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EPISODE 12: Our Identity as Servants

Our culture tells us we can create our own identity any way we want. But Scripture tells us our identity comes from God, who created us in his image, and recreates us by the power of the gospel. Part of our new identity is as “servants of the Lord.” New Testament scholar Matt Harmon points us to the important theme of “The Servant of the Lord” in scripture and how we who follow Jesus, “the servant par excellence,” can find our true identity.

Show Notes:

The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People: Tracing a Biblical Theme Through the Canon (New Studies in Biblical Theology, Volume 54)

by Matthew S. Harmon

Asking the Right Questions: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible

by Matthew S. Harmon

Transcript


Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and our podcast seeks to do what we do with all of our activities with the C.S. Lewis Institute, to pursue discipleship of the heart and mind, helping people think and know and do all that is involved in being a disciple. And I am delighted that my conversation partner for today's podcast is Matt Harmon, professor of New Testament at Grace College and Grace Theological Seminary, the author of numerous books, including some pretty mammoth commentaries of books on the New Testament. He's just recently come out with a really great book called The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People. Matt, welcome to Questions That Matter.

It is a privilege to be with you and to talk to a friend from long ago.

What Is Biblical Theology?

Yeah. Matt and I have been friends for quite a while. We were both on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ, now called Cru, for several years. We were part of a team that taught our staff Bible study methods and biblical interpretation, and then Matt went on and got a PhD in New Testament. He's a professor now, and he and I still enjoy connecting whenever we can. We wish it could be more often. So, Matt, you've written this book on the servant of the Lord and the servant people, and it's part of a series of books. The series is called The New Studies in Biblical Theology. Can you help our listeners know what is that category, biblical theology? What does that mean?

Yeah. Certainly. I think that, when you first hear an expression like that, you might think that the expression biblical theology just refers to any theology that is based on the Bible. But within the academic world, there tends to be a distinction between what's called biblical theology and systematic theology. And perhaps the simplest way to try to get at the difference is that systematic theology attempts to organize what the Bible teaches on different topics and categories, like God and humanity and the nature of salvation, those sorts of categories that we bring to the text, and then ask, “So what does the Bible say about them?” Biblical theology as an academic discipline, by contrast, tries to use the preexisting categories of the Bible itself, while paying attention to the development of the story line of scripture, the overarching narrative that runs from Genesis to Revelation, and tracing the development of those key themes and ideas, with respect to how that larger story is developing.

Nicely said. Nicely done. Yeah. And one of the things that you and I have talked about over the years—and I know you believe this because I read it all in your stuff—this isn't just academic, esoteric kind of stuff, so that we can argue over fine points of things that don't matter. These things matter tremendously. And if we do a poor job of thinking theologically, we're going to live out our Christian faith in some pretty unhealthy or shallow ways. And so what I love about your book, your writing, is you're always pushing it in the direction of, “Okay, we can go explore this theological point, but how does it shape us or how does it change us?” So let me jump way ahead. This study that you did about the servant of the Lord, where do you see that applying in people's lives, whether they read your book or not?

Sure.

Hopefully, they'll read this theme in so many places in Scripture, which is where it's more important. But I'm jumping way ahead, and then we'll come back from that. But how do you see this working itself out in our spiritual growth and discipleship?

Yeah. That’s a great question. And I'm absolutely committed to making sure that theology doesn't just stay in the realm of the theoretical and the intellectual and that it gets to the practical. So when I think of this idea of the servant of the Lord, there are these key figures throughout Scripture that are identified with this special title of the servant of the Lord. But even when you think about how it applies to us, I think, when you understand that, as a follower of Jesus, part of your identity is to be a servant of the Lord, it brings to the front of your understanding of the Christian life a few key things: One is that as a servant, you are ultimately under the authority of the Master, of the Lord Jesus Himself. So He is the one who gets to set the agenda for your life, your priorities, your values, your activities, what you think, how you feel, all those sorts of things. It's the Lord's prerogative to set the agenda for that, and He does that through His Word.

But also I think that, when it comes to its application to leadership, but as well as just even wherever God places us, that God intends to use us as His servants to create a servant people, so that He works through us to create more of His servants who joyfully surrender to the authority of Jesus and embrace their role within the larger story of the world. And that's part of where I think biblical theology is so helpful, is the biblical story that's traced through biblical theology is the true story of the world. It is the fundamental reality against which we need to evaluate our experience of life in all of its different contexts. So if you understand that—who is God, what is He doing in the world, what is He working towards—that sets the agenda for how we are to think about our own lives as individuals and as a community of Jesus followers.

Our Own Identity.

