Wisdom GPS: Where To Look for Wisdom.

A New Commentary on the Fourth Servant Song: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Pt. 1

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. -I Corinthians 1:18

His arrogance was disappointing. The tone this distinguished professor used in his lecture left no doubt that his resume was stellar…and he knew it. I had come to expect this in my undergraduate studies. But this class was part of my Master’s of Divinity degree. His course was meant to train me to become a Christian pastor. He was capable of imparting theological knowledge that might help in my sense of call, but he was incapable of passing on the wisdom needed to guide people on their journey with Jesus.

The fourth Servant Song of Isaiah surfaces this deep desire for leadership we can admire in its very first sentence:

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. -Isaiah 52:13

This sounds like someone who could teach me to help others take their next step with Christ. But where will I find such a person? I’ve so often been taken in by people who seem wise on the surface but deep down prove to be otherwise. What should I look for to find the wise person I can safely admire?

The answer of the fourth Servant Song to such questions both surprises us and makes it clear why we keep getting fooled.

We tend to look for wisdom among those with power. Those born into famous families attract our attention. We find ourselves admiring those with celebrity. But the wise Servant has none of these qualities:

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. -Isaiah 53:2

In fact, this song makes it clear that success in any of these areas is a red herring:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces,
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. -Isaiah 53:3

This description of the wise servant threatens a deep assumption held, not only in our generation, but in every generation. In the book of Job, written at least 400 years before Jesus, a person who suffers in this way is not considered wise or blessed, but is rather sinful and cursed.

The lamp of a wicked man is snuffed out; the flame of his fire stops burning…People of the west are appalled at his fate; those of the east are seized with horror. Surely such is the dwelling of an evil man; such is the place of one who does not know God. -Job 18:5, 20-21

Isaiah’s poem, however, connects the suffering of the servant to the healing of humanity:

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. -Isaiah 53:4-5.

The fourth song explores the suffering and healing of the servant by reflecting on animal sacrifice in the Jewish sacrificial system. For example, the role of “sprinkling” is described in the following passage from Leviticus:

He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain…He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. -Leviticus 16:15a, 16b

This same language of “sprinkling” is used to describe the servant’s suffering on our behalf:

Just as there were many who were appalled at him— his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness—so he will sprinkle many nations… -Isaiah 52:14-15a

Isaiah goes further, making the connection between the Servant’s suffering and the sacrifice of a lamb:

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. -Isaiah 53:7

Why is this kind of wisdom necessary?

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. -Isaiah 53:6

The combination of themes is completely foreign to the plans of the powerful in Isaiah’s day, as it is in ours:

…and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

For what they were not told, they will see,

and what they have not heard, they will understand. -Isaiah 52:14-15

This theme of true wisdom is found not only in the four Servant Songs of Isaiah. Paul quotes another passage, Isaiah 29:14, before adding the wisdom he has gained from experiencing suffering and giving his life to Jesus:

For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. -I Corinthians 1:19-25

It was passages like this that made my seminary professor such a disappointment. But I soon found another Christian intellectual who embodied the wisdom of the servant in his joy, his humor, and his humility. He was not well-known, although his ideas have been adopted by other scholars without citation and used to promote their own careers. That didn’t bother him. He had learned that the wise look beyond their own fate. This Scottish scholar of short stature focused on mentoring people in the emerging church of the non-West. That was where he put his energies in life and this work continues to bear fruit, years after his death. I admire him.

The obvious application, then, of this first part of the fourth servant song is for each of us to answer the question raised in our passage:

Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? -Isaiah 53:1.

Have we understood what true wisdom is? Has this lesson changed who we admire?