The suffering servant

13 See, my servant will be successful;
he will be raised and lifted up and greatly exalted.
14 Just as many were appalled at you –
his appearance was so disfigured
that he did not look like a man,
and his form did not resemble a human being –
15 so he will sprinkle many nations.
Kings will shut their mouths because of him,
for they will see what had not been told them,
and they will understand what they had not heard.

Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a young plant
and like a root out of dry ground.
He didn’t have an impressive form
or majesty that we should look at him,
no appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.
He was like someone people turned away from;
he was despised, and we didn’t value him.

4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses,
and he carried our pains;
but we in turn regarded him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion,
crushed because of our iniquities;
punishment for our peace was on him,
and we are healed by his wounds.
6 We all went astray like sheep;
we all have turned to our own way;
and the Lord has punished him
for the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
8 He was taken away because of oppression and judgement,
and who considered his fate?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
he was struck because of my people’s rebellion.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
but he was with a rich man at his death,
because he had done no violence
and had not spoken deceitfully.

10 Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely.
When you make him a guilt offering,
he will see his seed, he will prolong his days,
and by his hand the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.
11 After his anguish,
he will see light and be satisfied.
By his knowledge,
my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will carry their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him the many as a portion,
and he will receive the mighty as spoil,
because he willingly submitted to death,
and was counted among the rebels;
yet he bore the sin of many
and interceded for the rebels.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Introduction

The book of Isaiah is often referred to as the Bible in miniature. There are 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah. The first 39 of those are doom and gloom. The nation had fallen into sin, idolatry, intermarriage, and various other things had begun to take root. So you have this announcement in the first 39 chapters of coming judgment, and Isaiah speaks to the people about that. They did not listen.

But in chapter 40, there is a change, and it’s discernible and distinct: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” So the doom and gloom ends, kind of like the Old Testament ends. Malachi ends on a sour note—disobedience, giving the Lord what is left over, giving Him blind animals as a sacrifice, or sick or tainted animals.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye”—chapter 40 of Isaiah—and you move into the New Testament, and what do you get? There was a man named John, and he came and announced the gospel. In Isaiah chapter 40, you have the announcement of the gospel.

Within the remaining chapters, there are four songs. The first of those four songs is found in Isaiah chapter 42, where the servant is introduced. They are called servant songs for a reason. The word “servant” appears no more and no fewer than 40 times in these four songs. Sometimes it’s plural, sometimes it’s singular.

I draw attention to that because when I was in the army doing my training, I made friends with a Jew. He recited this passage to me and told me, “This is why I cannot be a Christian. Because you Christians say that what is being referred to here is Jesus”—whom he, of course, rejected as Messiah. “We as Jews say it’s the nation Israel.” Very different pictures: singular Jesus, plural Israel.

In chapter 42, the servant is introduced to us as Spirit-filled—Spirit-enabled to do what God is calling him to do. Chapter 49, the second of the songs, has the servant speaking specifically of his calling from the womb and his role, which was to bring salvation to the nations and not just to Israel. The third song is found in Isaiah 50, verses 4 to 11, where already prophetically Isaiah is talking about the servant obeying. In chapters 52 and 53—which has been read to us, the fourth of those servant songs—we have the suffering and the saving work of the Savior, or of the Messiah, Jesus.

Now, I’ve already said that I’m assuming the servant is Jesus because you cannot have a nation turning its back on the Lord and enduring the whipping, the flogging, the scorning, and so on. In my mind, clearly this is an individual. And so, I speak gallantly of Jesus.

The passage breaks itself nicely into five different stanzas, three verses per stanza:

– Isaiah 52:13-15: The servant succeeds
– Isaiah 53:1-3: The servant is scorned
– Isaiah 53:4-6: The servant is sacrificed
– Isaiah 53:7-9: The servant is silent
– Isaiah 53:10-12: The servant is triumphant/victorious (satisfied)

Let’s just begin there. I’m going to try to be as brief as I can because this is a long passage of Scripture. Actually, you could preach five sermons on it—it’s that good and that rich. We want to pause and try to take in this morning the sweep and the context of it.

