When I got to verse 6 I was stunned!
(Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
Read from Isaiah 52:7-53:12
66 chapters. 1292 verses. 22 sermons – this is number 23. And so far 8 months. That is this magnificent book of prophecy: Isaiah. And today, today we come to the most significant, the most important, the central prophecy of the whole book. It is today that out of the backdrop of sin and judgement and misery the mysterious “Servant of God” emerges. The one who is like a king but isn’t, the one who is loved by God but will suffer, the one who is powerful beyond belief but so weak, the one who will rescue his people but will die – today is the day when he steps out of the shadows and we see him for who he really is.
Jesus.
Jesus, promised so many times in so many places, but here in Isaiah promised so clearly that many Jews today refuse to read this chapter because it shouts so loudly “Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah (the Rescuer)”.
This is what I’ve been looking forward to preaching for 8 months! Because here we see the heart of God. Here we see hope. Here we see our sin dealt with. He took our punishment upon himself.
You see we have a problem. We all know there is something wrong with the world. Look around us and what do we see? Turn on the news. Injustice, war, famine, lying, cheating, hurting, ignoring people, abandoning people. Look around in our own lives – how much we have been hurt by others – and to our eternal shame how much we have hurt other people.
There is something wrong. And the Bible says it is because we were made to know God – but we have turned our back on him and rejected.
That is what the Bible calls sin. Our relationship is broken. And when that central relationship is gone, like the foundation of a building, the rest comes tumbling after. Because of sin, we sin. Because we are broken within, we act like broken people.
Oh, we’re not all bad! Much of the divine image is still in us. People do great things! Wonderful things. But we also do terrible things. And that’s why Jesus came. To restore us. To make us whole. To deal with our sin and make us right with God so that we can know him and love him like we were made to.
Joy and happiness! That is why he came.
So we echo v7 7 How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!
There is news of restoration and it’s for us too: as we read we see it is more than just for Israel, more than just for Jerusalem in 538BC – it is for you, it is for me, for all people everywhere. As we read a few weeks ago, It is too small a thing for God’s servant to just rescue Israel. He will be a light to all nations.
How beautiful this message. Peace and salvation, the news that God, the only God, reigns.
In Christ Jesus our status is changed. We are moved from sinners under God’s anger – God’s enemies - to beloved children of God. Yes we may sin, but it is something that doesn’t belong to us anymore. As someone put it “I can’t sin properly anymore.”
WE are loved perfectly. Relationship with God, our Heavenly Father, satisfies at the very deepest level. Our longings for eternity are met in him. Our longing to be known intimately, perfectly and loved are met in Him.
We are beloved children of God.
But how? Why?
Because of the work of the Servant of God. Because of the work of the King of Kings. Because of the work of Jesus.
So far in Isaiah we’ve read three of these “servant songs” as they are called: prophecies about this coming servant, made 700 years before Jesus was born. Today we look at the fourth, final, and greatest Servant Song. 15 mind-blowing verses. Shall we begin.
13 See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. 14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.
Nothing we read about this servant makes any sense. He will prosper – but he will suffer. He will be highly exalted – but he is disfigured, scarcely looks human, because of the piercings and beatings and whippings he endures in v5. That doesn’t sound to me like being exalted!
Hey, come here, let me exalt you, lift you up (great!) by beating you until you’re unrecognisable. Ha-ha, no thanks.
It goes on: 15 And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about. Is 53 Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?
In other words, there is something so strange, so remarkable, so amazing that no-one will believe it.
If Isaiah were writing this today he’d probably call it “15 mind-blowing things you wouldn’t believe about the Servant”. With the little tag-line “I was stunned when I got to v6”.
But unlike the mildly amusing distractions that people call “mind-blowing” these days (oh, a baby pulling a face, oh, a cat falling off a curtain, wow) – this really is mind-blowing. Kings will shut their mouths, utterly speechless.
Whole nations will be startled. What? Can this be true?
The message is simply unbelievable. Remember that God has promised in earlier chapters that he is going to show the world who he is by doing something new, something different, something only he knows about. A unique thing that no-one could ever guess. “Ask your idols, your false gods, your fortune tellers, to tell you what I will do” God has challenged again and again. And here is the revelation of God’s powerful arm of rescue, his amazing message of rescue. And it’s just unbelievable.
What is it? What is God going to do?!
By this stage those crowded around Isaiah would be shouting that. “What’s going to happen? How will God rescue us?”
They had been listening to the terrible news that Babylon, a nation they’d only just met, would very soon come sweeping in and carry them all off into captivity, and leave Jerusalem, the beloved city, in ruins. And all this because of their sin!
And you can imagine those living in Babylon, about 150 years later, listening as Isaiah’s prophecy was being read. Oh, they knew that the first parts had come true. Look around, we’re in the enemy city. Jerusalem is in ruins. And, yes, it was because of our sin. So imagine the excitement in hearing these words read out. God’s unbelievable rescue plan!
Is 53 Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?
What’s going to happen? Massive heavenly armies. The earth opens up and fire rains down from the sky as the thunder rolls and GOD RESCUES HIS PEOPLE?
No. v2 My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground.
