The Servant - Repulsive But Redemptive Series

• The Nobel prize winning physicist Niels Bohr once said, ‘It is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future.’ That’s hardly a genius comment to make, but he was talking about physics experiments, and how difficult it is to predict for the future based on past experiments.

o But we all know it’s practically impossible to predict the future. If we could, bookmakers would be out of a job. Back in 2016, when David Cameron proposed a referendum about leaving the European Union, who could have predicted the mess we are in today?

A political analyst said on Thursday night on Radio 5, ‘no one knows what’s going to happen in the British Parliament in the next few minutes, let alone the next few days.’ As Neils Bohr so rightly said, ‘It’s very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future!’

That’s why Isaiah 53 is such an amazing chapter. In this passage Isaiah predicts, 700 years in advance, exactly how Jesus was going to save us. In this chapter he predicts Jesus’ trial, his death by crucifixion, his burial in a rich man’s tomb, his resurrection from the dead, the spread of the Gospel around the world, and even Jesus’ ascension and reign in heaven.

That’s what makes Isaiah 53 such a controversial chapter. A Jewish rabbi in the 17th century told Jews not to read this prophecy in Jewish synagogues, because it points so powerfully to Jesus.

And we are going to see how Isaiah does that. The passage actually begins at the end of chapter 52. It's a passage that is called a 'Servant Song', as Isaiah introduces us to the Servant of the Lord who would come in the future.

And in this opening section, Isaiah tells us that God’s Servant will be recognized by a set of seeming contradictions. Firstly

• He will be human yet divine (13)

• (v.13) says ‘Behold, my servant shall act wisely, he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.’ Now it’s very clear from the rest of this servant song that the servant was going to be a human being.

? In the very next verse we are told how much he will suffer, and that his appearance will be disfigured. And later on in Isaiah 53 we are told he will be rejected by others, he will not open his mouth during his trial, and he will die, in some sense, for other people. So we are clearly talking about a genuine human being.

• But in this opening verse, the Servant is described in the same way that God is described in the great vision of Isaiah 6.

• Isaiah 6 opens with the words ‘in the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, HIGH AND LIFTED UP, and the train of his robe filled the temple.’

Isaiah 52 says the servant will be ‘high and lifted up and exalted.’ This is not the kind of language that the Bible uses anywhere else for a normal human being. So even though the Servant clearly is human, he is spoken about in the same lofty terms as God himself – ‘high and lifted up and exalted.’

The Servant will be both human and divine. And that is exactly what Jesus claimed for himself. In fact that’s what got him crucified. The High Priest at Jesus’ trial said, ‘you, a mere man, claim to be God.’

So as you are thinking this morning, ‘can I really believe that Jesus was God?’, you don’t just have the claims that Jesus made about himself – claims that got him crucified. You don’t just have the miracles he did that even his enemies could not deny, and you don’t just have the resurrection of Jesus, which was the spark that lit Christianity.

On top of all that, you have this prophecy of Isaiah, written 700 years before Jesus was ever born, claiming that God’s Servant would be both human and divine.

And this fits with Isaiah 9, that passage we read at Christmas, ‘unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God.’

You can see why Christians get so excited about Isaiah. He was predicting, 700 years in advance, that Jesus would be both human and divine.

So on one level this verse adds to our conviction that Jesus really is the Son of God. But we need to ask an equally important question ‘why was it important that Jesus was both God and man?’ What difference does that make to our lives today?

Well, it makes a massive difference. For one thing it teaches us about the value that God places on us as human beings. The Christian story is that God himself came into the world to save men and women.