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Responding to the Practical Problem of Evil, or Isaiah's Third Servant Song - chapter 50

Griffith, struggling with the
vexing problem of theodicity 

One of the biggest attacks against Christianity is the problem of evil, specifically the issue of unjust suffering.  Often this objection is brought up as if they have found a chink in our armor, like the Christian has never thought about the issue.  “Oh yeah, Mr. Defender of the Faith, here’s a curve ball for you – if God is good why do bad things happen?”  The answer is, “How long do you have?”  because the Bible talks about the problem of unjust suffering page after page after page. 

Everyone has these kinds of problems.  You can hear it in the voice of my 18 month old son as he cries – “Why do bad things happen to good people!”  But the severity of unjust suffering extends from things like being forced to take a nap when you don’t want to, to sorrow and pain that most of us could never begin to comprehend. 

Let’s consider the third “Servant Song,” found in Isaiah 50.  (Read the message on the fourth song, Isaiah 53, here).  This chapter answers the problem of unjust suffering, not from an intellectual perspective, but from a practical perspective – what should we do when life seems unfair?

The Context of Isaiah 50

In Isaiah 50, there are two different servants of the Lord who are suffering on the extreme end of the spectrum of suffering.   These two servants illustrate two very different approaches to this sort of problem.  The first servant is Israel in verses 1 to 3 and the second is the Lord Jesus Christ in verses 4 to 9.  Isaiah then concludes the chapter in verses ten and eleven with some applications for us.  Now would be a good to read Isaiah 50, looking for

* two servants,
* two kinds of unjust suffering,
* two approaches to dealing with our problems.

James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners

In this post we’ll consider the first servant and his problem.  The first servant is the nation of Israel (and we can also think of Judah).  They went through incredible suffering of siege and captivity (Israel 722 B.C. Judah 586 B.C.).  When you think about the worst way to die, rarely does a person say a siege.  But it should be towards the top of the list.  Their food supply is cut off.  And people do crazy things when they are starving, like eating their own children (see 2 Kings 6:24-30 for a gruesome example).  When taken they are forced into slavery.  These sort of extreme sufferings form the background of verses one to three.

The Greatest Gift

I don’t know if you’re a Christmas movie junkie, like myself, but if you are there is a constant theme running throughout most Christmas movies.   It is found in the famous words of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  After discovering that Christmas was not destroyed by his stealing the presents, the story reads:

      And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow 

      Stood puzzling and puzzling: How could it be so?

      It came without ribbons?  It came without tags!    

      It came without packages, boxes or bags!

      And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore 

      Then the Grinch though of something he hadn’t before!

      Maybe Christmas, he thought doesn’t come from a store 

      Maybe Christmas...perhaps…means a little bit more.

The theme that runs throughout almost every Christmas story is that the meaning of Christmas is about something more than presents. All gifts are but a shadow of this, the greatest of all gifts, the coming of the Lord Jesus.  Let's consider how the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest gift of all.

A Good Gift is Necessary

First, a good gift is something that you need really need.    If you’ve ever seen the movie A Christmas Story, perhaps you’ll remember that the main character, Ralphie, wants more than anything “a red rider carbon action two hundred shot range model air rifle,” or a bb gun.  In his mind, he day dreams about defending his house as bandits try to intrude.  He sees the bb gun as a necessity.  Well, along with Ralphie, sometimes our definition of “necessity” requires a bit of modification.  But if ever a gift was truly needed, it was the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I love that line from O Holy Night –

The Suffering Servant

The Ethiopian's Disappointment

Rembrandt, The baptism of the eunuch, 1626

The story is told of a man from Africa who undertook a journey to search for God.  He sensed the bankruptcy of the religion around him.  He eventually acquired a copy of what we call the Old Testament.  As he read he learned that God had called one nation out from all the other nations to be a great light and to represent God on the earth.  God called them His Servant, for they were to do His will and be His representatives in the world.  This was the divine mission of the nation of Israel.  Excitedly he made preparations and went to Jerusalem on one of their feast days so he could benefit first hand from their spiritual ministry.  Like many today, he went to those who claimed to be God’s people for answers.  And like many today, he left terribly disappointed.  He came to Israel, whose meaning “God fights.”  But he found spiritual weakness.  He came to the Jews , which literally means “God’s praise.”  But he found those who “worshipped God with their lips but their hearts were far from Him.”  He came to see the very house of God, but all he found were whitewashed tombs, external rituals and appearances, but deadness on the inside.  He discovered that the ones who were to bring salvation to the world, clearly needed salvation themselves.  Dejected, he went back home reading the prophet Isaiah in his chariot.  He was confused – how could this impotent nation of hypocrites be the arm of the Lord?  He read on.  As he read aloud, a man approached and asked him a simple question “Do you understand what you are reading?”  He replied, “how can I, unless someone explains it to me?”  The explanation he heard was revolutionary.  Many, perhaps like this Ethiopian, think of the world in terms of the religious and the irreligious.  But when they do so, they find that the religious can be just as, if not more, disappointing than the irreligious.  He learned that the so called righteous people need a deliverer, just as badly as the so called sinners.

The passage the Ethiopian was reading was Isaiah 52:13-to 53:12, one of the most profound passages in all of Scripture.  For it’s there that we read in the clearest terms of the mission of the Messiah, God’s true servant.  So let’s turn there and read this passage, which has been called the holy of holies in Bible reading.