Dock Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 29 March 2026
Summary
In the third sermon on Isaiah’s Servant Songs, Abie drew the congregation into the heart of Holy Week by sitting with Isaiah 50:4–11. Abie traced three interlocking movements in the servant song: the servant’s obedience to the Lord’s instruction, the suffering that obedience would bring, and the trust that held him through it all. Abie made the case that the leadup to victory rarely looks victorious. As Jesus recognised himself in this servant song and walked willingly toward the cross, so we are invited to ask: how will we answer the call to obedience, face suffering with Jesus’s perspective, and trust God even in the dark?
Key Points & Takeways
The Servant Will Be Obedient - Obedience is not a one-off decision but a daily, disciplined posture. Jesus modelled this throughout his ministry. Obedience made Jesus popular when he healed and taught and put a target on his back when his teaching was provocative. The crowd’s reaction didn’t determine his direction.
Obedience Will Lead to Suffering - The servant song is unflinching. As a society we are deeply uncomfortable with suffering, but Jesus shows us that we don’t have to conflate suffering with despair. Suffering can still teach and give.
In Suffering, the Servant Still Trusts - Trust is not the absence of difficulty, it is the conviction that God is present within it. Jesus’ mission was not what Jewish audiences expected; not military or political victory, but the defeat of God’s enemies through self-offering. He trusted this mission all the way through arrest, flogging, and crucifixion.
Dock Discussion Questions
Dock Discussion Questions
Abie opened with the image of a child expecting a king and getting a priest. Where in your own life have you found God’s answer to your expectations to be different, and, in retrospect, better?
The sermon draws a distinction between obedience that feels exciting and obedience that requires us to make unpopular or costly decisions. What does obedience to God currently look like for you and what makes it hard?
John Wyatt argues that the assisted dying debate “conflates suffering with despair.” As a group, do you agree? How does the Christian understanding of suffering differ from the cultural default, and how do you hold that view with compassion for those who are in pain?
Abie described choosing to keep praying “thank you for the bad things” even when it became genuinely hard. What practices help you to keep trusting God in seasons of suffering or uncertainty, rather than falling into despair?
The servant song calls those who “walk in the dark” to trust rather than light their own fires. Where might you be tempted to manufacture your own light rather than trusting God’s?
Long-form, edited transcript
Servant Songs – Jesus Speaks
Isaiah 50:4-11
Introduction
We’re going to think about what comes before Easter. Because the leadup to victory doesn’t always look victorious. We call it Good Friday because we know what comes after but on the first Good Friday, it didn’t look good at all.
So we’re turning to the third of Isaiah’s servant songs, found in Isaiah 50:4–11. We’re not thinking about the victory of Easter Sunday we’re thinking about the suffering, the obedience, and the trust that led up to it.
Scripture: Isaiah 50:4–11
The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
5 The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
6 I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
7 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.
8 He who vindicates me is near.
Who then will bring charges against me?
Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
Let him confront me!
9 It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
the moths will eat them up.10 Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on their God.
11 But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.A Story About Expectations
Back in late 2018, I was interning as a kids’ pastor at a church in Peckham. In the leadup to Christmas, we were teaching the children about the prophecies in Isaiah that point toward Jesus — things written hundreds of years before he came. And I was saying, “Sometimes these don’t sound like the Jesus we know — and they didn’t sound like the Messiah people were expecting either.”
I asked the kids: the saviour is going to rebuild ancient ruins — what kind of person does that? Builders, architects, big strong people. He’s going to break chains and judge people — police officers, lawyers, judges. He’s going to crown his people — so what kind of person gets to choose who becomes royal? I was trying to lead them to: usually you have to be royal yourself.
A sweet little girl called Amelia put her hand up and said, “Probably a white man.”
I was 22, fresh from rural Norfolk, just moved to London. I did not know how to handle that. I nodded and moved on. But I spoke to her mum afterward — who texted me later, very excited, to say they’d talked about it at lunch. And it turned out Amelia was talking about Bishop Michael Curry — the man dressed all in white who, just a few months earlier, had officiated the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. He’d made Meghan a princess.
She wasn’t talking about a prince. She was talking about a priest.
The people waiting for the Messiah wanted a king. They got a carpenter — or rather, a priest. And what she said was better than what I was looking for. In the same way, what God gave was better than what they were expecting.
Point One: The Servant Will Be Obedient
As we read this servant song, Brian Russell says that Jesus recognised himself in these songs. So as Jesus models each of these things, we must remember we are called to be like him.
The servant song opens with obedience. The Lord gives the servant an instructed tongue and wakens his ear morning by morning. This is obedience as a daily discipline, not a one-off act.
