Punished For You And Me Series

ISAIAH 53:4-6

PUNISHED FOR YOU AND ME

Unmistakably chapter 53, speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. Significantly, the Jewish Targum interprets this portion of Isaiah’s prophecy as referring to the Messiah. Every detail of the prophet’s words corresponds so closely to the person and work of the Lord Jesus that no one with normal powers of thought could reason otherwise. Written over 700 years before the sacrificial death of Christ, its predictions are so specific that no mere man could possibly have written them, nor fulfilled them. This chapter is an unanswerable proof of the inspiration of the Bible and the divinity of Christ.

The clear teaching in this stanza is that deliverance for all people comes by the substitutionary suffering of the Servant. He does not suffer because people are sinners, but in the place of sinful people. He suffers for them, and because of that, they do not need to experience the mandated eternal consequences for their sins. Now restoration of relationship with God is possible for all who will come and confess their sinfulness and turn to follow Christ Jesus.

[Notice the terms of suffering packed together in these verse: griefs, pains, stricken, smitten, afflicted, pierced, crushed, punished, welts. No wonder Jesus cried no to this cup in the Garden of Gethsemene.]

I. BEARING OUR BURDENS, 4.

II. RECEIVING OUR PUNISHMENT, 5.

III. CRUSHED FOR OUR REBELLION, 6.

In verse 4 the passage states the true reason for the Servant’s suffering. Surely our sickness [grief] He bore, and our pains He carried. But we considered (esteemed) Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

Notice the contrast between He and our. This stanza of the poem reports that although "we" did not recognize it at first, the sufferings of the Servant were not His own fault, as "we" thought, but were in fact the result of "our" sins, and resulted in "our" healing. The Servant is indeed characterized by griefs and sorrows, but they were not His own. It was all for us that He suffered and died! We is probably the prophet identifying himself with his people and speaking for the whole. But all persons who recognize that their sin has caused the Servant to suffer may include themselves in the all-inclusive "we."

The atoning death of Christ is a truth so profound that scholars have been unable to fully plumb its depths. Think of it-Jesus, God’s Son, died to pay the penalty for our sins! Various theories have been advanced to explain what happened, but Scripture teaches that substitution lies closest to the heart of this great mystery. The innocent substitute bore the sins of all humanity.

Cliff Barrows tells of the time his two young children did something wrong. Although they were gently warned, they repeated the offense and needed to be disciplined. Cliff’s tender heart was pained at the thought of having to punish the ones he loved. So he called Bobby and Bettie into his room, removed his belt bare back he knelt by his bed. He told each child to whip him 10 times. Oh, how they cried! But the penalty had to be paid. The children sobbed as they lashed their daddy’s back. Then Cliff hugged and kissed them, and they prayed together. "It hurt," he recalls, "but I never had to spank them again:"

Are you haunted by the memory of some cowardly, selfish, or shameful acts? Jesus took the lashes for all our sins. Now He invites us to accept His forgiveness and devote the rest of our lives to Him. He wants us to know the greatness of His Father’s love. That’s why He died! -DJD God the Judge not only declared us guilty but also paid our penalty (1 Pet. 2:24).

[The language of carrying and bearing sets the stage for the substitutionary understanding of the Servant’s suffering. This is the language of the cult, especially from Leviticus. There the sacrificial animal carries (nasa’) the sins of the offerers away, so that the offerer does not carry them anymore. The animal does not merely die because the offerer sinned, but in the offerer’s place, doing what the offerer must do otherwise, (5:1, 17; 10:17; 16:22; 17:16; 20:19; see also Num. 9.:13; 14:34). In the same way sabal implies the bearing of a burden for someone else (Isa. 46:4, 7; Lam. 5:7). The Servant is not suffering with His people, but for them. Oswalt, Isaiah, 386. The Servant takes the sicknesses that belong to us upon Himself and thus carries them.]

The bearing of weakness and illness that made us think little of the Servant - is our weakness and illness! The very things that made us think Him of little importance are the things for which we ought to honor Him, because it is for our sake He is enduring them. When we hurt, we hurt others. When God hurt, He healed others.