The word that sustains the weary (Isaiah 50)
As you wake on this Good Friday morning you may feel weary. Many of us are at the moment - physically and emotionally drained, by different routines, increased demands, confined spaces and cloistered relationships. Weary, but needing to keep on keeping on, day after relentless day.
Please listen to the Servant of the Lord as he speaks of himself:
The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
Words that come from lips drenched in grace (Psalm 45:2). Words that are full of light and space and cooling breezes from heaven's shores. The servant - the Lord Jesus - says "He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed." Fully alert to all the will and ways of his Father. Fully in sympathy with the character and heart of God. And so he speaks with a tongue well-instructed; all-knowing and all-sustaining.
But on this day of all days, look further into these verses. The word that sustains the weary comes from the fully-obedient Servant:
The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
And in full obedience he was the Suffering Servant:
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 mocking and spitting.
The cost of his suffering was beyond price and yet he set his face like flint - determined, resolute, commited to the very end, the untold depths of the cross.
And it is he who addresses you this morning. Speaks as the one who drank, alone, the whole cup of suffering in order to bring you salvation. Speaks to you of holy love, tested and proved, love that was placarded on the cross; of faithfulness and mercy enthroned in the centre of history, higher than the heavens, deeper than the oceans.
His word is able to sustain you today, in all the weariness of life. He speaks as one who knows the exhaustion, who shared the sorrows, who faced-down all the monsters of evil and chaos, who won peace for you - peace by his blood, shed on the cross.
He is speaking, still, his words to the weary. Let's make his experience our prayer: that the LORD would waken us morning by morning, waken our ears to listen like one being instructed. Let's not try lighting our own fires, to make our way in flawed and failing wisdom, but instead,
Let the one who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on their God.
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I have a Friend whose faithful love
Is more than all the world to me,
’Tis higher than the heights above,
And deeper than the soundless sea;
So old, so new,
So strong, so true;
Before the earth received its frame,
He loved me—Blessed be His name!
He held the highest place above,
Adored by all the sons of flame,
Yet, such His self-denying love,
He laid aside His crown and came
To seek the lost,
And, at the cost
Of heavenly rank and earthly fame,
He sought me—Blessed be His name!
It was a lonely path He trod,
From every human soul apart;
Known only to Himself and God
Was all the grief that filled His heart:
Yet from the track
He turned not back,
Till where I lay in want and shame
He found me—Blessed be His name!
Then dawned at last that day of dread
When, desolate, yet undismayed,
With wearied frame and thorn-crowned head,
He, now forsaken and betrayed,
Went up for me
To Calvary,
And dying there in grief and shame
He saved me—Blessed be His name!
Long as I live my song shall tell
The wonders of His matchless love;
And when at last I rise to dwell
In the bright home prepared above,
My joy shall be
His face to see,
And bowing then with loud acclaim,
I’ll praise Him—Blessed be His name!
C.A Tydeman