In my dock recently, we were reading Pete Greig’s Dirty Glory — which many of us read in January but which is so good, why rush? We were talking about how hard it can be to be obedient when we might look a bit silly. I’m three months and one dissertation away from being ordained. Someone in my dock asked: what would you do if God said tomorrow, “Actually, don’t want you to be ordained anymore”? And we talked about how much harder obedience gets when other people are watching.
But we don’t see that in Jesus. Throughout his ministry, he says: “I am here to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4). “I always do what pleases him” (John 8). Obedience made him popular — healing, teaching, feeding. It also put a target on his back. In Luke 4 and John 5, his teaching was so provocative the religious leaders tried to stone him or push him off a cliff.
Philippians 2 says he humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross. And in Gethsemane, still fully human, still feeling the weight of it: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not my will but yours.”
Jesus saw himself in the servant song. And we want to see Jesus in ourselves. So: how will we lean deeper into obedience? Not just in the high points, but when it’s hard — when the Lord calls us to unpopular decisions, when others disapprove, when we ourselves don’t understand or agree?
Point Two: Obedience Will Lead to Suffering
It’s hard to be obedient when you’re worried what others think. It’s even harder when you know obedience will lead to suffering.
We don’t know exactly when Jesus came to understand how his life would end — theological opinion has shifted over centuries. In older nativity paintings, Mary stands back in worship because the view was that Jesus was born fully omniscient. In newer ones, she holds him as her baby, reflecting the Philippians 2 language of Jesus emptying himself at birth. But we do know he knew. Three times in the gospels he explicitly says how he must die. And knowing this, he still goes willingly.
As a society, we are deeply uncomfortable with suffering. The assisted dying bill currently moving through government reflects a natural instinct: to choose how and when we opt out of pain. John Wyatt — a medical doctor, Christian, and ethics professor at UCL — argues that the problem with this bill is that it universally conflates suffering with despair. But despair says you have nothing left to give and nothing left to learn. As Christians, we want to say: as long as there is breath, there is more to give and more to learn.
The servant song: “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore I have set my face like flint.”
At the start of this year, I started praying over my daughter each night: “Dear Lord, thank you for today — for all the good things, which we know come from you. And thank you for all the bad things, because we know that in them you are teaching us, healing us, leading us, and guiding us.” It was easy to pray when nothing bad was happening.
Then in February, my husband’s uncle went to hospital with stomach pain. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — already spread throughout his body. He had a stroke. He died 19 days after his first admission. He walked in and died less than three weeks later.
It was hard to keep praying “thank you for the bad things”. On the days when I saw my husband’s heart breaking for his family, I had to keep choosing to say: you are teaching us. You are healing us. You are guiding us. I can’t stop saying that when things actually get bad.
We might not always choose how and when we suffer. But we can choose whether we frame it as despair. When Jesus prays in the garden, “not my will but yours,” he is not simply enduring — he is choosing to embrace it, knowing there is so much more to come.
Point Three: In Suffering, the Servant Trusts
It’s hard to be obedient when you don’t know where it leads. It’s harder when you suspect it might lead to suffering. And perhaps hardest of all is holding on to trust throughout.
Verse 9: “It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me. Who will condemn me?” As Jesus was arrested in Matthew 26, he says: “This has all taken place so that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” He recognised this was his mission — not military or political, but to defeat the enemies of God by offering himself as ransom, bringing redemption through his death.
Knowing all that was to come, he was obedient to the point of extreme, brutal suffering. And in doing so, he showed us what it means to truly trust in God’s call. He went up against his accusers, his enemies, his executioner — saying, “You don’t condemn me.” He trusted as he was arrested, flogged, beaten, and crucified.
The servant song’s word to those who walk in the dark: “trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God.”
If we are obedient without trust, we are just puppets going through the motions. If we suffer without trust, we will lose all perspective and find ourselves lost in despair. But if we walk in darkness and still choose to put our trust in the Lord — to believe he will guide us through it — then we are following in the footsteps of the servant himself.
Closing: The Leadup to Victory
The leadup to victory doesn’t always look victorious. Our expectations are so often warped and limited by our earthly understandings. But the Easter story tells us to keep trusting in more.
In the words of Phil Wickham: Friday’s good because Sunday is coming.
As Jesus recognised within these songs what his role would be — how can we, this Easter, recognise not just what God has done for us, but what we are called to do in response?
How will we answer the call to obedience?
How will we face suffering with the perspective of Jesus?
And how will we trust in him, even if we are walking in the darkness?
Closing Prayer
Father,
Thank you for the obedience, suffering and trust of Jesus.
Thank you that in all of these things, Jesus made a way for us to be in a relationship with you.
Jesus gave us the perfect example of how to face whatever is ahead of us.
Jesus gave us access to strength, victory and confidence.
In the precious name of our saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.