Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Isaiah 52.13 through Isaiah 53.12 is our passage. After a long
stretch, you’re finally getting to something in Isaiah that you
know might have been since chapter 9. Behold, the virgin shall conceive.
That might be the last time there was something familiar to you.
So here we are again at a good familiar passage. You’ll notice
all kinds of things pop out at you, things that you know from
the gospels, things you know from the book of Acts, things
you know from the apostle Paul. So let’s give our attention to
God’s word and look at three verses at a time. Look at, say,
13 to 15, one to three, four to six. seven to nine, and then 10 through,
is it 12? You’ll see each three verses
sort of goes together. So let’s hear God’s word, Isaiah
52, beginning at verse 13. Behold, my servant shall prosper. He shall be exalted and lifted
up and shall be very high. As many were astonished at him,
his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his
form beyond that of the sons of men. So shall he startle or
sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths
because of him. For that which has not been told
them, they shall see. And that which they have not
heard, they shall understand. who has believed what we heard
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. For he grew
up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him and
no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised, rejected
by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and is
one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we
esteemed him not. Surely He has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten
by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement
that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All
we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. And the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth like
a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before
its shearers is dumb. So he opened not his mouth. By
oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation
who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
He was stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his
grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. And
although he had done no violence, there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him. He has put him
to grief. When he made himself a sin offering,
an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong
his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand. He shall see the fruit of the
travail of his soul and be satisfied. And by his knowledge shall the
righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great and
he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured
out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.
Yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Amen. The word of the living
God. I mentioned a moment ago that
this is familiar territory for us. It’s been what, 40 chapters,
35 chapters since we’ve had something we knew something about. Maybe
you’ve not only heard these passages many times in the scripture,
but you’ve also listened to, or maybe attended a performance
of Handel’s Messiah. And you’ve heard the rendition
of, all we like sheep have gone astray. Each has gone his own
way. We just got past Easter a few weeks ago. This is always
a passage we think of. The Gospels, as we read them,
have echoes of Isaiah 52, 53. And of course, if you are a good
systematic theologian, maybe a budding one or an armchair
one, you caught justification by faith. You caught substitutionary
atonement. Perhaps you caught prophet, priest,
and king. You’ve caught Jesus’ humiliation
and exaltation. This passage is full. And we
wonder, how could a people who had this message so strong and
clear to us, how could they have heard this and rejected it? How
could they have heard this and said, Messiah can’t be this? Of course, they were looking
for a mighty king. They were looking for a great conqueror. They were
looking for another David, another Saul, but they got this beat
up looking Jesus. Even the apostle Paul is going
to catch all kinds of criticism because he’s not impressive.
He’s short, he’s stubby. He’s been whipped and beaten
along the Roman missionary way. And so we need to remember that
God does often things in a very strange way, not the way we would
have picked, not the way we would have chosen. Well, for us to
pick through the passage, I think it’s helpful to follow those
three Three verses at a time. I guess you can’t call them couplets,
maybe triplets. Three verses at a time is very
helpful. And think through prophet, priest,
king. Think through humiliation, exaltation. Think through the
active and passive obedience of Jesus. Think through the substitutionary
atonement of Jesus in our place, condemned. He stood. Think of
all these things as we zip through the passage. You know, when you
see an interrogation, maybe not necessarily a criminal interrogation,
but one on the one on the C-span, what’s the question? Government
officials always want to know, what did you know and when did
you know it? Right. Bible says men are without excuse.
What did you know and when did you know it? Well, we. We have natural revelation all
around us. We can look at the stars, the
fingers of a baby. We can look at the beauty of
creation, the coming of spring. We can look at snow, all kinds
of things show us there is an intelligent designer. Natural
revelation, general revelation is sufficient to tell you there
is a God, but it is insufficient to tell you the way of salvation.
So only the scriptures can tell you that you’re a sinner in need
of Jesus and how you can come to him by faith. And so here’s
a passage, an Old Testament passage. What did you know and when did
you know it? Or maybe what did you hear and when did you hear
it? Because as we have learned in
the book of Isaiah, God stops up the ears. He blinds the eyes. He dulls the heart. And unless
the spirit changes us, we cannot see, hear, believe, understand.
