The Mocking and the Spitting
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Welcome to Gospel in Life. The book of Isaiah prophesies a servant of the Lord, a mysterious figure who is going to bring salvation. New Testament writers tell us that this servant is Jesus Christ himself. Why is it so significant that Jesus is identified as a servant? And what does it mean for his followers today? Join us as Tim Keller explores the person of Jesus Christ, the gentle and strong servant of the Lord. ♪

Our scripture reading tonight comes from the book of Isaiah chapter 50 verses 4 through 11. The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The sovereign Lord has opened my ears and I have not been rebellious. I have not drawn back.

Verse 2.

It is the sovereign Lord who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me? They will all wear out like a garment. The moths will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.

This is the word of the Lord. In the weeks leading up to Easter, we're looking at the mission of Jesus, what he came into the world to do, and we're

Doing that, we're exploring that by examining these final chapters of the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah prophesies a mysterious figure called the servant of the Lord. And this figure is going to come into the world and bring God's salvation. And the New Testament writers identify the servant of the Lord prophesied by Isaiah to be Jesus as Jesus. And this is the third of the servant songs we're looking at. And...

This song tells us about a life we ought to live, shows us where to get the power to live that life, and then lastly explains why that power works. The life we ought to live, the power to live that life, and why that power works. Now when I say, let's start here, this is a picture of the life we ought to live, that is remembering...

something that you might forget when we're looking at these servant songs, that if Jesus Christ is the servant of the Lord, the ultimate servant, then he's a model for us. If you believe in God and you want to serve God, what does the life of service to God look like? Well, here it is. In every one of these passages, in the servant of the Lord, we have the model for how we ought to be living. And there's two features to this life. First of all, in verse 4, it says, I sustain the weary.

The servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ, is a wonderful counselor. In Isaiah 42, we read, a bruised reed he will not break. A smoking, a flickering candle wick he won't snuff out. And what that means is Jesus is so tender and so wise that he heals the brokenhearted. He binds up their wounds.

He's gentle with the bruised. He never takes, when it says he never takes a, puts out a flickering candle, that means no matter how much your strength is flagging, no matter how weak and bruised you are, if you go to him, he will never put you out. He'll never throw you over the edge. He'll be gentle with you. He'll

He'll blow on the dying embers of your heart and your life back into a flame. He's the wonderful counselor. Now, a servant of the Lord is like that. Anyone who serves God is someone who is great with the weary, great with the bruised. So let me ask you a question. Do people seek you out? Even though you haven't invited them to do it, do people seek you out and they open up and they want to talk to you about their problems and their hurts? Because they perceive in you a wisdom and a grace that

And a kindness such that they want to talk to you about their bruises and their weariness. Are you that kind of person? If you really want to be a servant of the Lord, you should be that kind of person. So that's one feature. Attractive tenderness. The other feature of this kind of life is found actually through, it's a thread that goes through the next few verses. Verse 5 says, the servant of the Lord says, I have not drawn back. That means I did not chicken out. From what? From the Lord.

The beating, verse 6. The mocking, the spitting. I have set my face like a flint, verse 7. And the flint is the hardest of all rocks. I'm going to do what I'm called to do. And it doesn't matter who's accusing me. It doesn't matter who's condemning me. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to draw back. I'm going to go, why? Because, verse 8, he who vindicates me is near. Now, what is this? This is the description of a person, a man, in this case.

Whose identity and self-regard is so grounded in God himself. That's what it means to say God is my vindication. His identity is so rooted in God that you can't crush him through criticism, through opposition, through vilification. He says, I don't care what anybody thinks. I don't care. Nothing turns me back. Nothing gets me down. Nothing makes me lose my composure.

Why? Because God is my vindication. God is my identity. It's his love and his regard. That's all that matters. And as a result, nothing, nothing daunts me. Nothing. And so what you have, interestingly here, is this combination of attractive tenderness and absolutely unbending strength. That's what it means. That's what a servant of the Lord, somebody who serves God, should be like. How are you on that? How are you doing on that? I can tell you this.

Some of us are tender and kind or some of us are strong and unbending, but you never, almost never see this together. And the reason is because it takes the spirit of God and it's this, but this is the kind of life you ought to live. All right. Well, okay. Well, where do you get the power to live a life like that? I mean, boy, that's tough. That's hard. How do you, where do you get the power to live a life like that? And the text tells you, and let's spend some time on this. Where do you get the power to live this kind of life? It tells you.

