The Savior’s Open Ear

Day by day, Jesus attentively submitted to His Father’s Word. This obedience led in one direction: to the cross. Today on Things Unseen, listen as Sinclair Ferguson turns to a prophecy that reveals Christ’s submission to death and defeat of the grave.

We’ve been thinking all week about the series of poems in the second half of Isaiah that we call the Servant Songs. We know from the New Testament that both the Lord Jesus Himself and the Apostles saw them as prophecies of Jesus’ ministry that give clues to His character and significance. And today I want to reflect on the third of these songs, in Isaiah 50:4–9. I hope you’ll read the section later on, and if it’s the first time you can remember reading Isaiah 50:4–9, I hope you’ll read it again and again. It’s not only one of the most beautiful descriptions of the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament, it’s also one of the most instructive, and we’ve time to look at only a couple of points from it today.

First of all, in this poem, the Servant Himself speaks and picks up what was said of Him earlier in the first Servant Song. He is able “to sustain with a word him who is weary” (Isa. 50:4). If you’re an Anglican, you’ll be familiar with the words of the prayer book communion service when it introduces Jesus’ words from Matthew 11:28: “Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto to all that truly turn to him: ‘Come to me, all you who labor and our heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’” Well, these words in Isaiah are the explanation for Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel. He is the One who gives rest to the weary.

But Isaiah 50 now goes on to explain why the Lord Jesus is able to do this. Listen to what the servant says:

Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. (v. 4)

I must say, I love to think about this. There He is, our Lord Jesus. Think of Him waking up in the morning and saying to His Father, like Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for Your Servant is listening.”

What was Jesus listening to, do you think? How did His heavenly Father communicate with Him in His humanity? Well, there’s an element of mystery here, isn’t there? But sometimes when we talk about reading our Bibles, we speak about the ministry of the Spirit in illuminating the Scriptures. He brings insight and understanding to us, and we say, “Oh, now I see it,” or, “Now I see how it applies,” and perhaps it was something like that with Jesus.

He wouldn’t have owned His own Bible. That’s a thought, isn’t it? He couldn’t have afforded a Hebrew Bible of His own, but He had memorized it thoroughly, perhaps every single word of it. In fact, He knew it so well that when He was tempted, He was able to quote Deuteronomy 8:3, Deuteronomy 6:13, and Deuteronomy 6:16, and most of us can’t do that, no matter how many Bibles we own.

So, I wonder if perhaps there were mornings when He woke up, and it was these very passages we’ve been thinking about in Isaiah 42, and 49, and 50, these passages already on His mind, as though His Father had quietly placed them in His ear, to be on His mind when He became fully awake. And Jesus would reflect on how He might fulfill them that very day.

But there’s more here. The Father not only awakened the Servant’s ear, He also opened it. The Servant not only heard what the Father said, He listened, in the sense of taking it in, working it out, applying it to Himself, and being obedient to His heavenly Father. Remember how He said that He lived by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God? Think of it: every word. And in His case, that led in only one direction: to the cross.

So, listen to what He goes on to say here, “I was not rebellious,” that is, to the Father:

I was not rebellious . . .  I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting. (Isa. 50:5–6)

I don’t really need to say anything about these words, do I? We’ve all read their fulfillment in the passion narratives of the Gospels. Our Lord knew that His loving obedience to the Father’s plan would lead to being humiliated and crucified. But He also knew from this passage that His Father would be with Him and help Him. The disgrace and the shame would not last beyond the garden tomb and the resurrection because although He would be treated as guilty and condemned, He was actually innocent. And all His enemies, human and supernatural, would not be able to keep this good man down. In fact, He says here they will all be like a piece of clothing that a moth has eaten up—one touch from God and death will fall to pieces before Him.

This is surely worth meditating on today, so that our love for the Lord Jesus grows and grows. But we need to close for today. But if this picture of the Savior doesn’t make me want to sing, “Hallelujah, what a Savior,” I’m honestly not sure what will.