The Servant Succeeds

Dave read to us in chapter 53, verse 10: “See, my servant will be successful.” I want to pause with that word “see.” It is not an option. It is not a suggestion. It is an instruction. It’s an imperative that is being given here—a command from God. God is speaking in these verses, and Isaiah is capturing that. He is saying, “Look!” Unlike your TVs where you get an announcement, “Sensitive viewers, there is something coming you don’t want to watch—turn away, go to the toilet, or go make yourself some tea”—because what’s coming is going to be ugly. No, no, no. God speaks and says, “See! Look! Study! Take a good, long, hard look at what is being said about the servant, because what is being said is vital to the eternity of your soul.”

So we want to pay attention to that word “see.” As hard as it is to consider what Jesus had to go through on the cross, we want to look up. We want to look at. The reason we want to do that is because when we look up and look at Jesus, our direction for our lives is set. You go where your eyes go. If you don’t look up and you look down at all the stuff that’s happening on the earth today, you’re going to get depressed, you’re going to get discouraged, you’re going to feel full of anxiety about things because it’s an ugly world. No—look up. See, study, take a good, long, hard look at this servant.

He then goes on to talk to us about what is going to happen: “See, my servant will be successful.” That word “successful” is painted against the backdrop of the rest of the verse. In the rest of the verse, our attention is drawn to the fact that many are going to be appalled at his appearance. He’s going to be disfigured. He did not look like a man. His form did not resemble a human being. In other words, this servant is going to be very ordinary when he comes.

Now, let me jump back to my friend in the army. When he recited this to me, he said, “We cannot accept that the servant you speak of as Jesus is our Messiah, because the Messiah will come with pomp and pageantry and celebration and victory.” Why is it that men and women—and Jews—often reject the Lord Jesus Christ? Because He’s too ordinary. Isn’t that true? It happened in the Scripture itself. People looked at Him and said, “Well, isn’t this the son of Mary and Joseph? Wasn’t Joseph a carpenter? Didn’t they come from Nazareth? Wasn’t He born in Bethlehem? That’s far too ordinary. Jerusalem—that’s the big city, that’s where stuff happens.” No, He is far too ordinary.

So you’ve got this “see.” He is this servant, and He is very ordinary. But what He does and what He will achieve is extraordinary. He will sprinkle, the Scripture says, many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of Him, for they will see what had not been told them, and they will understand what they had not heard. Typically, kings give instructions; they pass edicts; things happen when kings speak. But this servant—ordinary, somebody who’s going to be disfigured, somebody who is going to be rejected by people generally speaking—is going to silence the mouths of kings.

As I study this, I don’t see him spelling out exactly when this is going to happen, but I don’t think it’s too far to suggest that what Paul writes about in Philippians chapter 2 is potentially being referred to here. Philippians 2:10 says, “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” So the servant—ordinary—is going to come and He is going to succeed. No matter what people say, no matter what people think, no matter how people treat Him, this is what is true of the servant. And His success is guaranteed because it is underwritten by God Himself. Listen to Ephesians: God ordained that before the foundation of the world was laid, Christ would come.

The Servant is Scorned

But as we move to the second point, the servant we see here is scorned. “Who has believed what we heard?” verses 1 to 3 say. “And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him—no appearance that we should desire him.” This builds on what has been said at the end of chapter 52. But there is a change. The speaker now is not God—although one could say it is God. The speaker here is Isaiah, and of course God is speaking through Isaiah the prophet. What he is saying is that on account of the widespread rejection of the servant and on account of his ordinariness and the fact that people are not going to respond heartily and easily, Isaiah finds himself grieving. These words are full of passion. There is frustration. There is heartache.

