the message and the messenger. Through His prayer life, Jesus was always seeking time to pray in solitude with God the Father (see Luke 5:16 &Luke 6:12) who would “awaken His ear to listen with life giving words that would sustain the weary and how the weary would hear them” (Isaiah 50:4).

> God knew when we were being knit together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13).

> God knew the plans God laid out for with a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11) and how God chose us in Jesus [through our union with Christ (GNB)] before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (Ephesians 1:4).

> God even knows our name (John 10:3); knows our frame and remembers that we are dust (Genesis 3:19; Psalm 103:14), the numbers of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30).

> Through Christ God wants to teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise (Psalm 90:12) because the day which we do not know will come when we will die and face God’s judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

> That is why in the fullness of time God sent His Son (Galatinas 4:7) Jesus to die on a cross to save us (John 3:16) because God is not willing that anyone should perish but that all should repent (II Peter 3:9).

> All of these things explain why God designed the message of the Gospel to come through the messenger of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to reach the lost, the last, the least and the weary.

2) Consider the seven reminders from the Gospel of John… He spake none other words than those given Him by the Father. Compare the (sic) seven [eight] times this was asserted by Messiah (John_7:16; _8:28, 8:46, _8:47; 12:49;14:10,14:24; 17:8). (The Companion Bible. E. W. Bullinger).

A) Message and messenger: John 7:16  So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me (ESV).

B) The fall guy: John 8:28  So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me (ESV).