Yes. You start the book and you end the book on this importance of how we think of ourselves and what is our identity. And you rightly point out that, right now in our world, this is one of the biggest discussions going on. And pretty much the answers are everybody decides for themselves what their identity is, even down to what gender I want to be. And so I choose my identity, and probably the more bizarre the better, I guess. But you write, very early on in this book, “In one sense, this book is a contribution to understanding our identity as human beings from a biblical perspective.” And then a few sentences later, “I'm not arguing that this is the most significant biblical theme for understanding our identity as human beings. Rather, I'm proposing it is an important and sometimes overlooked theme that helps us better understand the meta narrative of scripture, as well as our own identity.” And once you kind of pointed the lens in that direction, I thought, “Man, that's powerful!” because, well, first of all, I don't have to accept the world's teaching of I make up my own identity. From the scriptures, there’s all sorts of things about my identity. I am a person created in the image of God. I'm a child of God, redeemed by the Savior. I'm adopted into God's family. And I've done a whole bunch of work on shaping my identity that way from those biblical categories. But I haven't spent a whole lot of energy or time on, “I'm a servant of the Lord.” I just find that to be—it's a corrective and very, very helpfully so. Can you say more about that?

Sure. I think that one of the striking things as I was working on this project was discovering how often this piece of identity as a servant is a contributing factor to other forms of other titles, for example. So when you think about the term servant, you can apply it to a servant king, a servant prophet, a servant priest. And so what that does is it sheds new light on the nature of what it means to be those other things. So that part of the advantage of studying this theme of the servant of the Lord is to see how the idea of being a servant should shape our understanding of those other key themes of prophet, priest, and king, and even just in our own experience in everyday life, of being a parent, a child, a coworker, whatever other roles God puts us in, a neighbor, those kinds of things. If you think about it through the lens of, “I am a servant of the Lord in this context. So what would it look like to live out my identity as a servant in this context that God has placed me?”

And just the word itself has to point you outwardly.

Yes.

A servant serves. And so you have to complete that idea with, “Serves who? Serves whom? Serves how many?” And so we're serving the Lord. We serve other people in the body of Christ. We serve other people outside.

So the editor of the series, Don Carson, says about your book in this series. He says this on the back cover. “In this distinctive volume,” as only Dr. Carson could—I wish I could imitate his voice. It’s a very distinctive volume. I can't do it. Anyway. “Dr. Harmon connects the dots that some of us have overlooked and enriches not only our understanding, but also our discipleship.” So what are those dots? And then connect them for us. How’s that. What I just said in that is, “Tell us your whole entire 250 page book in… I'll give you a minute and a half.”

There you go.

And then people won't have to read the book. Which is the goal of the… No, wait. I'm sorry. Cancel that last comment.

There you go. We'll make this the verbal equivalent of a SparkNotes summary here for your listeners. But really the central idea that I am trying to highlight and explain is that, from the very beginning and all throughout Redemptive history, God raises up key individuals, that He gives the title of servant of the Lord, with the purpose of using them to create a servant people. And that these individual servants usually, if not always, execute at least three different kinds of roles: A royal or kingly role, a priestly role, and a prophetic role. And so I trace how God raises up individual servants, starting with Adam in the garden and then going on to Moses and Joshua and David and the Isaianic servant of the Lord that is perhaps the most well-known passage about the servant of the Lord, at least in the Old Testament, and how all of those point forward to the work and person of Jesus and how He is the ultimate Servant of the Lord who then creates a servant people. That’s us, the church. And so that, through us, He is using us to advance His purposes in the world by using us as His servants and often executing those sort of three different roles of a royal role, a priestly role, a prophetic role, as we live here in this fallen world, awaiting the day when Christ will consummate all things in a new creation.

How Do We Read Those Servant Songs?

I'll return to my conversation on Questions That Matter in just a second. But I would like to invite each and every one of you to prayerfully consider becoming a ministry partner with the C.S. Lewis Institute. Our ministry is about discipleship, discipleship of the heart and mind, helping people love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. But as you might guess, a ministry of discipleship is not always the most exciting thing that people consider, but we believe that your tuning into this podcast probably indicates that you've had very positive experiences and have benefited from the institute over the years. So please click the button that says donate and become a ministry partner with us.

Well done. Well done. And let me quickly say to the listeners, reading the whole book is a whole lot better than what Matt just summarized. But again, for me, the idea of connecting those dots, and you just said it, but I'm going to repeat it. So Adam is called a servant of the Lord, then Moses, Joshua, David. There are these several different servant songs in Isaiah.