First of all, look where he gets the ability to sustain the weary. Where does the servant of the Lord get the ability to be such a wonderful counselor? It says, the sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. That word instructed is a Hebrew word for disciple. Literally it says, he has given me the tongue of a disciple. Because I'm a disciple, I have learned how to sustain the weary.

What's that mean? Well, he actually says it again. Because if you look down at verse 5, that's where he gets the tenderness and his ability to counsel. By being a disciple. Where does he get this strength? Where does he get the ability to face anything? I have not drawn back. Well, why hasn't he drawn back? I have not drawn back because the Lord has opened my ears. Or go back up into verse 4 where it starts. He wakens me. The servant is saying, God wakens me every morning, morning by morning...

And he wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. And that's the same Hebrew word as at the top of verse 4. It's a word that means to be a disciple. To listen to the word of the master, of the teacher. Now, what is a disciple? A disciple is not just a servant. A disciple is not less than a servant, but more. A disciple is a learner. A disciple...

Listen to the word of the teacher in order to master the knowledge that the teacher has. If you want a classic modern example of discipleship, you should look at a teaching hospital. And we have them all over the place, do we not? What is a teaching hospital? What are the medical students and what are their residents doing there? Well, they are under authority and they will tell you they work like slaves and they have slave hours.

But the main reason that they're there is to learn. Morning by morning, they wake up to listen to the words of their teachers, and they're seeking to master the knowledge that their teachers have so that they can someday be competent doctors as well. So what does it mean then to be a disciple of God? And the servant of the Lord, Jesus, is not only the servant par excellence, the servant of God par excellence, he's also the disciple par excellence.

Because what it means to be a disciple of God means to listen to what? To open your eyes, to ears, to what? The word of God, which of course for the Israelites always was the scripture. So the servant of the Lord is immersed in the scripture. And that means that Jesus Christ was immersed in the scripture. And this is the secret of his power. Now let me rest on this for a moment. Because this is a feature of Jesus' life that I just think is missed. If he's the servant of the Lord here,

Then we would go into the New Testament and find that Jesus is absolutely immersed in the Scripture, trusts it completely, is absolutely reliant on it in every square inch of his life, in every moment of his waking hours. And the answer to that is yes, that's exactly what you find. First of all, when you go into the Gospels and you look at Jesus' attitude towards Scripture, it's amazing. Jesus is always quoting Scripture, much more than you even know. If you actually read through with an eye to this, you'll be stunned.

He quotes 24, he quotes out of 24 Old Testament books, which is the majority of them. Ten times he bases his case, he's making a case to people, and he bases the case not only on one verse, but one word. He takes the scriptures so seriously that he says every word is inspired. Do you know the place where he's arguing with the Sadducees about the resurrection? And the Sadducees don't believe in the resurrection.

And Jesus says, of course you have to believe in the resurrection. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are still alive. And he said, what do you mean? Notice the Bible says that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not was. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which means that he's always the God of the living. And therefore, because that word says is and not was, they're still alive. Jesus took every word of the Bible as God's truth. In fact, you know, in Matthew 5, 19 says,

He actually says every jot, which is the shortest of the Hebrew words, the yod, and tittle, which is actually just a part of a letter. I'm sorry, a yod is the shortest, the smallest of the Hebrew letters, and a tittle is a part of a letter. And what he says there is not a jot or tittle of the Bible will pass away till all is fulfilled, which means not just that every word of the Bible is divine and binding, but every letter and every part of a letter. Here's another way to put it.

This is the last thing I'll say about Jesus' view of scripture. Jesus believed that absolutely every single part of the scripture was divinely inspired and binding. Jesus did not actually believe in red letter editions of the Bible. Did you know that? Okay, I'm being a little extreme and I have a couple myself so you don't have to go and burn them.

But here's what I mean by that. When you read the red letters, you know, it has the words of Jesus in red, not the rest. What is the what's the implication there? The implication is that that's Jesus talking and that's really God's word. And the rest of the stuff is sort of, you know, they're in black. Well, that's different. You know, red. God, obviously God read. And I've had people say to me, well, Jesus never says that. That's Paul or Moses or David says it. But Jesus doesn't say that.

So what Jesus says, that's binding, and the other things that are in the Bible are not as binding. You go to Matthew 19, verse 5, I think it is, where Jesus says, he quotes, and he says, God has said, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. God has said, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. What is he doing there? He's quoting Genesis 2.24. And if you go back to Genesis 2.24,

You'll see that it's just the human author. The author of Genesis says that God is actually not speaking in the narrative text. It's just the author. Well, what does that mean? What it means is as far as Jesus is concerned, anything Moses says, anything the psalmist says, anything that anything that's in the Bible, anything the Bible says, God says anything the scripture says, God says, that's how you know what God says.

