The life of Josiah Henson was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. After 41 years as a slave, Henson escaped in 1830 from Maryland to Canada via the Underground Railroad. He settled in Dresden, Ontario, where he pastored a church and started a school for escaped slaves. Recently, the cabin where he and his wife Nancy lived has been restored and is being developed as a historical tourist site commemorating the African-American fight for freedom. The site includes the house and a small museum.
The Messiah, too, came to set the captives free. “Awake! Awake,” cries a watchman. “Prepare and purify yourself for this great day of rejoicing. The slaves will be freed, the prisoners redeemed!” This is not just freedom for freedom's sake, but so that “the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (52:10). This is welcome news indeed, or at least it will be to the Israelites in exile. The same God whose wrath will catch them like “antelope in a net” will fall irresistibly on their enemies as well. The same God who had set the slaves free in Egypt will also open the door for them to return to their homeland. The New Testament took the image of “beautiful feet” from Isaiah 52:7 and applied it to the Christian imperative to bear witness to the spiritual good news, the gospel of Christ (Rom. 10:14-15; Eph. 6:15).
The glory here goes to God, not Israel. In fact, the obedient Servant is strongly contrasted with sinful Israel. It's not God who forsook the “marriage,” but His people. They failed to write His law on their hearts and were swayed instead by human ways of thinking (51:7). The nation's sins needed to be punished. By contrast, the Servant, even though He'll be persecuted and suffer greatly, does not rebel but obeys perfectly. He knows that God will vindicate Him in the end (50:4-9, the third Servant Song).
posted by I love Jesus! ! ! @ Sunday, June 24, 2007
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