Themes of the Bible: Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53)

 

Themes of the Bible: Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53)

You read some powerful words of Scripture if you did your assignment for this week, and just so you know for next week, we’ll be in the book of Jeremiah. So, you should read Jeremiah chapter 1, that way you'll be prepared for what we talk about as we continue going through this series looking at God's message to humanity as you see it portrayed throughout the scriptures.

There are these passages that you will come across in our study of the Bible that we refer to as “trouble passages.” They can be trouble passages for Christians in that they're difficult for us to understand, or they're difficult for us to explain to a watching world. This would include passages where Paul tells slaves to obey their masters. Well, in the 21st century mindset we immediately see this with racial overtones, and people are going to struggle with that. And trouble passage for Christians includes those Old Testament passages where God commands the destruction of the Amalekites, commands killing women and children. These are difficult “trouble passages” to explain and rationalize, especially to an unbeliever.    

Well, what's interesting is, just like there are trouble passages for Christians, there are passages of the Tanakh, what we know as the Old Testament, that are trouble passages for Orthodox Jewish people, and Isaiah 53 is one of those exceptionally difficult passages for the orthodox Jew to handle. Furthermore, if you look at surveys of Jews who have converted to Christianity, who have said ‘yes, I was raised in the Jewish faith, that is my ethnicity, but I believe that Jesus is the Messiah,’ what it is that God used to convince them, this passage, Isaiah 53, is almost always at the top of the list. So, I want to take a moment to tell you about one of these converts, a now Messianic Jew named Leah.

Leah, a 25-year-old Jewish woman was searching for answers to spiritual questions, much like all of us. Remember last week when I said that it doesn't matter who you are? Even Carl Sagan, an atheist was looking for answers. Me as a Christian, I'm looking for answers, Leah, a Jewish woman was looking for answers. And while looking for these answers, she was faced with the question of ‘was Jesus who He claimed to be?’ And that is the key. We can see that as the very reason that John wrote his gospel, so that people could know who Jesus is, and thus be saved in His name (John 20:30-31). There are so many reasons people reject Christianity and walk away. They’ll say, ‘well I don't want to join a group that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump’ ‘Well I'm not going to join that group because of their stance on sexual issues.’ But truthfully, our decision about whether or not we're going to follow Christ should come down to one question and one question alone, and it doesn't have anything to do with the other people that choose whether or not to follow him. The question is: is Jesus who He claimed to be? That's the determining question for the Christian faith and that's what Leah was faced with. She answered that question saying, “I wanted the answer and I'm starting to see that Jesus is the Messiah, but I know if I accept that, then I'm rejecting my father, a Jewish Rabbi who did not believe in Jesus, and I loved him more than anyone else in this world. I just can't do it.” She was being convicted by the Holy Spirit and Scripture that ‘yes, Jesus is the Messiah, but if I accept means that I'm looking at my dad, who was the most important person in the entire world to me and I'm rejecting him, I'm betraying my own family.’ She was challenged to read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, so she found her dad's old Tanakh, and she opened into the passage in question, and she made two astounding discoveries. First, the passage really did sound like it was screaming the name of Jesus. And second, her father had circled the entire chapter in his book, and in the margin she found that he had written “Messianic prophecy. There is no escape. Yeshua is the Messiah.” Yeshua is the Jewish way to say Jesus. So, it was such a convincing and convicting passage that even her father, a Jewish rabbi, could not dismiss it. Within two weeks she acknowledged that Jesus fit the description of the suffering servant of God in Isaiah 53 and surrendered her life to Christ.

So, this chapter of Scripture that we’re studying today is a trouble passage for those who reject who and what is says that Jesus is. And if you did your homework, you saw it as well, it's laid out there, a remarkable series of what I would say, are explicit, unambiguous precise specific details about that Messiah that we started studying way back several months ago, in Genesis 3:15. Back in Genesis 3:15 we found out that there's a coming Messiah, and Isaiah puts a fine point on who that's going to be. So, if you've got your Bibles, we’ll start in Isaiah 53, verse 2. [Read Isaiah 53:2-4].  

 I'm going to move quickly, but here's what you see. This Messiah will be born and will grow up in a totally normal way. This isn't someone that's going to descend from the heavens on the clouds, and everybody's going to know ‘oh, well, that's the Messiah because He comes on the clouds from God,’ he's going to be born in a natural way. There also says that he'll look like an average, ordinary person, he's not going to come looking kingly, he's going to look like a normal person. He's going to be rejected and reviled by his own people. He will be a man of sorrows experiencing grief and sorrow, he's not going to be recognized for who he is and what he's doing. In other words, there's going to be a ton of people waiting for a Messiah and to them that will mean a politician, who will deliver the Jews from their oppressors, at the time of Jesus it’s the Romans, and Jesus comes along, claiming to be that Messiah but he raises no army, and he's speaking of a spiritual kingdom and not an earthly kingdom, and so he will be rejected, not recognized for who he is, and what he's doing verse five says he'll be punished to bring us peace.