And every single part, every word, every letter is divine and binding and true. That's his view, not mine. It is mine, but it's his. That's why it's mine. Let me press. But it's not just that Jesus had a mind that believed in the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible. He submitted every part of his life, and he's the son of God. He submitted every single part of his life to the scripture.

Every time there was a crisis, every time he's betrayed, every time he's sentenced, every time he's abandoned, every time he's betrayed. In every single crisis, how does he handle it? How does he handle it? He's the son of God, right? How does he deal with it? He says, it is written, which is going to the Bible. That's Jesus going to the Bible. When the devil assaults him, every single time he says, it is written.

When the religious leaders attack him, he says, you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. When he's in the Garden of Gethsemane and the soldiers are on their way and Peter pulls out his sword, what does Jesus say? He says, Peter, you know, I could call a bunch of angels to stop this right now, but then how would the scripture be fulfilled? How would the scripture be fulfilled? This is the Son of God and he's not making a move unless it's in accord with scripture. This is the Son of God and he does not handle

The devil or opposition or crises in his own strength, he uses the scripture. If there's anybody wouldn't need it, you would think he wouldn't need it, but he needs it. He uses it. And, you know, when he's on the way to Calvary and he's carrying the cross and the women in Luke come up to him and they're weeping and he says, daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves and them. What does he do? He quotes the book of Hosea.

And when he's on the cross and he's dying and he's under the most excruciating pain, he cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But that's a quote from Psalm 22, verse 1. Now, all right, what does this all mean? Here's what it means. When you are in agony, when you are at the end of your rope, when you are at the point of utter extremity, you cannot, you can only react. You understand? All right.

In other words, you can't act. That means when you are absolutely at the end of your rope and you're in the most incredible pain, you're practically out of your mind, you can't say, well, now how should I act? You don't think about it. You react. That is, what's the real you just comes out. What's in your heart comes out. What you meditate on most, what you think about most, what you hope in most, what you spend most of your time imagining and thinking about, it just comes out. And when you stab Jesus Christ, literally stab Jesus Christ, he bleeds Bible.

Because at the end of his rope, what comes out? Scripture. He's quoting scripture, which means that in his heart of hearts, the main thing that he was saturated with, immersed in, that permeates all of his imagination, all of his thinking, are the promises and the principles and the truths and the summonses of the scripture. Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth, and his story has been told in hundreds of different ways.

Can anything more be said about him? In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal, calling each of us to look anew at our relationship with God.

Jesus the King is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. What does that mean? That means that that was the secret of his power. It says so here.

But of course it's in a kind of poetic, symbolic, prophetic way. But you go into the New Testament and you see it every single place. Jesus did not handle suffering without the scripture. He did not make a decision about his life unless it was accord with scripture. And that's the son of God doing that. And if he...

couldn't handle life without putting the scripture at the very center of his being, at the very center of his life, putting himself under its authority and trusting every single letter of it. If he couldn't get through life without that, how do you think you and I are going to do it? So this leaves me with two practical questions. One is, where are you getting your intake? Where are you getting enough scripture? Where are you learning it enough, memorizing it enough, meditating on it enough?

So that it so immerses your imagination, so saturates your imagination and your thinking and your emotions that when you've got a crisis that you're facing or a decision to make or you've got somebody to counsel or comfort.

Even if you can't think of a particular verse and chapter, it's still guiding you. Do you hear what I'm saying? You can be so immersed in the scripture that you have a decision to make or you're counseling somebody or a crisis. And even though you can't think of a particular chapter or verse, the tropes, the paradigms, the trajectories, the themes, the attitudes of the scripture are guiding you. But for that to happen, you have to really know it. Where are you getting the intake?

You say, well, I come to Redeemer and listen to it with, you know, an ex-Bible exhibition every week. Okay, fine. But it says here morning by morning. Or at least that means at least daily. Where are you getting your intake? But here's the other question. Are you under the authority of the scripture? Or do you just sort of like it? Do you just see in our culture, we are, it's pounded into us that you have the right to decide what is right or wrong for you and nobody else.

And therefore, increasingly, I have people say to me, I'm interested in Christianity or I believe in Jesus or I want Jesus in my life. But you can't accept absolutely everything the Bible says. I mean, there's some things that are out of date, some things you just can't go with. I want Jesus in my life, but I don't want to accept absolutely everything the Bible says. Now, the nicest way for me to put this is that's inconsistent.