Go back to when Mark said that Jesus was standing on the Mount of Olives and looked down into Jerusalem—you can stand on the mountain, look right down onto the temple mount, see into Jerusalem—and He wept. Why did He weep? Because He had come as Savior and Redeemer, and His own people did not recognize Him as such. Far too ordinary. They rejected Him because of His weakness. “He grew up like a young plant”—the imagery behind this is a seed that is planted and starts to germinate and grow, but it hardly breaks through the surface of the soil. You don’t notice it. And so people reject Him because it just seems too weak—it’s going to fizzle, it’s going to die, and you’re not going to get any value out of it. People like strong leaders. Then when they get them, they don’t like them—”too strong,” they say. Isn’t that true? But this is what is being said here of Jesus. He’s going to be scorned because of His weakness.

“And like a root out of dry ground” continues to build on His ordinariness. The illustration is that He is unimpressive. Now, many of you have been reading through the Old Testament sequentially, and you’ve come to a passage where you’ve read that Saul was a man who stood a head taller than everybody else, and he was handsome, and in appearance he was a person who really drew a crowd. People looked at him and marveled. Jesus is not like that—far too ordinary. And so people reject Him because He’s not that good-looking from what we can make out. That doesn’t mean He was ugly, but obviously not as handsome as some might think He should be.

But He’s not only that; He comes from ordinary towns: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum are the names mentioned in the New Testament. Listen to the disciples as they start out. John chapter 1, verses 45 and 46: Philip has found the Messiah. He finds Nathaniel and says to him in excitement, “We have found him whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote about—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. We have found him!” And what does Nathaniel say? “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It’s kind of like saying, “You know what happens in Benoni? Nothing.” So they reject Him. He’s ordinary in His appearance—far too ordinary to stand out.

But that ordinariness is actually what makes Him appealing. I have served with wealthy people. I have served with strong leaders and with people who are super-duper qualified—not one degree, not two degrees, but three and four degrees. Very impressive. High earners, high wealth, high-value wealthy people. But I want to tell you something about them—and this is not necessarily true of every single one; this is a generalization—they are not easily appealed to. They can be very snooty, very proud, very distant, very cold, very unconcerned. But when you strangely find a beggar who has found out where to get bread, the beggar goes and tells other beggars where to get bread—because that’s what happens.

Here we are. That ordinariness of Jesus, which is a reason for many to reject Him, is the very thing that should attract us to Him because He’s approachable. He’s available. He’s come so that we can see that He’s accessible. We want to come this morning, and we don’t want to be indifferent to Him. You see that word “despise” means more than just being indifferent. It means to reject Him intentionally, willfully, and to denounce Him with sneering contempt—to vigorously dismiss Him as inconsequential. And yet time is broken into BC and AD because of Jesus.

He was a man of suffering and one who knew what sickness was. That says to us that His life here on earth, His ministry, was characterized by suffering and by sorrow. We see that in the Lord Jesus so many times. There is a widow about to bury her son, and He stops the parade—I wish I was there; it must have been quite frightening—and He raises the son. How many funerals do you go to where the dead person rises? I think some people would run out if that happened. But He had compassion on her. The Scripture says that ordinariness equals approachability, accessibility, availability. So we want to draw near this morning.

The Servant is Sacrificed

Now we see what it is that He wants us to see in particular. I think verses 4-6 capture that. Thirdly, the servant is sacrificed, and it’s an incredible description: “He himself bore our sicknesses.” I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong in saying what I’m about to say, but bear with me. I was sick for two weeks while I was away, and it wasn’t a pleasant time. But I had a consultation with a doctor twice, was put on two sets of antibiotics, and I got well. I don’t think he means that by “sickness” here. I think what he means is a terminal sickness: sin. Sin is a terminal sickness, and we’ve all got it—but only some are doing something about it. It’s not something that causes your nose to run, your ears to block, or your chest to wheeze. It does have external manifestations in the sense of the evil we do, the lies we tell, the coveting that goes on, and so on. Could it be that that’s what he means here? I think it is. We’re terminally ill, but He carried our pains. What an incredible sentence. What an incredible thought.