But, well, Adam, Moses, Joshua, and David, they were all disappointments in a sense, in that they couldn't totally fulfill and live up to what they were called to do as servants of the Lord. And in the Isaiah songs, the servant is identified as Israel in the first several ones, and yet Israel is a tremendous disappointment and failing to live up to it. So it points to another servant who is obviously different and obviously better, and it points to Jesus as the servant par excellence, as you say it. And the fact that your book didn't end after the chapter on Jesus was very important, because it does point to then we are called as people bought by the serving blood of the Messiah to be servants. Let's explore a little bit about that whole Isaiah thing, because it's the richest and most deep, I think, chapter of your book. Talk us through a little bit about how do we read those servant songs?

Yeah, those chapters in some ways are sort of part of the origin story of my interest in this topic, and I had to work with them in my dissertation work, tracing how Paul in Galatians was using language from those servant songs in Isaiah. But one of the most significant moments in that process was tracking through those servant songs and seeing how initially Israel as a nation is identified as the servant. But they're a failed servant. They’re blind. They’re deaf. They’re disobedient. And so, when you come to Isaiah 49, you get this introduction of an individual servant who is set apart to obey where Israel had failed, but also has, as part of his purpose, to bring the nations to know the true God. And so that sets the stage for the next two servant songs, the one in chapter 50 that describes the perseverance and obedience of the servant in the face of opposition. And then when you get to Isaiah 53, which really that servant song starts in Isaiah 52:13, but for convenience sake, we just typically say Isaiah 53, that the servant is portrayed as suffering the punishment for Israel's failure. But not just Israel's failure, humanity's failure, so that he is not just a sort of Jewish Messiah figure, He is a human Messiah for all of the peoples of the earth.

And what I didn't always recognize initially in working in those texts was the fact that those texts point not just to Jesus’ death, but also His resurrection and His vindication, that God vindicates the self-sacrificial offering of the servant, and when you start to piece those things together, it creates just this remarkably beautiful anticipation of who could possibly fulfill that kind of mission. And it sets the stage for understanding who Jesus is in the New Testament.

Oh, man. And you do really well in explaining it. I’m sure you know, I think some of our listeners know, I've come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah from a Jewish background, and so I didn't grow up hearing anything about Jesus. And then I met some Christians and they said, “Well, Jesus is the Messiah,” and my first thought was, “Well, he can't be because we don't have world peace yet.” And then they said, “Well, but you really ought to read your scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, the Tanakh, the Old Testament, and see about the Messiah.” And I thought, “Well, sure, that's a good idea.” And what I found is, “Okay, this is a whole lot more complex and rich than just as simple as, ‘Well, here's a list of predictions and, oh, look, here's how Jesus fulfills them.’” I do believe Jesus fulfills them, for sure, but it's more rich and multilayered, multifaceted.

I remember someone challenging me to read Isaiah 53, and if you're not familiar with your own scriptures, you read that and you go, “Man, that sounds kind of like Jesus,” dying for sins and all that. And then you back up and you try to read it in light of Isaiah and, “Well, there's a servant mentioned here, and he's called Israel, and then there's a servant here and he's called Israel again, and then there's a servant here, and he's called Israel, but it doesn't seem like that can be Israel,” and it's a lot more tricky. And so what we need to do is really read it, allowing it to be as full as it is. And just like you said, there needs to be a sense where you're reading it and you go, “Okay, I thought this was about Israel, but no, it can't be about Israel because it's talking about this servant is going to atone for Israel's sins. And this servant didn't open up his mouth.” And you think, “Oh, wait a minute, Isaiah was the one who said, ‘I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.’ That's all they do is open their mouth and get themselves in trouble.”

It becomes so much richer and better. But it takes some work, it takes some digging in and really reading the text, allowing it to be as complex and as rich, not convoluted and confusing, but complex and rich. Am I close?

Yeah. No, that's great. And I think that one of the things that stood out to me in this project and working back through Isaiah 53 again was being struck by how, when you read the description of what the servant does in Isaiah 53, there are overtones of having a royal function, having a priestly function, and having a prophetic function. And so it almost seems like what Isaiah 53 is doing is drawing all of these threads together not just from Isaiah. But from earlier scripture, and just saying, “It’s all going to culminate in this one Person. And He’s going to do something that you can't even really wrap your mind around until you see Him do it and look back and go, ‘Ohh! That's how it all fits together!””

And I just want to say—all right, I'm going to preach for a second here. Well, as a Jewish believer who has a tremendous burden for Jewish people coming to know that Isaiah 53 really is about Yeshua, the Messiah. And I want to encourage Gentile Christians to be able to reach out to their Jewish friends and talk to them about Jesus the Messiah. I really want to encourage you to read the whole book of Isaiah and reread it and reread it and get the flow of it and how it builds and builds and builds. I mean, that chapter in Isaiah 53 feels like a crescendo of the whole entire book. And like you're saying, really, of all of Scripture. It’s like this mountaintop.