And that's the nicest way. And probably it's too nice. It's probably not quite fair. And here's why. Do you know what you're saying? I want Jesus in my life. I want to accept him. I want to live a Christian life. But I can't accept absolutely everything the Bible says. There's some things, yeah, I just can't accept that. What you're saying is, I want Jesus in my life, but I reject the very basis for the way in which he lived his life. I want to learn from Jesus, except I don't want to learn anything about how he lived his life at all. Well, then what are you going to learn from Jesus?

See why? Let me put it another way. What you're also saying is, I want Jesus in my life and I really respect him. But I know better than him about this thing about the full authority of the Bible. We now know. I know better than he does. How in the world can he be your savior? How in the world could you, how can you trust him? On the one hand, you say you trust him. How can you be your savior and be absolutely wrong about this? If you trust in him, you've got to accept the way in which he lived his life.

You can't make a mockery of the very basis of the whole way in which he lived his life. Now you say, well, wait a minute, I'm just saying there's a few things in the Bible I can't quite go with. Well, look, no, it's not as small a difference as you think. Either you are the one in the judgment seat and you're deciding what parts of the Bible make sense and what parts don't. Or the Bible's in the judgment seat over you and it's looking at you and deciding what parts of your life make sense and what parts don't.

See, you know that verse 10 and 11 at the very end, that kind of weird ending? It's all about this. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? But him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trusts in the name of the Lord. What does that mean? But now you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go walk in the light of your fires and of the torches that you have set ablaze. This is what you will receive from my hand, torment. What? He's talking about the sin of self-sufficiency.

He is saying, if you're in the dark and nothing seems to be making sense and everything is a mess, don't light your own fires. You stick with the word of God. You stick with what I've told you. You move ahead like that. But if you say, well, no, no, wait a minute here. I'm going to have to some of these. I don't like this. I'm going to. That's lighting your own fires. Do you know what the original sin was?

What was the original sin in the Garden of Eden? What was the original sin of Adam and Eve? Was it murder? Was it rape? Was it robbery? No. What was the original sin? It started all of our problems. It was saying, I want to decide for myself what's right or wrong. I'm not going to go with the Word of God. The Word of God makes sense, but not this one thing where it says, don't eat that tree. You know, I'm going to decide what is right or wrong for me. I'm going to decide. And that was putting themselves in the place of God.

So either the word of God is over you or you're over the word of God, which makes you the word of God. And Jesus shows that even though he was God, he put himself under the word of God, which of course is perfectly consistent. So how in the world could you trust him? How could he save you and then be so wrong? If you're going to accept Jesus in your life, you have to accept the full authority of the Bible, the two come or go together. And that's where he got his power.

But we can't stop there. Oh, no, no, no, not yet. And here's the reason why we can't stop here. If we stop here, you're probably under the impression, maybe, well, if you stop here, you would be under the impression that the Bible is this kind of magic book that if I just know it, memorize it, get it in my life, somehow the strength comes in. No, that means the Bible is sort of almost a magic book. It's abstract. No, it's the meaning of the Bible.

The reason you have to, morning by morning, take the Bible in, once you discern its basic message, its basic meaning, it's what it says and what it means, then you take that in every day in a different chapter, a different page of the Bible, it comes in a different way, and that basic message, which is the gospel, more and more changes you. And that's what releases the power. What is the heart of this passage? It's verse 6. It's the suffering.

I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from the mocking and the spitting. And in Mark 15, we read this. They had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, hail, king of the Jews. Again and again, they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him.

And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him, and then they led him out to be crucified. And after the resurrection, Jesus is raised from the dead. He appears on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, and there's these two disciples walking along, and they don't recognize him. They talk, and he says, why are you so upset? And the disciples said, well, you know, this Jesus Christ, we thought he was going to save the world, and instead he died. And they said, well, you know, this Jesus Christ, we thought he was going to save the world,

And Jesus says, you don't really understand the scriptures. Now listen carefully what he means by that. These men would have understood the scriptures to be authoritative. These disciples would have accepted the full authority of the Bible.

That wasn't a problem. And they would have known a lot about the Bible. They would have known all the stories, all the accounts. They would have known it inside out. But Jesus says, you failed. The power of God is not in you because you didn't understand the point of the Bible. You didn't understand the meaning. You missed the forest for the trees. And what was the point of the Bible? He says it right there in Luke 24 to the two disciples. He says, the Christ had to suffer.

