Text:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (Amplified Bible) with my adaptations
13Behold, My Servant shall deal wisely and shall prosper; He shall be exalted and extolled and shall stand very high.
14[For many the Servant of God became an object of horror; many were astonished at Him.] His face and His whole appearance were marred more than any man’s, and His form beyond that of the sons of men--but just as many were astonished at Him,
15So shall He startle and sprinkle many nations, and kings shall shut their mouths because of Him; for that which has not been told them shall they see, and that which they have not heard shall they consider and understand.
Isaiah 53
1WHO HAS believed (trusted in, relied upon, and clung to) our message [of that which was revealed to us]? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been disclosed?
2For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He has no (majesty or) [kingly splendor], that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
3He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
4Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy or AIDS].
5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needed to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.
6All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has (laid) upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.
8By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
9And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.
10Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. (Lord, when you and your Servant) make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; by His knowledge of Himself [which He possesses and imparts to others] shall My [uncompromisingly] righteous One, My Servant, justify many and make many righteous (upright and in right standing with God), for He shall bear their iniquities and their guilt [with the consequences, says the Lord].
12Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers], and He shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because He poured out His life unto death, and [He let Himself] be regarded as a criminal and be numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore [and took away] the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (the rebellious).
Introduction:
In this short powerful passage, God exposes the solution to the problem of our sin and guilt. The Servant comes to take our place, to receive our punishment, to purchase our pardon from sin.
Jesus clearly identified himself as the Lord’s Servant when he declared, “(I) did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give (my) life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)
Thesis:
God gives the same promise every human being. “Your relationship with me that was destroyed by your sin has been resurrected by the death of my Son, Jesus.”
Key Question:
How did Jesus do this for us? What about his death on the cross gives new life to our relationship with god?
I. God introduces his servant as an unusual man. (52:12-15)
A. God says my Servant has unusual wisdom. “My servant will act wisely” means that throughout his entire mission he will do what it takes to secure its most complete success. The Servant will make no mistakes, no errors, and no accidents. He does everything according to God’s plan to reach the goal of restoring our relationship with God. Jesus said, “My food … is to do the will … of Him Who sent Me and to accomplish and completely finish His work.” (John 4:34 AMP)
B. God declares that his Son suffers an unusual mutilation. “The Servant of God became an object of horror … His face and His whole appearance were marred more than any” other person. He was beaten and abused until he no longer looked human.
C. God states that Jesus has an unusual power. He will “sprinkle many nations.” This is a reference to the way the ancient Jewish priests sprinkled the blood of animal sacrifices on the worshippers. The New Testament declares, “Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.” (Hebrews 9:13-14 NLT) Because of his suffering, the Servant has the power to remove sin’s defilement from the very core of our beings.
II. The prophet Isaiah explains the human reaction to God’s unexpected Servant (53:1-3)
A. Humanity realizes first that the Servant’s life and death are an unexpected message. “Who would have believed pain and glory could exist together in the same person at the same time?” We look for things like power, popularity, position and possessions to protect us from pain. We stand in awe of men and women with these things. But all the glorious kings and queens of this world combined cannot compare to the matchless glory of Jesus Christ.
B. Next, people point out that the Servant appears as an unexpected man. Jesus came from an area of the country with a bad reputation and a town with little to no character. Even one of his first disciples asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46) He was the son of a carpenter/builder not a great warrior or conquering king.
C. Third, the Lord’s Servant comes with an unexpected way of living. He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
III. The prophet turns our attention to the undeserved suffering of the Lord’s Servant as our substitute. (53:4-6)
A. Jesus takes up undeserved pain. He carries our sorrows, our weaknesses and our troubles. He takes up the consequences of our sins.
B. God’s Servant experiences the undeserved force of human abuse and inhumanity. His suffering is not the result of his own actions but the clear-cut result of our rebellion against God.
C. Jesus goes through all this because we respond to God with undeserved rebellion and rejection.
When we sin, we are judged because in that moment of choosing sin we are actually electing the absence of God in our lives at that point. You see, [sin and salvation are] always relational. Sin separates us from God – that’s the point – sin is our embrace of the absence of God in our lives.