or perceive, but when you do have the spirit and the blessing
of it, especially in light of the New Testament and this side
of the cross, this is one of the best places, best passages
of scripture. The passage begins and ends with
my servant. It also begins and ends referring
to us, God’s children, as the many, the people of God. Now, one other little warning,
I promise we’re gonna get to these verses, In general discussion,
when you hear people talk about the atonement, the extent of
the atonement, the purpose of the atonement, the efficacy of
the atonement, you know, did God just open up a fountain and
if you come drink of it, it’s all yours. But if you don’t,
well, too bad. It was there for you, but you
didn’t get it. Then you got us good Calvinist particular atonement,
which I think is very evident in this passage. Okay, those
arguments are one thing. We don’t want to ruffle feathers
tonight, or maybe we do, but think of this passage in light
of the covenant. God makes covenant with a people,
plural. God makes a covenant with a people,
plural, who are made up of individuals, singular. And so you have to
think of a passage like this in light of God’s covenant love,
God’s covenant faithfulness, and the suffering servant’s covenant
mission. And so in verse 13, he begins
by saying, by elevating his servant, behold, my servant, that’s Jesus.
He will prosper. He’ll be exalted. He’ll be lifted
up and he will be raised very high. Now we know where Jesus
sits. He sits at the right hand of
God, the father. Uh, he will come to judge the living and
the dead. We know that he left heaven, uh, his humiliation. Uh, he came to earth, did his
ministry. And then his exaltation was his
ascending back to the throne of glory. And so God has indeed
prospered him. His mission was successful. And
his kingship is one that is succeeding. He is the God exalted, lifted
up very high. But when he came to earth, born
in a stable, an obscure fellow, and then he grows up in Nazareth,
then what was the saying? Can anything good come from Nazareth? He was nothing to look at. He
wasn’t voted best looking. school grad, you know, at the
Nazareth High. He wasn’t most likely to succeed. You know, he wasn’t prom king.
You know, those sorts of accolades we like to throw on one another.
People were astonished at him. In particular, speaking of his
passion week, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance. We watched the news at night
and You know, we read of horrific things that take place. We read
of maybe, well, I won’t mention them, but you get the idea. There’s
bad things that people do to other people and, and Roman crucifixion,
Roman beatings, Roman, um, judgments were nasty. They were awful. Remember, it
was not polite to mention the word crucifixion in society. It was a word you did not mention
because it was so horrific and it was so horrible. And of course,
Paul will say in the letter to the Corinthians, preaching of
the cross is folly. It is foolishness. But to the
wise of this world, they don’t get it. But to the foolish in
Christ, we do understand it. Jesus was so mistreated physically
that he was unrecognizable. But verse 15 speaks of the purpose
of his exaltation, the purpose of his humiliation. He shall
sprinkle or startle many nations. He’ll cleanse them. Kings will
not know what to say. Things that people haven’t been
told they shall see and that which they have not heard they’ll
understand. Think of Jesus with Pilate. Think
of Jesus before ruling authorities. They didn’t know what to do with
him. Ended up handing him over to the will of God and the will
of the people. People were dumbfounded by him. He spoke so plainly. He spoke so authoritatively.
And this is what Paul says, I will go preach in Romans 15. He says,
it’s my job to go to those which have not heard so that they shall
see and they shall understand. What’s our job as a church? Is
it to put together a nice little slate of social activities? You
know, church bingo? I mean, you kind of know the
funny, the joke. Our job is to take the gospel
of Jesus to those who haven’t heard, those who have not seen,
those who have not understood. And, you know, of course we could
have a good bingo match here and there or a chili supper,
that kind of thing. But our goal, our purpose is
to preach the gospel, to preach this humiliated and exalted Savior,
Jesus Christ. And so, uh, that’s the first
couple of verses there. It speaks of the servant who
will prosper, humiliation, exaltation. And then when you get to verses
one to three of the next chapter, nobody’s believed it. Uh, nobody
has, um, nobody has said, wow, look at,
look at Jesus. Look at this servant. Now we live in a world that is
amazed with antichrist. You read the description of antichrist
and he’s good looking. He’s popular. Um, people like
him, they follow him. He’s got an ex account, a Facebook
account, an Instagram account. He’s probably the governor of
some large region or body. You know, he he’s, he’s very
popular and people flock to him. They follow him. But, but that
was not so with Jesus. Jesus comes on the scene and
nobody believes him. Jesus comes on the scene. And they’re like,
who is this guy? He grew up in the desert. He
was like a little plant, a root, a shoot out of the ground. Wasn’t
good looking, no form, no comeliness that we should look at him, no
beauty that we should desire him. Remember when they picked
out Saul, Saul was big, tall and good looking. photogenic,
we might say. They come to pick David and they
go through all the sons of Jesse and, and, oh, this one’s good
looking. And God says, not him, this one, this one he’ll do,
not him. And they go all the way down. Are there any more?
