Suffering servant
Day 337, Monday, July 14
Isaiah 52:13 – Chapter 55
Our belief that Isaiah prophetically predicts and to a large degree interprets Jesus reaches a high point in 53:4-6, where we read, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by god, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him iniquity of us all.”
The character in Isaiah we usually equate with Jesus is known as the “suffering servant.” Jews and others who do not accept the suffering servant as being Jesus usually consider him to be a personification of the nation of Israel, which suffers in its witness to God.
You’ll want to read today’s passages carefully, as they are filled with familiar verses you have heard many times but may not have recognized as being from Isaiah.
Another especially familiar passage comes in chapter 55, verses 8 and 9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “ As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Coincidentally the Job reading today is also about suffering, where Job seeks the release of death, but seeks to find joy in the knowledge that he has never denied God’s word—a striking parallel to the silence of the suffering servant who like a sheep before its shearers is silent.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Monday meditation

Job 6:1-10
Then Job replied: “If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—no wonder my words have been impetuous.
The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me.
Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass, or an ox bellow when it has fodder? Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the sap of the mallow? I refuse to touch it; such food makes me ill.
“Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut off my life! Then I would still have this consolation—my joy in unrelenting pain—that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.

Prayer focus
Lord, when we are low and afflicted, let us take inspiration from Job and from the suffering servant and keep our faith and trust in you.