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GOD’S GREATEST WORK
Isaiah 53
Bob Bonner
March 23, 2008
There once was a preacher who genuinely loved his God. He loved his people and his country. He had observed that God was not blessing his people or his country because they had lived as though God did not exist. His fellow citizens, even the religious ones, made their country’s religion a mockery. Once a week they would give lip service to God, but no sooner would they leave their house of worship than they would live as though God played no important role in their lives. Some, upon leaving their worship service, would seek out popular sites where foreigners and others who did not worship God would spend their time. These religious ones would seek out these people for the sole purpose of making better business connections, even if it meant dishonoring or bringing shame to the God for whom they had just left services to worship. Others would leave their worship service and within an hour would visit a lover who knew not God, and by their immoral relationship they would dishonor God.
Seeing such things take place over and over again, week after week, broke this preacher’s heart. He loved his God, and because he did, he hated the fact that his friends and family would treat this One for Whom he lived with such disregard.
Then one day God paid this preacher, whose name was Isaiah, a visit. Isaiah records what happened that day in Isaiah 6. When God showed up, Isaiah immediately realized that although from a human point of view, some may have said that he was a godly individual, he knew right then and there, standing in the presence of the creator of the entire universe, that he was far from being acceptable to a perfect and holy God. Many days later, Isaiah would write about his and all of the human race’s attempts at pleasing God by their best efforts. Summarily, he wrote, “All man’s righteousness is as filthy rags to God.” But God had mercy on Isaiah that day. He forgave Isaiah for all his sins and called him to a lifelong ministry of preaching to his fellow Jews. His assignment was to tell them about God’s holiness and their need to turn around and come back to God. He was to explain to them that their very lives, today and for eternity, depend upon their submission to God. He was to tell them about God’s offer of forgiveness if they would only return to God and confess their sins. But if they did not return to God, he was to warn them that God would bring His judgment upon the nation. Isaiah, out of his love for God and for his people, willingly accepted his assignment.
For the next several years of his life, Isaiah preached his heart out doing everything he could to convince his fellow countrymen of the error of their ways and their need to return to making God and His ways number one in their lives. But no one would listen to him, while others would mock him. After a period of time, Isaiah would bear witness to the truth that the Psalmist, King David, had written a couple hundred years earlier in Psalms 14 and 53, no person truly seeks after God of his own volition. He realized that all human beings are rebels at heart and want nothing of God. Oh, they may be religious and try to bring God down to their level and make deals with Him, but to submit themselves to His rule and authority over their lives on His terms? No way. By this time in his life, Isaiah had given it his best shot, but no one would listen. I have no record of one convert to Isaiah’s preaching of the Word of God. Now that’s tough to take for any preacher. There had to be days when Isaiah felt like a failure or that he had wasted his life or that maybe he wasn’t spiritual enough or some combination of all of the above. Any way you cut it, his commission by God to be His prophet was no easy life work.
With every day that passed and every Jew that would deliberately cross the street just to avoid seeing or listening to Isaiah preach, Isaiah’s heart must have broken a little more. Then one day God came to Isaiah with His plan. It was one that God had established from the beginning of time but was just now revealing to Isaiah. It was God’s perfect plan by which He would rescue even the most rebellious of men and women in the world. He would send them a savior. In Isaiah 52:12 through the end of Isaiah 53, Isaiah records his response to God’s plan in the form of a poem.
This Easter Sunday we want to take a quick look at Isaiah 53. Some would say that Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 give us a more vivid account of the actual crucifixion of Christ, the specific details of what He personally endured, than the four Gospels in the New Testament combined. I would agree with their assessment. And yet, Isaiah 53 was written some 700 years before Christ was even born and several hundred years before the method of execution known as crucifixion was employed. The minute details of Christ’s execution prophesied in Isaiah 53 are so clear that they have led many to the correct conclusion that if there were ever any proof that our Bible is the supernatural work of God, this is it.
As one looks at this chapter and the last three verses of the preceding chapter, we see that together they make up a poetic unit of thought that divides into three stanzas. The first stanza, 52:13-15, introduces God’s servant, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The second stanza, 53:1-9 depicts the suffering of God’s servant. The third stanza, 53:10-12, portrays the results of Christ’s crucifixion in that God’s servant satisfied the wrath of God.
As we look at the second stanza of this poem which covers Is. 53:1-9, note that Christ’s suffering is looked at from two different perspectives. The first is recorded in verses 1-3, in which we see Christ’s experience from the standpoint of His human peers of the first century and following. We read,
1Who has believed our message?
2For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
3He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
In verse 1, we see Isaiah’s initial emotional response to God’s plan of preaching the truth that he writes about in the previous verses. Having had little success in his past years of preaching, Isaiah’s initial response to passing on God’s message was, “Yeah, right Lord. Like they are really going to listen to us?!” In verse 1, Isaiah registers his complaint ahead of time that nobody would listen to what the Lord had told him to tell the people about the coming Messiah. If they hadn’t believed God before, what makes God think they will believe His message now? So he says, “Who has believed our message?” Unfortunately, Isaiah’s doubts about his own generation and ones to come proved to be correct. When he preached this message to his contemporaries they did not listen or believe what he said would come true. They would turn a deaf ear to his words about a coming Messiah, who would be called by God to voluntarily suffer for our sin; they would refuse to believe that this Messiah voluntarily choose to be our substitute for the punishment of our wrong doing that we might be forgiven, fully accepted, and forever loved and approved of by God.