Well, there’s the runt of the litter and he’s out with the
sheep. We didn’t even bring him for
the lineup because we knew ruddy little David. who plays the harp
and beats bears with a club, you know, and is dirty and shepherd
boy, smelly, often gone. We didn’t even call him in because
who would want a guy like him? And that’s exactly who Jesus
picks. That’s who God picks. He looks
at the heart, but no form, no beauty. In fact, verse three
tells us he was despised. He was rejected. He was a man
of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief.
Men hid their faces from him and he was not esteemed. Now we think of Jesus’ humiliation,
that would be his leaving heaven. We think of Jesus’ humiliation,
born in a stable. We think of Jesus’ humiliation,
born to peasant parents, Mary and Joseph. We think of Jesus’
humiliation growing up in Nazareth, the town You know, nobody wanted
to live in. I was chatting with somebody
the other day. They just moved to Burlington. They’ve been visiting
our church. And I was telling them how in the 90s, all of us
high school graduates would say, if we can get out of Burr, Vegas.
Right. And so we call it Burr Vegas.
If you can get out of Burlington, you never come back. Well, look
at here. Uh, God has a sense of humor, right? Um, yeah, you
came back too, didn’t you? That’s right. Uh, but, but Jesus
didn’t have the resume. He didn’t have the credentials.
He didn’t have the things people were looking for. Uh, so he was
socially, uh, rejected, not many friends. In fact, in his hour
of trial, he was, alone. Peter fled. Judas betrayed him. That passage of scripture was
fulfilled. Strike the shepherd and the sheep
will scatter. And so this man of sorrows not
only was acquainted with human grief from broken human relationships,
but at the cross, the Jews and the Romans were pretty tough
on him. It’s an understatement. But it was the will of the Lord
to crush him. It was the will of the Lord to turn his face
from him. I hear echoes in my head of the
Aaronic benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord turn his face towards you, lift up his countenance
before you and give you peace. Jesus got the exact opposite
on the cross. The Lord did not bless him. He
cursed him. The Lord did not keep or guard him, but he, He
let him go, the hands of wicked men. The Lord did not turn his
face toward him. He turned his face away. So much
so that he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And
so you get the idea in order for us to have benediction, it
took Jesus receiving malediction. What’s the purpose of all this?
Why? humiliated and exalted servant. Why a human king, a human servant
who’s despised, rejected, not looked on with any regard? Well, the purpose comes in 4,
5, and 6. Surely he has borne our griefs. Surely he’s carried
our sorrows, stricken, smitten, afflicted by God, wounded for
our transgressions. bruised for our iniquities, chastisement,
stripes. And then it goes on in verse
six. We were like sheep. We had gone astray. Each of us
had gone our own way. And the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Don’t you have recollections
here of Abraham in chapter 22 of Genesis, God says, go up to
a mountain. I’ll show you. And there offer
your son, your only son, Isaac, the one whom you love. And so
Abraham, uh, we know got up early one morning, saddled his donkey,
gathered the wood, gathered the fire, gathered the knife, made
the couple of days journey with his servants, told them, servants,
the boy and I will go a day farther. We’ll go worship and we will
return to you. They said very prophetic words. The book of Hebrews tells us
that Abraham by faith was willing to offer up Isaac because he
figured God could raise him from the dead. And so you go on in
that story, they go up the mountain, my father, my father, my son,
where’s the lamb? We have the fire, we have the
knife. And what does Abraham say? On the mountain, the Lord
will provide. And so we have that great example
of the ram and the thicket, the substitute for Isaac. And we come to the cross, we
come to Calvary, and on the same mountain, the Lord provided. God did not lay his knife into
us at the sacrificial altar, but laid it in his son, his only
son, the one whom he loved. And so the whole sacrificial
system, beginning with the skins and the garments that were made
for Adam and Eve and on throughout the altars of Abraham and the
altars of Moses and all the rest throughout the Levitical system,
All those pointed to something dying in place of sinners. We call it substitutionary atonement. It’s a legal thing we must understand. God cannot lift up the rug, sweep
sins under and say, don’t see it, don’t hear it, it’s gone. No, sins had to be paid for. Sacrifice had to be made without
the shedding of blood there is. no remission of sins. And so
the ram and the thicket on the mountain, Jesus, our substitute
on the mountain. Not all the blood of beast we
sing on Jewish altar slain can for our sin atone. But it took
Jesus, Jesus being slain. And so there’s this important
concept in the scriptures of the substitutionary atonement
of Jesus. There’s an important little couple
words that point us to this, for us, or in our place. Those are important little prepositions,
little words that seem to us to be fillers. You know, students
in school, they gotta write 500 words, so they get up their word
count, and they try to use three words when one’ll do. And they’re
rather wordy, so they can get their 500 words in. Sometimes
these little junk words, we don’t think much of, but for us or
in our place, speak of the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus.
