Anyway, the other day I was reading the messianic prophecy Isaiah 49. It begins like this (vv. 1-4):
Listen to Me, O islands,
And pay attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called Me from the womb;
From the body of My mother He named Me.
He has made My mouth like a sharp sword,
In the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me;
And He has also made Me a select arrow,
He has hidden Me in His quiver.
He said to Me, “ You are My Servant, Israel,
In Whom I will show My glory.”
But I said, “I have toiled in vain,
I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity;
Yet surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord,
And My reward with My God.”
The two lines beginning "But I said..." jumped out to me. I read them over and over. What? This sounds a bit like one of the lamentation psalms. But this is the Messiah, Jesus, speaking prophetically. Jesus is complaining?
Yes -- oh, praise the Lord -- Jesus is complaining. Not whining, like we sometimes do. He's taking His broken heart and His frustration to the Father: "Father, is this all really going somewhere? THEY'RE NOT LISTENING. They still don't understand." I can imagine He prayed something similar not long before He was crucified, because during those days and weeks He did spend quite a lot of time confirming that the disciples had understood who He was and why He had come.
Maybe He also ran this chapter of Isaiah through His mind on the cross, to remind Himself of the Father's reply (vv. 6-7):
He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make You a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and its Holy One,
To the despised One,
To the One abhorred by the nation,
To the Servant of rulers,
“Kings will see and arise,
Princes will also bow down,
Because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who has chosen You.”
Imagine, words resembling Jesus' intimate, honest prayers and the Father's resounding replies were recorded by the prophet Isaiah, many centuries before Christ was born. What can I learn from these prayers (God wants it "real"!), and, even better... what other wonderful snapshots of Jesus' mind and heart are hiding in scripture?
I, for one, want to find out. :)