While the second part of Isaiah is focused mostly on salvation and "good news", it does also include elements of judgement, and convicts Israel of her sin. Similarly, when we are saved there will be times when the Holy Spirit is highlighting areas in our life that need to change. This is normal.
These verses show that the Servant is both referring to Jesus and to Israel. We read the first few verses of Isaiah and it is clearly talking about Jesus. Now we read of the servant here and it is clearly not talking about Jesus., for He was definitely not blind and stubborn. Jesus was what Israel was meant to be.
Israel should have been God's faithful servant, listening to Him, obeying Him, and bringing His light to the world, but time and time again they were just as disobedient as the rest of the world. They had seen God do many things, but they learnt nothing. Just as many saw Jesus do many miracles, yet remained totally faithless.
"Who handed Jacob over to become loot?" Israel's natural reaction would have been to blame Babylon, and ask why God had not helped them. What she needed to do was to realise that she was receiving God's judgement. When things go wrong with us our first reaction is so often to look to someone else to blame. We would get on much better if our first reaction was to ask what can we do better.
Salvation only comes when we come to terms with our own sin.
No comments:
Post a Comment