And yet, how do we respond? “But we in turn rejected him, stricken, struck down by God and afflicted.” I’ve heard people say, “How could a loving God punish His only begotten Son and cause Him to die? That’s not a loving father. I want nothing to do with such a God.” If only he knew that that Son was suffering in his place to take away his terminal illness—the illness that deserves death, called sin.

Now, what is this all doing? The passage is speaking to us about substitution. As sinners, we deserve God’s wrath and God’s judgment. We deserve to be separated from God forever and ever. In fact, let’s be honest: God has no obligation whatsoever to even listen to us because holiness wants nothing to do with unholiness. And yet He pours out on His Son the punishment, the wrath, the anger, the separation that sin deserves. He pours all of that out on His Son. So He punishes somebody instead of us. That word “substitution”—the verb “bore” means to lift off someone else the burden, the weight that they are carrying. It means to take it away from them so that they no longer have to carry that burden. That’s what Jesus is doing on the cross. He is substituted so that we don’t have to pay that price—because we could not pay it. We would suffer and we would die and we would become ash.

But there’s so much more that is said about our Lord Jesus, isn’t there? Why does He suffer? Because sin earns a debt. Sin earns punishment. If you’ve ever been involved in an accident—a simple, innocent accident; you turned too sharply and scratched someone’s car, and sadly for you, they were sitting in the car and they got out—you’re like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And then you find out it’s your best friend. How do you feel? Indebted to him. He says to you, “No, don’t worry about it. It’s just a small little ding. I’ll take care of it.” And how do you worry? Every time you see him, you say, “I’m so sorry. I really am. I can’t forget it.” He says, “Forget it.” “I can’t.” That’s kind of what sin is like in our case. We should be in such a place that we can’t just forget it. It’s a debt that has been incurred.

And yet God sends His Son to pay the debt that we owe. The debt we owe Him is that there needs to be justice on account of the offense that has been committed toward Him. All of that is happening on that day on the cross. When you look at the rejected and despised, and you look at the suffering that is going on, you see the humanity of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Go to the Garden of Gethsemane for a moment. Typically that would have been last night. What do you see in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the early hours of this morning? You see Jesus in prayer, weeping. I would imagine—the Scripture says sweat drops of blood—there is this agonizing of soul that is going on, and you hear a plaintive cry: “Father, if it is possible, remove this cup.” It’s a bitter cup. It’s a painful cup. It’s a cup of sorrow and suffering and humiliation and scorn. “Father, if it’s possible, remove this cup from me.” The pain is huge. And what He says next says it all: “But if not, thy will be done.” And God the Father, in His character and nature to preserve that justice, allows His Son to be arrested, humiliated, flogged, scorned, denied. That trial—not a fair trial—and of course He has to go to the cross and suffer on the cross.

Move from Gethsemane to the flogging. Move from the flogging to the carrying of the cross up the Via Dolorosa. Move from that weakened state where He is and Simon of Cyrene comes and carries the cross for Him. Move to the cross itself. Feel those nails. See that blood. See that crown. And understand that He’s suffering in your place and in my place so that we can go free. It’s not a car—it’s your soul. Eternity is at stake, and it touches our hearts.

Then hear Him on the cross: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And you see the separation that sin deserves. God turns His face away from His own Son and allows Him to suffer as the once-for-all sacrifice for sinners. That’s the heart of God. That’s the heart of our Savior.

As we talk about substitution, we talk about penal substitution. He suffers in our place. The innocent is paying the price for the guilty. It’s not make-believe. There really was blood that flowed. Those lashes were real. That crown of thorns dug deep and hurt. Those nails as He hung there caused immense pain. It stopped Him from breathing even, because as His weight relaxed, He would want to stand up again because He couldn’t breathe—the chest would be squeezed.

“See,” says the Lord, because when you see Him and what He’s doing in our place, you see His necessity. We could not pay that price. If you’ve been going through the Old Testament once again, one of the words that you’ve read frequently is that word “atonement.” That word means to make at one with. So we deserve separation, but God sends His Son as the substitute, suffering in our place. He is sacrificed so that we can go free. He atones for our sins, meaning we can now be made at one with God because the sacrifice is acceptable and pure and sinless, and because there is going to be such a thing as the resurrection showing that Jesus overcomes sin and Satan and death.