But I think a lot of people just kind of like to read just that chapter. “Isn’t this great!” Well, it is great, and there's tremendous blessing, but boy, when you read it in light of the whole book of Isaiah, and you get more and more of a feel of how the prophets spoke. They painted pictures. They looked way ahead into the distant future, and then they also looked into the near future, and saw how those two things were linked. It's beautiful and rich, but it ain't easy.

Right, right. It requires ultimately allowing the Bible to guide you in setting up, “What kind of things should I be looking for? What kind of category should I have of this promised One who's coming? Okay, he's going to be a royal figure. Okay. Got to be looking for that. He's going to be a prophetic figure. He's going to be a priestly figure.” And as you more and more immerse yourself into the Bible, you begin to get those categories provided to you. And what you said about reading large chunks, reading the whole book of Isaiah, reading really the whole narrative of Scripture is so important, because if you just start getting these little sound bites, these little verses here and there, it’s like having this 1,000 piece puzzle. And you're just looking at like, I don't know, eight or ten or twenty pieces, but having no clue how they all fit together or if they're even supposed to fit together, let alone being able to look at the box cover and go, “Oh, that’s how they're all supposed to fit together!” But you don't know that until you look at the totality of things.

We'll return to my conversation in just a moment. I do want to invite you to take a look at our website, cslewisinstitute.org, and avail yourself to the many resources that we have there. We have over 40 years’ worth of articles and recordings and events that can be tremendously helpful. Check out the different ways that we can help you share your faith or grow deeply in your faith. And consider also supporting the institute. If you click on the button that says donate, we would love to have you as a ministry partner. Now, let's return to the conversation.

Yeah, that illustration of the puzzle and just a few pieces, that's really good. Here's an illustration that's not as good, and it's only going to work for a tiny, tiny, small segment, but I just have to do it because I'm—what's the word? Self centered. That's it. So I love the music of Rachmaninoff, and one of my favorite pieces is his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. And basically he takes this tiny little theme of Paganini, and he works out this whole series of variations on it. And so it's 25 minutes long, and it culminates in this really beautiful just two and a half minute piece that lots and lots of people know, and they love it, and they'll play it on Spotify. It's just a two and a half minute song, and it was a theme that was in several different movies, in Groundhog Day, and everybody loves that, and it is great. But when you hear that two and a half minutes in light of the whole 25-minute piece of music, when it builds and it builds and it builds, it's almost like every single variation is like a disappointment. It's like kind of rough, it's kind of harsh, whatever. And then there's this amazing oasis in the middle of a desert, and it's so glorious. And like I said, that only worked for a few people, but it worked for me. So thank you for indulging me.

But that's how we need to read Isaiah 53, in light of all of Isaiah, in light of all of scripture. And, anyway, I hope people stuck with us. We'll find out. We get stats, like, “People checked out when you started doing that Rachmaninoff bit, and they really clicked “enough” when you started singing. That was really bad.” But let me just turn the angle here, just a slight different direction. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time, but you wrote this really great short book about how to study the Bible, about how to read the Bible and get the most out of it and study it. And I think it's a really great resource for people who have never been trained in Bible study. They've read the Bible, but they need some instruction and training. And you cleverly titled the book Asking the Right Questions. Can you give us a little promo of that?

Sure. Yeah. This book came out in 2017 with Crossway, and it's called Asking the Right Questions: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible. And actually, in the opening chapter of that book, I give an overview of what I consider to be the basic [28:23] story line of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in about I don't know, 10, 12 pages, trying to make it really simple and easy to follow. But the goal of the book was to help believers of any maturity to grow in their ability to understand and apply the Bible. And really, the launching point is what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments. He was asked, what are the two greatest commandments? And obviously the first one: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. And then the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And of course, He’s quoting from the Old Testament, so it's not like He’s making these new ideas up.

