ELECT

Among the many voices heard at Golgotha was the mocking cry from the rulers of Israel, ‘He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God’, Luke 23. 35. Maybe Peter learned of the taunting voice and recalled it later when, drawing on Psalm 118, he would write of One who was rejected indeed of men, ‘but chosen of God, and precious’, 1 Pet. 2. 4.

In today’s reading from Isaiah, it is clearly Jehovah’s servant, ‘mine elect’, to whom our attention is drawn. Not a servant chosen out from a number of others as in the marketplace, but a unique choice, to undertake a unique task. To this servant the work was never irksome; ‘I delight to do thy will, O my God’, Ps. 40. 8. Neither was there any reluctance, for He willingly ‘took upon him the form of a servant’, Phil. 2. 7. How fitting the words of those who witnessed His works, ‘He hath done all things well’, Mark 7. 37.

He was not only the chosen servant, but also the chosen sacrifice. We recall the words of Abraham to Isaac as they ascended Moriah together, ‘God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt- offering’, Gen. 22. 8. It was, of course, in anticipation of the one final sacrifice that the whole structure of ceremonial law was given, thus maintaining a means of approach to God, until ‘this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God’, Heb. 10. 12.

Furthermore, it is clearly seen throughout the Scriptures that this same One is also the chosen sovereign. It was to Samuel that the Lord said, ‘I have provided me a king’, and David, the man after God’s own heart, was anointed to foreshadow the chosen One. So, the Psalmist, foreseeing God’s purposes, records ‘Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion’, Ps. 2. 6. Peter writes of One who is both ‘chief corner stone’ and ‘head of the corner’ as both the foundation and the finisher of God’s purposes. Our Lord Jesus Christ, elect and precious, who once took the servant’s place to become the sacrifice, must take the sovereign’s place. Not by force of arms nor yet by popular vote, but as the One ‘whose right it is’, Ezek. 21. 27.