The picture behind this is the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament, when the priest would come having offered sacrifice into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. Once that had been accepted and he came out, the hands would be laid on the scapegoat outside of the camp. The scapegoat would be led away and allowed to go outside the camp, removing the sin from the people. And you hear Psalm 103: “How far has he removed our sins from us? As far as the east is from the west”—they can never be brought back. That’s why that scapegoat would be allowed to die; they cannot come back. That all is in the person and in the work of Jesus. Immense, incredible, but grand because we have the love of God on display.

Now, what this teaches us is that sin is serious. It’s not something that you can excuse and say, “Well, I made a mistake.” No, it’s very willful, deliberate, and there is a penalty that needs to be paid because of it. Justice needs to be served, but Christ serves as our substitute.

The Servant is Silent

Fourthly, we come to the silence of the servant. I don’t need to say much here except that I want to highlight why He is so silent. The Scripture says, “Like a sheep is silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. He was taken away because of oppression and judgment. And who considered his fate? He was cut off from the land of the living. He was struck because of my people’s rebellion. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.”

Not once do you hear Jesus cry a cry of self-pity. Not once do you see Him or hear Him saying, “This is unfair.” Not once do you see Him saying something to those who are His accusers, “Your day is coming.” No, no, no. “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they do.” His silence is highlighted for us so that we might understand: He went willingly. He went knowing, before He even came to earth, that this is what’s going to happen. And He bore it because He wanted to show us what being a true servant of God is about.

Are we quite different? Sometimes we serve the Lord and it becomes a bit tough. Too many demands. “Pastor, take my name off the list. I can’t handle it anymore.” Imagine if Jesus had done that: “Hey God, this is just too much. You need to find someone else.” You don’t hear that. He is silent because He is the willing servant and because He is doing what God desires. He is pleased to do what God desires, and God is pleased that His Son suffers, obeying the call that is upon His life.

The Servant is Satisfied

So you come to this final point. The servant is satisfied. “Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed and prolong his days. And by his hand the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.” What is this saying to us? In short, it’s saying this: His death accomplishes salvation. And it’s not salvation for the Jews only—it’s the salvation of all who will come. Anybody who sees, who hears, who understands what is being said this morning—”I am a sinner. I need a Savior. I’m sick. I need a Healer”—and you will come. You come into the family of God as you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what’s happening? You will be counted among the many. Where is that “many”? Go to Revelation. Gathered before Him are people from every tribe and tongue and nation. We inherit salvation, we inherit our Savior, and we inherit the kingdom of God as we put our faith in the Lord Jesus. But you and I as delivered people are also His inheritance—His people. And so you see this beautiful marriage taking place.

Conclusion

Hear this as we close: Who, for the joy set before Him, endured the agony of the cross? What is that joy? That day when everybody gathers before Him—those who are redeemed—and spends eternity with Him. You see, they glorify Him, and He owns them.

But today is a day where we remember the cross. We remember our Savior. We understand penal substitutionary death, atonement, and all that goes with that. And it is a day where there has to be, in some way or another, a response. To not respond is to despise. To not respond is to reject Him positively. To respond is to receive Him and say, “Lord, I want You. I need You. I come to You. Here I am. Own me. Take me. Do with me what You please. I have been touched by the servant, and I want to be a servant of the Servant—capital S.”

Oh, may we see that and hear that. We’re going to go straight into communion. Communion is for those who believe. But this morning, it’s possible that some are sitting here and you have not yet put your faith in Jesus. You’ve been touched. You can now, if you will, quietly—I’m going to give you a chance for silent prayer in a few moments—respond and say to the Lord, “Lord, I see. I hear. I understand. I want to come and surrender my life to You.” Give yourself to Him as you confess your sin and turn your back on it and determine not to go back that way again. You can come and partake, because He will receive you. “But to as many as received him, he gave the power to become the children of God.”