He bore our griefs. He bore our sorrows. He was stricken,
smitten, and afflicted for our transgressions, for our iniquities. And it was his chastisement for
us that made us whole. We think of the scapegoat in
the Old Testament. Every year on the Day of Atonement,
two goats, one would be killed and slaughtered, the other would
be sent off into the wilderness. But what did the priest do? He
put his hands on the head of that scapegoat and he imputed
or credited to the scapegoat the sins of the people. Did that
goat sin? Don’t overthink it, but no. And
so did Jesus outside the camp sin? No, absolutely not. But our sins were imputed. I
remember way back in the day getting examined for ordination.
Tell us the three big historic imputations. And so it’s Adam’s
sin to all his posterity. His sin in the garden was imputed
to all who proceeded from him by ordinary generation. Now,
who is the only person in human history that did not proceed
by ordinary generation? It’s Jesus. He was conceived
by the Holy Ghost. and born of the Virgin Mary without
sin. And so he could be the spotless
lamb. And so the second imputation after Adam’s sins to mankind,
the sins of the elect, I’m getting in trouble here, but it’s true.
The sins of the elect were placed on Jesus on the cross, not the
sins of every human being, because some human beings, where do they
go? They go to everlasting punishment.
And is God just? Of course, if he punished Jesus
for sins, he’s going to somehow, some way make that effective
for people. Of course, we understand that
to be the preaching of the gospel, the working of the Holy Spirit,
the gift of faith and all the rest. But we believe that Jesus
had the sins of the elect, not the sins of the whole world,
not the sins of every human being that ever would be in salvation
was made possible. That’s just legal, legal nonsense. You can’t, it doesn’t work. It
doesn’t add up. Uh, but we believe the sins of
the elect were placed on Jesus. And then that third imputation,
when you come to faith in Jesus, The righteousness of Christ is
imputed to you. You receive it by faith alone.
And God sees you just as if you never sinned and just as if you
always obeyed. But think of Jesus bearing our
griefs, carrying our sorrows, stricken, smitten, afflicted
for every evil thought, for every evil deed, for everything we
should have done and didn’t do, for everything we shouldn’t have
done, but we did. We think of how often we sin and how those
debts would pile up to the heavens, but they were piled on Jesus
at the cross. And so all our past and present
and future sins are forgiven by his stripes. The scripture
says we are healed. I think in verse six, we have
a picture of Adam and Eve in the garden. All we like sheep
have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. Adam and Eve had everything they
needed. But Satan dissatisfied them and said, there’s one thing
you need more, and that’s to be rid of God, to be rid of his
authority, and to have your own way, your autonomy. And the Lord
laid that on Christ. And that was foreshadowed in
the garments, the skins that replaced the fig leaves. The
next little section, 7, 8, and 9 speaks of the kind of the way
of Jesus. Y’all know the little phrase
from, I think, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he thinks the lady doth
protest much. Here, Jesus protested none. It speaks of his oppression,
his affliction. It speaks of his slaughter. It speaks of his going to his
death, his green mile, as it were. And what does it say? He
opened not his mouth. It was unfair. It was unjust. It was wrong. It was, I mean,
every word and descriptor you could come up with, this should
not have been, except it was the will of God. It was in the
economy of God. And it was the way of God for
salvation. No sweeping sin under the rug. It had to be laid on
a spotless lamb in order to be forgiven and justification offered. And so he opened not his mouth. You know, we, we’re, we’re a
defensive bunch, aren’t we? We protest much. We go on Yelp,
you know, we go on X, we go on Facebook and we let everybody
know how in our little first world life, it was really unjust,
you know, not to get our hamburger on time or whatever perceived
oppression we have been oppressed with. And Jesus didn’t open his mouth.
We could take a cue from that, couldn’t we? Sometimes we got
to grin and bear it. Sometimes we got to turn the
other cheek. Sometimes we have to walk in a mile, walk a mile
and give away our cloaks, those sorts of things. But Jesus, in
his oppression, in his walk to the cross, in all the reviling,
in all the king of the Jews, hail king of the Jews, the crown
of thorns, the purple cloth, he kept his mouth closed. Why?
because he was going to save his people. He was fulfilling
that covenant promise of eternity past. He was fulfilling that
steadfast love, the covenant love. And then it speaks of Jesus,
his further humiliation, naked on the cross, his spirit in the
side spit at, mocked by this soldier, mocked by this criminal.