What? A man? Just one man? Well, maybe there’s something amazing about him. Like Samson – the strength of hundreds, or the Hulk or something.
No, v2 continues There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
What? God’s great plan is… this? Some rejected dude?
Yes. This is the unbelievable plan. God will send a man, a man born in poverty. A man born to an ordinary nothing family. Born to be rejected. To be hated by his own people.
Why?
4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
God is sending someone to be a substitute for us. You know in football, when someone’s tired or playing badly they substitute him. They swap him out with someone else. Someone else takes his place.
That’s what this servant will do for us. He will take our place.
He, Jesus, swaps places with us. He takes our place, we get his place. It’s like we’re crossing the road and we don’t see the truck hurtling towards us. Jesus is the guy who rushes over and pushes us out of the way into safety, while the truck slams into him. He was in safety, but he took our place in danger, to get us to safety.
6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
This my friends is the very heart of the gospel: Jesus, our substitute. The one who took our place. The one who took our punishment. The one who gave his live so that we could live. And Jesus was his name.
Jesus of Nazareth. Born to a nothing family in a nothing place. When people heard Jesus was from Nazareth they said “Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46).
Who was this carpenter’s bastard son? This nobody who claims to be a King? It seemed like a joke. Oh, he had powers, amazing powers. And he could teach! But it was just too unbelievable. This… nothing – the Messiah, the Christ, the promised Rescuer?
And so his own people rejected him, just as v 3 predicted.
Jn 1:10–13 [Jesus] came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn.
How? Because he was a man of sorrows as v4 says.
Not because he was filled with sorrow, but because he took our sorrows upon himself. As we saw last week, remember Jesus drinking the cup of judgement himself instead of us. Remember his words in the garden: Matt 26:37b [Jesus] became anguished and distressed. 38 He told [his closest disciples], “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” 39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
Willingly he went to die. Father, your will be done. And after praying Jesus stands up and says to his disciples “Get up, the time has come. My betrayer is here.”
7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away.
After Jesus’ arrest he was brought before the leading priests and the high council. Mt 26:62–63 Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Well, aren’t you going to answer these charges? What do you have to say for yourself?” 63 But Jesus remained silent.
A few hours later the council brings Jesus before Pilate, the Roman governor Mt 27:11–14 “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate, the governor asked him. Jesus replied, “You have said it.” 12 But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent. 13 “Don’t you hear all these charges they are bringing against you?” Pilate demanded. 14 But Jesus made no response to any of the charges, much to the governor’s surprise.
7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away.
Unjustly condemned. Pilate’s wife says about him “Leave that innocent man alone. I suffered through a terrible nightmare about him last night.” (Matt27:19)
Judas, his betrayer, realises he’s made a terrible mistake: Matt 27:3 When Judas…realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he declared, “for I have betrayed an innocent man.”
Pilate declares him innocent. Even the King of Israel at that time, Herod, examined Jesus and said he is innocent.
He was an innocent man, found guilty simply for claiming to be who he was and is: the Messiah, the King of God’s people.
So they lead Jesus away, and whipped him with a lead-tipped whip. Beat an innocent man until he was almost dead. Then they dragged him outside the city of Jerusalem and there his hands and feet were pierced as they hammered nails into him in one of the cruellest deaths ever imagined by humans – and we’re very good at imagining cruel deaths.
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
Jesus, on the Cross, for you and me. His life was cut short because of our rebellion. Because of your rebellion. Because of my rebellion.
It was my hand that hammered the nails in. It was my voice that called out in the crowd “Crucify Him”.
And it was yours.
Imagine this Bible contains a list of all my sins – things I’ve done, said, thought, left undone, and the sins I will do in the future. If it really did it would be bigger, much bigger. Now this is me. My sin blocks my access to God. I cannot reach him. I cannot know him. I cannot break through. What Christ did on the Cross is this. He took my sin upon himself, and gave me His perfect access to the Father.
All that I have done and ever will do that would cut me off from God is dealt with once and for all by Jesus on the Cross. He takes my place. And I get His.
10 …it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. (that’s you and me. Everyone who trusts in Him.)
He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands. 11 When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. 12 I will give him the honours of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.
Brothers, this is what Jesus accomplished, just as predicted 700 YEARS before it happened. Christ Jesus was counted as a rebel, a criminal. Though he was innocent he went to the Cross for you. And he went to the Cross for me.
He, the righteous servant, has made it possible for me, the unrighteous, to be counted righteous, for he has borne my sin.
Father, thank you for this incredible vision you gave Isaiah of the work of your son, our Lord Jesus, 700 years before it happened. Thank you for this unbelievable message, so startling, so amazing that we stand speechless. No-one could make this up. That God himself would come down and suffer. That the great king of heaven would give his own life – for me. It’s ridiculous. It is unbelievable. Thank you Father, that it is true. Thank you that you are so full of mercy that anyone who turns to you, no matter what we’ve done, can receive it forgiveness. Thank you Jesus that through your suffering, death and resurrection, that we can be declared righteous, and be called children of God.
You might be here this morning and wanting to experience this forgiveness. If that is you now, while every eye is closed, raise your hands to say yes I want to be made right with God.
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