But then He goes on to say, “On these two, the whole of the law and the prophets are established.” And so essentially, what I take Him to be saying is that all of the Bible was given to us to help us love God and love other people, so that, no matter what passage you go to, it will tell you something about how to love God and how to love people. So I came up with four questions oriented towards understanding any passage, and they're very simple: What do I learn about God? What do I learn about people? What do I learn about relating to God? And what do I learn about relating to other people? So those are the four understanding questions. And I believe that every passage in the Bible is oriented towards helping us answer those kinds of questions. And then, when it comes to application, I came up with just four simple application questions: What does God want me to think? What does God want me to believe? What does God want me to desire? And what does God want me to do? And these are questions that I think—even young children can learn to start asking these questions as they're reading the Bible. So even if you're reading a passage out of a more challenging book like, let's say, Leviticus, you're reading through the sacrifices, and you're like, “Oh, my goodness! I don't know what to do with this as a modern-day Christian.” Asking those kinds of questions of: What do I learn about God? What do I learn about people? What do I learn about relating to God? What do I learn about relating to other people? Can get you on the right track to see what God is saying to us today as His people.

Would you mind repeating the application questions again? Just because I think people really will want to grab that.

Sure. The application questions are: What does God want me to think? What does God want me to believe? What does God want me to desire? And what does God want me to do? I think too often when we think about applying Scripture, we run immediately to just the “do.” What's the “do?” And unintentionally that can produce a whole new class of Pharisees who base their relationship with God on how well they are doing on the new to-do list that they've come up with.

And as you well know, true transformation begins at the heart and mind level. And when that happens, it will produce a change in our desires and in our actions. But if you don't start there, what happens is you create Christians who are merely conforming their external behavior to a set of expectations and are not, in fact, experiencing the true transforming power of God's Spirit.

Man, we’ve got to get you to be a regular speaker for the C.S. Lewis Institute. And so now I have to insert a commercial because you just used the phrase heart and mind, and that's a big phrase for us. We're all about heart and mind discipleship, especially since C.S. Lewis grabbed a hold of hearts through imagination and also our minds. But then you talked about knowing and doing, which is a journal and a publication we put together, and we've got all sorts of resources, so I had to sneak the commercial in.

But just for our final look here, back at your thinking and work about being a servant people, or my identity is as a servant, what are some things that—how does that work itself out if, in fact, we are desiring to be a servant and we are then taking on actions as a servant? What are just some things, maybe in your own reflecting as you were working on this book, that led you to be more thinking of yourself as a servant. I know I just put you on the spot.

Sure. No. That’s fine. That’s fine. What are friends for, right?

But I do think that, when you think of how the Bible describes us as human beings in our unredeemed state, as being naturally bent towards ourselves, one of the ways that this theme of understanding our identity as being a servant of the Lord is it enables us, it reminds us, as we enter different spheres or situations, that our first priority should not be, “What’s in it for me? And what can I get out of this?” but, “How can I be an extension of God's love and compassion and kindness and truth in this context?” And that has implications for how you think about marriage, interacting with your spouse, interacting with a coworker, and even when you think about the descriptions of Jesus tied to Isaiah 53, He was a suffering servant. And so it's to be expected, if we are people who follow a suffering servant, that we ourselves may end up suffering, being misunderstood, or not being treated perhaps in a way that we think we deserve, that that's to be expected.

And at the end of the day, what matters most is not what others think of a servant, it's what the Master thinks of his servant. And as we live towards that day, with that mentality of thinking, “What I am most looking forward to hearing is, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.’”

Oh, man. Well done! Well said. I wish we could keep talking, but I'm going to draw our discussion to a close. And by the way, I love the image that I've been thinking about since reading your book, of evangelism as a service, that we serve other people when we point them to the Savior and we tell them about how they can experience eternal life and forgiveness of sins, that we're serving them. So very often, evangelism feels like an argument or a sales pitch. And yeah, sometimes it's going to be unpleasant, because people love darkness, but if we can think of it in terms of serving other people, that's a radical shift for me, and I think it's a good one, a good direction. Well, Matt, any last comments that you really wanted to say and I didn't draw upon before we wrap this up?

Well, I'm appreciative of you having me on the program, and I would encourage the listeners to immerse themselves in Scripture, because ultimately, that is where we're going to see the beauty of Christ, and that is what brings transformation in our own lives, and also it is what will fuel us to want to talk to others about Jesus. We naturally talk about the people and the things that we are most drawn to, that we're most captivated by, and so as we get more and more of a view of who Jesus is, as the Servant of the Lord and the many other titles and roles that He plays in our lives, that can only help to fuel our love for Christ, our devotion to Him, intensify our desire to obey Him, and to increase our desire to bring others to know the joy of knowing the Master that we ourselves experience.

Amen. Well, that's a good way to draw this to a close. Matt, thank you for joining me. And to all of our listeners, we hope that this podcast and all of the resources that the C.S. Lewis Institute provides will be helpful. Please visit our website, cslewisinstitute.org. And we have lots of different audio, video, written resources there. All of them are to help you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind. 

Brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute and the Questions That Matter Podcast with Randy Newman.

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