See, they did not understand the gospel. It said strong Messiah shows up, strong people summons up all their strength and follow him. He saves them. He saves the world. He says, you don't understand at all what the Bible's about. The Bible's about, and you see it right here in the prophecies of the servant of the Lord, that the Christ came to suffer. Why is that so big a deal? Why is that the key? If that's the message of the Bible,

You bring that into your life day by day through the word of God. That will change you. Why? Here's why. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a young Lutheran minister in the 1930s. And he saw the German National Church capitulate to Hitler. You know, sign the loyalty oath and all that. And he couldn't believe it. He was a German Lutheran minister. He couldn't believe it. And he struggled. How could the church that was founded by Martin Luther, that great teacher of the gospel, have capitulated to Hitler?

And he wrestled and he came up with an answer and he wrote about it in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937. And in that book, he says that the German church had lost its grasp on the gospel. He says instead of the gospel, the biblical gospel, the German church had come to believe in what he called cheap grace. Now, what is cheap grace? Here's what cheap grace is. The German theology for 100 years had moved away from the idea that God punishes sin.

See, increasingly, German theologians said, we don't believe in a God who's holy, who punishes sin, you know, punishes evil. We believe in a God of love who loves everybody, just accepts and loves everybody. Now, you realize if you have a God of love who just accepts and loves everybody, there's no need for a cross. He just accepts and loves everybody. That's his job. And the irony is.

And maybe some of you here feel like, well, that's the God I believe in. I don't believe in a God who's holy and who punishes sin, you know, wrath, Mount Sinai, thunder and lightning. I believe in a God who just accepts and loves everybody. Ironically, you have a less loving God than the old traditional biblical God. How so? A God who simply loves everybody gives you cheap grace. Why? Because it doesn't cost him anything.

What does an unholy God who just loves and accepts everything, what does it cost him to love you? And the answer is nothing. It's cheap. It costs nothing. But the biblical God, what did it cost the biblical God to love you? The biblical God is so holy and he takes justice so seriously that

And he cares about, and it's so important that sin must be punished. The only way he could love you was for him to empty himself of his own majesty and infinity and become weak and vulnerable and become mortal and go to the cross in Jesus Christ and die an excruciating death. What did it cost a holy God to love you? And the answer is it cost him everything. And here's the irony. Because he's holy...

Because he punishes sin, the only way he could love you was at an infinite cost. He had to take the punishment himself. He had to absorb the debt himself. And Bonhoeffer was right. The gospel is not no grace or cheap grace. It's costly grace. It's not no grace, which means, oh, God loves me because I'm a good person. But it's not cheap grace. Well, God just loves me because he loves everybody. That won't change you, cheap grace.

Because then Hitler comes to power and you say, well, I see some things over there I really don't really like. But you know what? I'm not going to stick my neck out. And, you know, maybe that's not best. Maybe I should speak up. But God will understand. Chief Grace, hollow people. And what God has actually said is at infinite cost to myself, because I'm a just and holy God, I have gone to the cross for you.

And Bonhoeffer says anyone who understands that they are justified freely by costly grace will never be the same again. Why? Because once you, for example, understand that God, because of his commitment to justice, was willing to spend and experience all that for you, then that's a God who's so committed to justice that if you see the Nazis coming and taking people away, you've got to stand up for justice.

Because God died standing up for justice in order to save you. And now, therefore, if you see Nazis starting to take your friends away, you know, off to some place, you have to do the same thing. You will do the same thing. If you say, I believe God loves me, but it doesn't radically change your life into a person of courage, a person who's not afraid of anything, a person of incredible tenderness toward others, then your understanding of grace is cheap grace. It's not costly grace. It's not the biblical gospel.

How in the world can you ever come to grips with someone who's given himself utterly to you without you giving yourself utterly to him? Impossible. And that's it. What is the Bible about? Costly grace. And if you delve into that and bring it into your life every single day, every book, every chapter, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Psalms, the Proverbs,

Paul, Jesus, John, every single book, every single story, Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, every single spot gives you that basic idea of costly grace. Gives you the idea of why the Christ had to suffer. Gives you the idea of holiness and grace and redemption. And you bring it in every day, every day, every day, and it saturates you. And that will make you into a servant of the Lord.

Hey, somebody said, I thought this was Valentine's Day. What about all this pulling out of the beard? Oh my gosh, torture. What about this mocking and spitting? It's all this blood and guts, mocking and spitting. Oh my gosh, what's all this about? This is how God says, I love you. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, gave himself for us. And we thank you that understanding that costly grace and imbibing it

In the thousands of different forms that comes to us. In narrative form. In propositional form. Through the word of God. Through the scripture. Every day will turn us into servants of the Lord. Will turn us into people of attractive tenderness. And also of unbending strength and courage. Let this happen to us. For we ask it in the name of Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover this podcast. This month's sermons were recorded in 1990, 2003, and 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.