Look in verse five, [Read Isaiah 53:5]. At the time that's written they won't understand it because piercing someone, crucifing someone was not a punishment that was used. Because its prophetic and from God, Isaiah will use language that they don't understand. [Read Isaiah 53:6-9]. He'll bring salvation and healing to his people, he'll bear the sins of His people as a substitute, verse seven says he'll suffer that burden without a complaint won't open his mouth, he'll be convicted in the dishonest court. Verse eight, he'll be cut off as though he has no descendants, no natural children of his own. He will die an innocent man, but he'll be given a rich man's burial. That’s something he's not going to be able to control when he's dead. Remember, after Jesus is dead, Joseph of Arimathea comes up, a wealthy man, and gives his tomb, the rented tomb or borrowed tomb, for Jesus to be laid in. [Read Isaiah 53:10-11]. He'll die because it's the Lord's will. But he will live beyond his death. Isaiah says he will live again and see his spiritual offspring, and accomplish all that the Lord has willed for him to do, he will make many righteous before God. Verse 12 finishes that, [Read Isaiah 53:12].  This is amazing. As an intercessor between sinners and the Holy God, the ones that he dies for, He will then intercede on their behalf.

That's what Isaiah promises in chapter 53. So, do you see why this is a trouble passage? It screams the name of Jesus. It's why it's a trouble passage for Orthodox Jews to reject Christianity and reject Christ, but I'll take it a step further and say that this is a trouble passage for skeptics and non-believers as well. This is something that atheists don't want to contend with. Why? Because Isaiah wrote these words 600 years before the coming of Jesus. Interestingly enough, when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, they have every Hebrew book of the Old Testament, and many copies of each, but the only complete, unfragmented book they have in an intact scroll is the book of Isaiah. It predates even Jesus’ life by hundreds of years. So, the oldest complete copy of a book of Scripture that we have, prophetically testifies to the coming Christ Jesus. We have a physical document that predates Jesus, the words that we were just reading, that “he'll be wounded for our transgressions, he'll be bruised for our iniquities. Our punishment will be upon him and by his stripes will be healed.” Those words were written by Isaiah 600 years before Jesus and written on that scroll 200 years before Jesus comes in fulfills it. That's very difficult for a skeptic, for an atheist to explain.

David Baron, who's a rabbinic scholar turned a follower of Jesus writes, “It is beyond even the wildest credulity to believe that the resemblance and every feature, and the minute detail between this prophetic portraiture drawn centuries before Jesus’ coming, his advent and the story of his life and death and glorious resurrection as narrated in the gospels, the similarities between those two things, that this can be mere accident or fortuitous coincidence.”

As I'm reading Isaiah 53, I see two things that stand out to me that I want to bring your attention to.

Number one, when I read Isaiah 53, it's not just telling me and stressing to me what Jesus has done, it’s stressing what Jesus has done for me. It is not just that Jesus bore grief or that he was pierced, or that he was crushed, or that he was afflicted. Let’s look back at verses 5 and 6. [Read Isaiah 53:5-6]. When I read Isaiah 53, it is stressing that I am the beneficiary of what Jesus has done. When you read this, beware of distancing yourself from the text and seeing this just as an historical document talking about a coming messiah that's going to do all of this stuff for the world. This is speaking to you, what was done for you. Your punishment was upon him. This is your iniquity that he bore and then verses 10 and 11 would have had special meaning to the people that were reading this back then, that heard Isaiah his words, I'll explain to you why in just a second. There's meaning for us there as well, of course, it was the Lord's will to punish him and cause him to suffer. It was God's will, that his son, be crushed, and forced to suffer and the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Again, here is master chess player.

What looks like a victory for Satan, the crushing of the Messiah, God is 50,000 steps ahead, even though he will suffer God will prolong his days. Look at verse 11. [Read Isaiah 53:11-12]. Those words would have had special meaning to the people in Isaiah’s day because they're still under the Old Covenant. Guilt offerings, these were substitutes, these were sacrifices given to God to cover the sins of the people. The practice was instituted so that people who sinned against God would not face his just wrath, the punishment of God. Remember what is the wages of sin according to Scripture? The wages of sin is death. That's the punishment. There must be blood accounting for that, and so what this guilt offering did was it allowed people who sinned against God to offer a sacrifice to temporarily satisfy the just wrath of God, so that they would not face it themselves. But notice that I said temporary. It's only temporary. It has to be continually done over and over and over. And so what we're talking about here is a coming sacrifice, a guilt offering once and for all. I will remember their sins no more. That's what the cross was all about. That's what Isaiah is talking about. He took all of those inequities, every sin that had been committed, that was being committed and would be committed, and he takes them to Calvary. There at Calvary, the sinless son became sin for our sake. That is exactly why, in Christ alone, we become the righteousness of God. That's why there is no other path. That's why we worship Jesus alone. It's why the Buddha isn't good enough. It's why the Dalai Lama isn't good enough. It's why Mohammed doesn't offer us anything because no one else bore our sins and our iniquities and took our affliction and buried it. No one else did that.

