By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 24,2024
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Isaiah 50:4–9 (ESV)
4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. 5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. 6 I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. 7 But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. 8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9 Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.
Today we begin that walk through “Holy Week.” Today we celebrate the announcement of Christ the King, as we celebrate the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as the people waved and laid their coats and palm branches on the road before him. We celebrate Christ the king. We celebrate, but we are all to aware of how quickly things change. Within a week this lauded king would find himself falsely accused and bearing the shame of a cross. Those that once proclaimed with loud voices, Hosanna, are now silent. They are silent because the powers surrounding them have flexed their muscles and showed their willingness to silence any distension.
I have contemplated Palm Sunday on many occasions. I have considered it in light of my own temperament. What would I have done?
The reality is that we are all very human. We have this engrained, reflexive desire within us for survival. Our natural default setting for survival. There is usually nothing wrong with this. This reflex has served us well, because it has allowed the survival of our ancestors in great trials so that we had the opportunity to be born here today. We are all survivors. We have all faced trials and have come out of those trials, and on this side of those experiences we can provide hope and encouragement to those around us. But this survival mechanism within us is not always honorable.
We see this on Palm Sunday. The crowds express with jubilation their desire and hope for a king they can all their own. But then that survival instinct kicks in, and the very same voices that expressed allegiance to the king, uttered treasonous venom as they shouted crucify him.
This survival instinct has allowed us to be here today. But survival is not always what it appears to be. There are times when survival is weakness. There are times were those that survive, did so out of deceit or betrayal. There are moments where the desire to survive makes us complacent to the injustice that occurs around us.
Today we look at what is often regarded as the third servant song within the words of Isaiah. We often think of these poetic lines within the prophetic narrative as declarations of the Messiah that would soon be coming, the Messiah we know as Jesus. We are not wrong in this, but I want us all to remember, the words of the prophet had meaning during the contemporary era of history as well as eras in the future. These words, though fulfilled in Christ, also brought courage and strength to the people that first heard them. These words inspired not only the hope for some future fulfillment but hope in their current time.
This is why I do not often get caught up in the excitement we currently see around the interpretation of prophecy in reference to the theologies surrounding the end times. I do not put a great deal of weight on the interpretation of scholars that promote various dispensations, because for the words to have been seen as inspired in ages past, they would have had to contain wisdom and encouragement in those days. If these words were only written to provide us with a road map to the end of days today, the ancients would have regarded them as the utterances of a lunatic. It is only after fulfillment that we can find the outside connections, not before.
That is why I want us to look at this passage, not from the perspective of the king, even though we now know of that fulfillment. Instead, I want us to explore what the ancient ears would have heard.
What is going on in the contemporary history surrounding this passage? Isaiah was, as I have mentioned before, the Shakespeare of his era. He was a scribe within the courts of his king. And his king was not just anyone, but his own cousin. As a scribe, it was Isaiah’s duty to record and deliver messages for his king. This man that we usually only know as a prophet, was one of the few people of Judah that saw the world. He traveled to the various seats of influence to deliver various communications between those that wielded the power of the kingdoms of men. Isaiah would travel through these various lands, and he could see faces of those that were required to endure the dictates written within the message he was delivering. He saw the faces; he traveled through the valleys. The dust of reality caked his sandaled feet, while those that held power sat cloistered in pristine palaces.
He saw, he smelled, he bore witness. And he as a man of prayer as well as learning, spoke truth. He bore witness to the reality of their current trajectory. He was inspired, yes, but was also able to see what others were incapable of seeing.
This I hope is the first lesson we learn from Isaiah. We are where we are for a reason. We may not like the reason, we may not even know what the reason is, but God can and does use our experiences to extend his influence in the world around us. Today, this moment, is sanctified and holy to God, at least it could be if we are able to see it. How will we respond? How will we bear light within it?
Isaiah was able to see within his travels the various aspects of policy being lived out before his eyes. He saw the courts of the Assyrians. He saw how they honored their deity, and how that devotion was translated within their culture. He also saw devotion to Yahweh. He knew the teaching of Torah, he heard the stories, and he bore witness to the rejection of the wisdom God had provided within those words.