Citation: Dr. Timothy Tennent at the MOVE! Conference, September 14th, 2010, at Estes Chapel, in Wilmore, Kentucky, Published on Asbury Theological Seminary (http://www.asburyseminary.edu)
We are all guilty of leaving God’s paths to follow our own way of doing life. We all stray at some point. We all chose God’s absence rather than to love and obey him. On the cross experienced the pain of that separation as he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Mark 15:34 NLT)
D. Here’s one of the most amazing points of this passage. Jesus sacrifice and suffering provide us with undeserved blessings. His beatings restore peace with God for us. The wounds on his back from the whipping he received bring us healing in our bodies, minds and souls.
IV. Isaiah declares the unspeakable oppression of God’s Servant. (53:7-9)
A. Jesus submits to unspeakable injustices as he faces a false court on false charges. This court of Jews and Gentiles falsely pronounces him guilty, tortures him, publicly humiliates him and slaughters him, like a lamb.
B. Everyone around the Servant has an unspeakable lack of concern for him. His closest friends betray, deny or desert him. His enemies mock him. His family watches from a distance. In fact, throughout all time, very few have paused to consider that Jesus suffers and dies for their sins. Some even find his receiving our punishment simply one more reason to reject God.
V. In the closing lines of this passage, the prophet reveals this is all part of God’s unchanging timeless strategy for his Servant. (53:10-12)
A. The Lord’s unchanging plan for Jesus is for his suffering and death to arrange for humanity’s pardon. As I mentioned earlier, Jesus knew his mission from the start. That’s why his final words on the cross were a victory cry, “It is finished.” (John 19:30)
B. Jesus makes an unchanging sacrifice on our behalf. He gives his life for our sins. The apostle Peter wrote, “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God….” (1 Peter 3:17)
C. Because of Jesus’ suffering, there are unchanging results. The Servant after he dies rises again to see his spiritual children and his followers. The apostle Paul wrote, “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” (Romans 6:8-10). And he now lives to pray for sinners like us. This is God’s promise to us. “Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” (Hebrews 7:25)
John Wesley, the founder of our branch of the Christian family tree wrote the following about God’s plan for our atonement.
The origin and cause of our redemption is the [inexpressible] love of God the Father, who willed to redeem us by the blood of His own Son; the grace of the Son, who freely took our curse upon Him, and imparts His blessing and merits to us; and the Holy Spirit, who communicates the love of the Father and the grace of the Son to our hearts. When we speak of this and of the satisfaction of Christ, we speak of the inmost mystery of the Christian faith.
Citation: The Works of John Wesley, Letter to William Law, 06 January 1756
CONCLUSION:
A song writer put this idea of Jesus suffering in our place into words this way.
Alas! And did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For sinners such as I?
Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
Refrain
At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!
So many people are under the impression that there are simply no negative consequences for their sins. But our sins separate us from God. They destroy our relationships with him. Jesus took that punishment for us on the cross when he suffered and died. We need to trust God when he declares we are pardoned because of Jesus.
Sin is our embrace of the absence of God in our lives. [There needs to be a time for each of us where we go beyond believing this doctrine of Christianity and actually experience it.] This is your stake in the ground… the point when you “got it”… when you said, “I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation, and an assurance was given to me that my sins, even mine, were taken away, and I was delivered from the law of sin and death.”
Citation: Dr. Timothy Tennent at the MOVE! Conference, September 14th, 2010, at Estes Chapel, in Wilmore, Kentucky, Published on Asbury Theological Seminary (http://www.asburyseminary.edu)
FIRST STEPS: What are the first steps in this REPENTANCE POINT {paradigm shift or change in our thinking}?
One way for us to experience the power of Jesus’ substitution for us is to personalize some of the sentences from today’s Bible passage. It would read like this.
Jesus lifted up my weaknesses,
he carried my pain.
I wanted to live my life without God and Jesus was wounded because of my rebellious deeds,
crushed because of my sins;
he endured punishment that made peace with God for me;
because of his wounds we have been healed.
I wandered off like a sheep;
I strayed off on my own path,
but the LORD caused my sin to attack Jesus.
The LORD made his life a guilt offering for my sins;
He bore all my sin and intercedes for me.
Will you celebrate Jesus’ sacrifice and grace as we partake of communion now?