Look at the dying words of the Buddha. Compare the dying words of the Buddha, “Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation. Do your best.”Compare that with the dying words of Jesus. “It is finished.” It is done. There's no more striving, there's no more trying, I've done it all. Paul writes, 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made Him who had had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That's our identity. Isaiah 53 promises it.

And then the second thing I picked up on. Yes, we know this passage is about the suffering servant of God but notice that it's the silent suffering servant.

When I'm attacked, or here's what happens more often, often with me, I’m misrepresented, somebody takes something that I said, and they twist it, they make it sound like I was saying something else when I really wasn't saying that at all, or I'm judged, somebody determines that this is who I am and this is what I'm about. I always feel that I need to respond. I’ve got to set the record straight, they're talking bad about me, they're saying I said something I didn't really say, I've got to let everybody know and I'm totally justified because they're lying about me and therefore I'm just setting the record straight. I have a burning desire for the last word because after all, I'm right, and everybody should know that I'm right. And then I read Isaiah 53, and I'm forced to take inventory of my own heart and you know what I realize, oftentimes my burning desire to respond is not really about the truth. It's about my own pride. ‘Well, how will people see me? How will people view me?’ I will be even if the person that's criticizing me is right. I still feel the need to redirect it so that nobody thinks ill of me. ‘Well, that's not really what I meant.’ Yet, go back and look at verse 7, verse 7 of Isaiah 53, I cannot get past this verse, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.” I read that, and I can't comprehend it. I can't follow it, and then the gospels record that's exactly what Jesus does. Look at this passage from Matthew 27, “when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, He gave no answer. Then Pilate asked him, don't you hear the testimony they're bringing against you. But Jesus made no reply. Not even to a single charge to the great amazement of the governor.” Well of course he's amazed because that isn't what human beings do. You're going to accuse me like that, you're going to slander me like that, you're going to say that I did that when I didn't do that, you better believe I'm going to have something to say about that. And then in Luke 23, the king, Herod questioned him at some length, but he made no answer to him, either. This is so hard for me to grasp. I can't comprehend it because Jesus is so right. And those people are so wrong. No one has ever been more right than him. No one has ever been more maligned or misrepresented than him. He is falsely accused, maligned, criticized, facing all kinds of groundless charges and insinuations. There are people in the crowd that did not have an opinion of Jesus, but they're hearing all of this and they're forming opinions of Jesus and believing of him things that are simply not true. And Jesus knows that to be the case. And he says nothing. What in the world? How can I get past verse seven?

Because there's a reason Jesus is silent. And I think there's a lesson there for us. Jesus is demonstrating a freedom that he had that if I'm a follower of his, I should find in him as well. Jesus exhibits a freedom here that I so often willingly give up. I choose to be enslaved. It is a freedom that produces silence. I'm enslaved by this insatiable desire to defend myself and to self-justify. I need everyone to know I’m right because my reputation matters to me. Christ was not enslaved to that because at every moment of his life, he was completely and totally confident in his identity, and his purpose. He knew why he was here, and it wasn't for the applause of men.

As a Christ-follower, my purpose here is to glorify my father in heaven and there are times when speaking will do that, and Jesus speaks many times, but there are times when silence will glorify God. Jesus knows that all of those accusations are untrue, and it's all part of the drama that is leading him to the cross, which is the will of the Father. You just read it in Isaiah that it was God's will that he be crushed, and Jesus knew. He knew that if he remained silent, this will build to where it's supposed to go to for the glory of the Father: the cross. He never speaks in his own defense. He never speaks to clear his name. He never speaks to lighten his load of suffering. He never does it. He's free from this need because he knows his accusers. He knew them better than they knew themselves, and he knew that they were enslaved to the prince of the world, Satan and sin. He knew that about them. So, to glorify the Father, Jesus chose not to shut them down for his own glory, to get the slow clap from the crowd around him, that wasn't going to glorify God. He pitied them, and he prayed for them, even as they were killing him, because his focus was glorifying the Father. That was what he was here to do.

I tend to forget this, in this era that we live in where there's online confrontation where I don't see the person that I'm talking to. I tend to forget that the person on the other side of that keyboard, on the other side of that tweet is a real person with a real soul, maybe one that is enslaved to the prince of this world. It's easy to do when we don't communicate face to face. It's why I sometimes worry about Christian engagement in social media. Because quickly faceless people become soulless people and we don't treat them as the captives to the prince of the world that they are. I think Christians need to be wary about that.

So, to conclude with the theological awareness of number one, that what Jesus did He, did for me. I'm also going to take this from Isaiah 53, and I challenge you to do the same. The next time I'm feeling enslaved, with my next chance to respond and set the world straight. I want to remember who I am in Christ. I want to embrace the freedom that I have in that truth to be silent. I don't feel the need for earthly justification, I am eternally justified, and I will speak only if it is for the glory of God. And if it's not, I will choose silence. That will be my choice and maybe in doing so I’ll be honoring God with that attitude, and my choice of words or lack of words. Maybe that will invite others to find that same freedom.

Let’s pray.