Our reading today begins in the fourth verse of this chapter, but the story does not. In the prior three verses, Isaiah speaks of the despair Israel will face in exile. They will feel as if God had abandoned them. Isaiah says, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions you mother was sent away.’”
Like other prophets, Isaiah is telling Israel that their exile was self-inflicted. They went after the pleasures the world claims to offer. They left; they committed spiritual adultery. But even in their current state of being, God had not written a certificate of divorce. His covenant remains. God does not bless and curse according to our adherence to His dictates. He is faithful, period. We experience blessing when we seek him, when we share in his joy and pleasure not because we are more righteous than everyone else, but because that is how relationships work. And when we walk away, we are not being cursed, but we have wandered away. We cannot eat at the table of God if we are not at the table.
There are times where we suffer, even though we are in the presence of our God. This is often the cry of those that reject God in our current age, “Why do bad things happen to good people.” If God is a good of goodness and love, why does he allow suffering? Why did Israel go into exile? Why did the holocaust occur? Why is war ravaging various nations and innocents lose their lives or must endure torturous violence? Why did I lose my job? Why is my marriage not featured on Halmark? Why?
Although we might be at the table, we live in communities and cultures. We in our personal attempts of survival see, hear, and turn away from bad behavior that we should speak out against. We may be seeking God personally, but when we leave the dwelling of meeting do we carry with us the words of wisdom we heard?
This is where verse four begins. It is within this setting where Isaiah seems to again cries out as he did in the beginning of his ministry, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips…” Isaiah does not think of himself as the elite, or the righteous. He knows who he is. He knows what he has participated in, and he also knows that God can redeem.
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” Our tongue is a powerful tool. We often do not think of it as such but when we look at the Revelation of Jesus as recorded by John, what is the weapon that Jesus carries into battle? His tongue is like a double-edged sword. This symbolism is present even in the words of Isaiah. God has given “me”, this servant, a tongue of those who are taught. This speaks of learning to use our words carefully.
“That I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” This word. Sustain is interesting. It has a positive or a negative aspect to it. It more literally means to bend or twist. And we are all very aware of how people can bend and twist words. Words can be used to pervert truth and promote injustice. Words can also be used to provide comfort and hope. Within this one word we can see the struggle within Isaiah. He observes the people who are broken before him. He sees the struggle the suffering. He sees how the kings are using words, even the words of his Lord to twist and pervert truth and cause injustice to occur. And he says, “The Lord has given me a tongue to sustain the weary.”
“Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.” I love the image this poem creates in my mind. At first, we may only see within this passage that Isaiah is hearing God, but there is more to the ears than we might imagine.
If we were to go back into the teachings of the Torah, back to Leviticus or the wisdom given to the priest in how to live within the sanctuary of God, we would see that the ears had significance. When a person came to the temple to offer a guilt offering, an offering of confession of a sin, the priest would prepare the animal as required. The blood would be drained and collected in a basin, and the priest would take this blood, he would put his fingers within it and would then pinch the right ear lobe of the one offering the sacrifice with the blood. This is one of the only times within the sacrificial system that the blood of the sacrifice would be applied directly to a person. The priest would then again place their fingers into the blood and apply the blood to the right thumb and right big toe. This participatory sacrifice gives us a glimpse into what Isaiah is speaking about.
The guilt offering requires the person to recognize that their judgment was faulty. They were not listening to God’s wisdom and the blood was applied to their ears to symbolize that they would again listen to God. Their actions were not in keeping with God’s requirements so the blood again would represent that their course and their actions would be dedicated to their God.
Isaiah says, “Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.” Just one ear, not both. Isaiah is confessing his own sin, his own guilt. He is pointing out our own failings and our own participation in injustice. But he and we can come back. The guilt can be covered, and our ear can again be opened to the wisdom of God. Our words, our action, and our course can once again be set to the course that God has laid before us.