Very few confessed faith in him. Maybe the criminal on one side,
the centurion that said surely he was the son of God, but it
was a dark day, literally, spiritually, a very dark day for Christ and
his humiliation, his shame, public shame, hanged on a tree outside
the camp. was for the transgression of
his people. And it says they made his grave with the wicked.
I believe there is where his humiliation ended. I love to
think that his exaltation began with Joseph of Arimathea. Most
criminals would have hanged on the cross until the ravens would
have pecked them. Maybe not pecked them clean,
but they would have hung there for a while. Part of the shame
and the ingloriousness of the cross was to be picked at as
roadkill, as it were. But remember Joseph of Arimathea
went and took his body and he wrapped it. He perfumed it. He
prepared it for burial. That was never the case with
a criminal, never the case with someone who had been treated
like Jesus. And so with a rich man and his
death, He was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man. In a sense,
it was the beginning of his exaltation. From that same tomb, he would
rise from the dead and he would meet with his people. But notice
it speaks of his innocence. I don’t know if y’all caught
that. In verse nine, it says there was no violence, no deceit
in his mouth. But we sang earlier in the hymn,
he was arraigned. Did y’all catch that little phrase? Let me go back and look at that
hymn later. He was arraigned for our sins. We watch the news
and look at a guy who’s been in jail 35 years for a crime
he didn’t commit. Maybe modern DNA proves that
he was innocent. But what do you do when he’s
been in prison 35 years? You can pay him some money, but you
can’t get those years back. But Jesus for us, no violence,
no guilt. But what does verse 10 tell us?
It was the will of the Lord to crush him. It was the will of
the Lord to put him to grief. It was the will of the Lord to
bruise him. It was the will of the Lord to
make him an offering from sin. Some people say, well, Jesus
dying on the cross is plan B because Adam and Eve goofed up. Well,
what did we learn back at Christmas or so about the covenant of redemption?
We learned that in eternity past, God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit determined and decreed to create a people
for themselves to permit them to fall into sin and to send
the son to be a savior, to bring them back to relationship with
him. And so it was the will of the
Lord to bruise him. It was the only way. It was the
will of the Lord to put him to grief. It was the will of the
Lord. It was the will of Jesus to be an offering for sin, but
he gets blessings from it. He gets benefits from it. He
will see his offspring. The will of the Lord will prosper. Think of Pilate. Pilate knew
he wasn’t guilty. Pilate found no guilt in him,
found nothing in him deserving of death. But Jesus went to the
cross and bore our sin, bore our guilt. And I love verse 11. By his knowledge shall the righteous
one, my servant, make many be accounted righteous. Y’all know
the justification term, God credits us or counts us or declares us
righteous. We’re given the righteousness,
obedience of Jesus. It’s credited to our count. That’s
why we can say he sees us as if we never sinned, but he sees
us as if we have always obeyed because Jesus only way I’ll divide
him a portion with the great. So divide the spoil with the
strong because he poured out his soul to death. My God, why
have you forsaken me? He was numbered with the transgressions.
He bore the sin of many and he speaks intercession for us in
our studies of first Corinthians. We’ll eventually get to chapter
15, where it says, um, of the resurrection. It says of the
power, where old death is your sting, where old grave is your
victory. Jesus has made that second exodus,
not the exodus from Egypt, but the exodus from sin and death
and darkness. And, you know, we live in a world
that likes to say I’m spiritual. We live in a world that says,
well, you have your religion. I have mine. There is no other
name under heaven and no other name on earth by which we can
be saved except Jesus. And this is craziness to people. I don’t know about you all, but
the, Longer I live, the older I get, and the more I see what
is down in the soul. This is, boy, this is it, isn’t
it? This is it. And we thank the
Lord for it. Let’s do pray together. Our father,
we thank you for the great, the great love, which you have
for us, the great extent to which you went to save us from our
sins. Not, not yours, not the sons.
but our sins were guilty and vile and helpless and without
hope in this world except Jesus. And we thank you for the exact
thing we needed a substitute. We thank you that our sins were
laid on him. Or may this push us to love you more. May it drive
us to praise you. May it encourage us to think
through what is right and what is wrong, what is pleasing and
what is unpleasing. and to live lives out of gratitude
for you. May we delight in your law and
delight what pleases you. Help us, we pray in Jesus’ great
and mighty name, amen.