SERMON RECORDING

A new year is starting, and you’ve got to be wondering what the future holds.

Who will win the Super Bowl? Which nation will grab the most gold at the 2008 Olympics? Which candidate will reach the White House? Most important of all, who will be the next American Idol?

We simply do not know. But there have always been prophets willing to make predictions.

Some come true.

Most do not.

Take Jeane Dixon, astrologer to the Reagans. She made hundreds of predictions in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and wrote a horoscope book for dogs. According to mental_floss magazine (November-December 2006), Dixon was most famous for foreseeing the assassination of John F. Kennedy — in 1956, she said a Democrat would win the 1960 election and die in office.

But her record was far from perfect. She also said that World War III would break out in 1958, cancer would be cured in 1967, and peace would cover the Earth in the year 2000.

We’re still waiting.

How about Edward Bellamy, a prophet who lived in 1888 and wrote a novel about the year 2000? What he got right was a prediction of modern conveniences such as credit cards, music on the radio, and even wholesale stores like Costco.

What he got wrong was a vision of America as a socialist state in which housewives didn’t have to cook and everyone retired at 45.

Don’t you wish the retirement thing had come true?

Then there was “The Amazing Criswell,” a pop-culture fixture of the 1960s. He appeared on “The Jack Paar Program” in March of 1963, and predicted that tragedy would strike President Kennedy in November. He got that right.

What he got wrong: Predictions that a space ray would zap Denver, brain transplants would be sold in vending machines, and mass cannibalism would break out in August 1999.

There are clearly some bad prophets out there, and there always have been.

What about Isaiah?

In today’s passage of Scripture, God delivers a message through the prophet Isaiah, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1). Isaiah is a mouthpiece for God, and through him the Lord announces, “I have put my spirit upon him” (v.1) … “He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching” (v. 4).

Isaiah is speaking about a servant of God, and is making clear that this servant is chosen by the Lord, full of God’s Spirit, and known for his justice and his teachings.

Mishpat and torah are the marks of this servant — that’s Hebrew for justice and teaching. The prophet Isaiah is announcing that God’s servant is bringing justice and teaching right into the middle of all the chaos and confusion of day-to-day human life.

But just exactly who is this servant of the Lord?

Isaiah doesn’t say. Like most prophets — both bad and good — he leaves the details vague. Jeane Dixon predicted that a Democrat would win the 1960 election and die in office, but she didn’t say that it would be Kennedy. In fact, in the heat of the presidential election, Dixon said that Kennedy would lose.

So prophets are wise to leave themselves a little wiggle room. The pundits who were predicting certain slam-dunk victories in last week’s New Hampshire primary should have kept this in mind.

Isaiah is probably talking about the nation of Israel when he speaks of God’s servant. He is reminding them that they are the Lord’s chosen people, with a mission of sharing God’s teachings with the world and establishing justice in the earth. “I have given you as a covenant to the people,” says God through the prophet, “a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind” (vv. 6-7).

Did Isaiah get this right? Yes, he did. Israel did, in fact, prove to be a light to the nations, opening the eyes of people around the world to the teachings and justice of the one true God. The people of Israel believed in God — they were not atheists, whom George Carlin says are members of a “non-prophet organization.” Without Israel, we never would have been introduced to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel.

We never would have gotten to know God’s son Jesus, either.

Here is where Isaiah’s prophecy gets really interesting. It may have first revealed a truth about Israel, but it later unveiled the true nature of Jesus the Messiah. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). These words could have come straight out of Isaiah 42, in which God says, “Here is my servant … my chosen, in whom my soul delights” (v. 1).

Clearly, what Isaiah got right is Jesus. He is the servant of the Lord with God’s “spirit upon him” (v. 1), the one who “will faithfully bring forth mishpat — justice” (v. 3). Jesus will be “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations” (v. 6), a savior who will “bring out the prisoners from the dungeon” (v. 7). Isaiah sensed what God was up to, and he spoke the truth about Jesus, the Messiah of God.

This reveals a key fact about good prophets, one that we need always to keep in mind. They are not supposed to be fortune-tellers who predict precisely what will happen in the months and years to come. Instead, they are supposed to be truth-tellers who speak clearly about what is happening right now!

A good prophet paints a clear picture of the state of the world, with all its pain and brokenness, sin and selfishness. A good prophet speaks the truth in love, and points people to where God is at work in the middle of all our human failings and flailings.

A good prophet is a truth-teller, not a fortune-teller.

Take Paul Ehrlich, a respected butterfly expert at Stanford University. In 1968, he wrote a book called The Population Bomb, which stated that people would have a lot of babies in the future. He saw the population growth around him, and he spoke clearly about it. That’s truth-telling. That’s good prophecy.

But Ehrlich went on to say that “hundreds of millions of people will starve to death,” and he predicted that India would run out of food in 1971. That’s fortune-telling. That’s bad prophecy.

Isaiah is a good prophet because he paints a clear picture of the state of the world. He speaks the truth in love, and points people to where God is at work. He doesn’t predict details of the arrival of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, but says that God’s servant will “open the eyes that are blind” and “bring out the prisoners from the dungeon” (v. 7). Isaiah sees the world’s problems, and identifies God’s solutions.

That’s truth-telling, not fortune-telling.

Even better, this kind of prophecy steers us in the direction that we need to go. Isaiah doesn’t just get right that God’s servant is coming — he creates a template that we can use for our own actions and attitudes. Bringing forth justice and being a light to the nations are not just the responsibility of Jesus the Messiah — they are also part of the job description of anyone who follows Jesus.

The prophet is speaking about us, right along with Jesus. What Isaiah got right is the need for servants of God to bring forth mishpat justice in every time and place.

A homeless man named Ben walked into our church one afternoon, asking to see the pastor. He was suffering from kidney stones, and had a prescription for a pain-killer — but no money to pay for it. Ben asked if we had funds to fill the prescription for him.

Now I had a ton of stuff to do that afternoon, and Ben’s predicament was way down on my to-do list. But I just happened to be studying Isaiah 42, and had just read an important line about the character of the servant of God — “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice” (v. 3).

Homeless Ben was a bruised reed, a dimly burning wick. Health care is a constant struggle for the uninsured poor of our country, and I sensed that I really needed to do something. If I was going to be God’s servant, and “faithfully bring forth justice,” I needed to help fill that prescription.

So I was stuck. Sometimes the Bible really annoys me.

The next morning, the two of us went to the pharmacy, looking like a rather strange couple — Ben, all covered with tattoos, and me, in dress shirt and tie. We picked up the pain-killers, and then in the car-ride back to church Ben told his story — he had grown up on a dairy farm in Ohio, with an abusive father who ended up shooting Ben’s mother and then killing himself. Ben had served in the military and worked as a truck-driver, and now he was meeting with a mental health counselor to get himself into a group home.

When we said good-bye, I wished Ben well and invited him to worship.. I was glad that I had been God’s servant that morning, doing what I could to bring forth a little bit of mishpat justice … to offer a ray of light to a man who was dwelling in deep darkness.

What Isaiah got right is that servants of God exist. In the nation of Israel. In Jesus Christ. In each of us, even when we are reluctant servants. May we live our days in ways that make this prophecy come true. Amen.


Sources:
“The future according to … 4 prophets who mostly got it wrong.” Mental_floss. November-December 2006. 57.