As I have been studying both for this week’s message and for Talking Tuesday, I have been drawn to this passage and passage like it. Isaiah is encouraging us to seek the wisdom of God, before we speak and act. He is encouraging us to seek true justice and to stand within that righteousness. But we can so easily be distracted and twist or pervert the wisdom God gives. Amborse of Milan, a 4th century Bishop and the teacher of the man we know as St. Augustine says this of Isaiah’s words.
Now what ought we to learn before everything else, but to be silent that we may be able to speak? Lest my voice should condemn me before that of another acquits me, for it is written: “By your words you shall be condemned.” What need is there, then, that you should hasten to undergo the danger of condemnation by speaking when you can be more safe by keeping silent? How many have I seen to fall into sin by speaking, but scarcely one by keeping silent; and so it is more difficult to know how to keep silent than how to speak … a person is wise, then, who knows how to keep silent. Lastly, the Wisdom of God said, “The Lord has given to me the tongue of learning, that I should know when it is good to speak.” Justly, then, is one wise who has received of the Lord to know when he ought to speak. Wherefore the Scripture says well: “A wise person will keep silence until there is opportunity.”[1]
There is much to say about this passage. I want to speak word for word through each of these verses. I want to highlight what it means to stand firm and to set our face like a flint. I want us to know how these words inspired righteousness and the pursuit of justice not only in Christ, but in those that walked into exile. But I feel we first need to allow the wisdom Isaiah gives us in this one verse.
We need to wait before God. We need to confess and acknowledge that we too are people with unclean lips, living within a community of people just like us. We need to recognize in ourselves that we have fallen short, and we have dishonored the image of God within ourselves and those around us. We cannot stand for truth and justice if we participate in injustice and falsehood in ourselves.
I want the tongue of those who are taught. I want my ear to be awaken morning my morning so that I can hear as the ones who are taught. I want my words to adjust to a given situation to provide comfort and hope, but all too often the words I speak are bent and perverse.
I like the people of Jerusalem two thousand years ago, cry out Hosanna to the king. But by Tuesday after watching the news for a couple of days, I again speak venom against anyone that opposes my ideas, and my understanding. I do this, we do this, when we neglect the truth. We do this when we fail to take on the life and lifestyle of Jesus. Jesus taught us how we should live; it is revealed to us throughout the gospels. We should as he did, make it our custom to worship God within our communities. We should, as he did, withdraw to isolated places to pray. And we should, as he did, minister to the needs of our community.
We cannot live this life of truth and justice if we do not have it to give. We cannot speak with the tongue of those who are taught if we do not first listen to the teaching. We cannot stand tall in God’s truth, if we have not first recognized the perversions of truth within us. But there is hope in our hopelessness. Jesus, God incarnate, was born of Mary, he lived within a house and community, he worshiped with that community. He grew in the knowledge of both God and man, he labored in his family business. He answered the call within him to face every form of temptation that we each face, yet he did not sin. He stood in the face of injustice and healed the broken and encouraged the ones beaten down by the struggles of life. And he took that injustice on himself as his back was stuck and his beard pulled out. He was lifted upon the cross of shame, enduring the full weight of our guilt and shame himself, for us. He died and was buried.
Jesus knows our condition. God knows the trials we face. He knows what we bury deep within the recesses of our hearts. And those things were buried with him in that tomb. Hopelessness is buried but hope grows new. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The adversary our accuser may try to hold us back, to keep us buried in those dark tombs we try to live in, but life and light overcomes the darkness. Hope will be restored, and justice will prevail. But before we can speak of it with the tongues of those who are taught, we must first listen with the ear of those who are taught.
Let us now together, draw close to God in this time of holy expectancy, and let us listen to the Spirit. So that we can leave this place with words for the weary, and actions of the just.
[1] Elliott, Mark W., editor. Isaiah 40–66. InterVarsity Press, 2007, pp. 130–31.
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By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 26, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 4 (Faith and Practice of EFC-MAYM pg 61) Do you provide for the suitable Christian education and recreation of your children and those under your care, and…
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By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
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