As I said in my opening remarks, not having people listen to him was really nothing new for Isaiah. But what I didn’t tell you is that God told him this would happen before He sent Isaiah out to preach. At Isaiah’s commissioning service, recorded in Isaiah 6:8-13, God told Isaiah that his fellow Israelites wouldn’t listen to nor would they believe his message. But possibly Isaiah didn’t comprehend this at the time, because he loved his people so much, and he just felt deep down that if he gave it his best shot, he could do what other preachers had failed to do. He could get them to listen. Years later he accepted God’s verdict about these people. They were stiff necked and would refuse to pay attention to God.
In addition to Isaiah’s pointing out that his own peers would not listen to his words, he is also foretelling that when the Messiah would come, those Jews who would be alive while Christ walked this earth would also not believe that Christ indeed was the Messiah, even after He had fulfilled all of these prophecies. Isaiah is telling us here that God’s message and instructions just wouldn’t naturally fit into the human race’s plans and agendas. It would take a supernatural work of God for people to put their trust in God’s suffering servant, the Messiah.
Like people today, Isaiah’s peers and the Jews of the first century only wanted to hear a positive message of hope about the goodness of the Hebrew race and our ability to accomplish whatever we set our minds to. They wanted to hear that God was on their side and against their enemies, the Romans, in spite of the fact that the Jews were living dishonest and immoral lives that brought shame to the name of God.
But Isaiah was not like the other preachers of his day. He would not tell them what they wanted to hear. He told them the truth. He told them what God told him to tell them: they were enemies of God and that the only thing they could expect from God because of their sin, their rebellion, and their deliberate ignoring or turning away from God was God’s judgment. And if that truth sparked any concern in their conscience, such that they might want to change their ways and return to God, then Isaiah would tell them about this “suffering servant” and God’s promise to provide a way for them to be forgiven and saved.
He would tell them that God would cause His judgment against them to fall upon Another, who would willingly be their substitute and pay the penalty for their sin, so as to remove God’s wrath that was for sure to come against them. This would probably sound so creative and unusual that some of them would want to know more about God’s plan and what this willing Substitute was like. What kind of person would do this for them? So he proceeded to tell them what we find written in the rest of the chapter.
In verse 2, Isaiah speaks of the “arm of the Lord.” More literally, those words might be better translated “bared arm of the Lord” pointing to God’s rolling up his sleeves such that He was ready to go to work. To really grasp the full intent of the meaning of this phrase, it should be seen in contrast to Psalm 19:1, which states, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” Literally, the “work of His hands” could be translated as His “finger work”. In other words, the creation of the heavens and the earth was without effort in comparison to the Lord’s greatest undertaking, the redemption and salvation of the human race. This expression “the arm of God” is often used in the Old Testament to refer to God’s active and energetic work in the redemption of the human race.
The bottom line is that Isaiah was telling his people God’s plan was so complete and perfect to save us from eternal damnation that we human beings could do nothing to aid or assist God in what was necessary to fulfill this task. God’s plan was foolproof, because God was responsible for everything that was necessary for us to be forgiven. Although it would cost us nothing, it did not come cheap. As Isaiah went on to explain, it cost God everything to perform this infinite task of saving us. This chapter represents a quick accounting of God’s all-time ultimate work. Creation was a work of God, but Isaiah 53 reveals God’s Greatest Work.
As verse 2 continues, Isaiah tells his generation and us a little bit more about this one who was going to step in to rescue us. He says that “He (Jesus) grew up before Him (God the Father) like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground.” The “parched” or dry ground poetically refers to the historical era of Christ’s birth. Isaiah was telling them that Israel as a kingdom was going to fall. It would be a long time before any Jewish heir of David would rule as king over Israel. It would be as though the nation of Israel were dead. Like parched ground that couldn’t grow anything, it would not support a king. But then, sometime in the future, in the midst of this parched ground, during a period we would later learn came under the Roman rule of Israel, a king from the line of David would appear like a green tender shoot in the midst of an arid and parched land. Thus Christ the Messiah’s appearance would be as unexpected and as miraculous as a head of Romaine lettuce astonishingly breaking through the soil of the barren Arabian desert.
Now don’t skip over those two words, “before Him”, in verse 2. Those words inform us that although the rest of the human race was oblivious to Christ’s birth, ministry, and eventual humiliation of being hung on a cross, God was not. Christ possessed God’s full attention from His birth, His youth, all the way through His ministry, and His eventual death and resurrection. Nothing slipped by God and nothing that happened to Christ was a mistake or beyond God’s control. It was all a part of His sovereign plan. It was “before Him”.
However, in contrast to Christ’s drawing God’s full attention, the rest of the human race would discount Him. Rather than drawing everyone’s joyous attention, this King of Israel would be ignored, rejected, and “despised” (literally, “regarded as though worthless”). He was discounted or “forsaken” (literally, “wanting in men”, that is to say he didn’t have a band of followers that would impress others or the media of his day). Contrary to what some think, Christ was not rejected because he was deformed or ugly. But on the other hand, from human standards, there was nothing about his physical appearance, personality, or charisma to draw those in Hollywood who like to sign movie contracts. There was nothing that would have attracted Him to the local political heads of the Democratic or Republican parties as an up and coming brilliant leader. He was an “average Joe” in appearance and demeanor.
Note also that Isaiah reminds us that Jesus was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” During His life here on earth, Jesus experienced very deep and real emotional wounds that, although invisible to us, were terribly real and painful to Him. And because He experienced true grief, He is able to understand our sorrows, disappointments, and heartaches. That’s why He alone is able to care for us, minister to our needs, be our closest friend, and enable us through His resurrection power to move forward in our lives when life seems hopeless and we feel powerless to move on.
As verses 1-3 reveal, the world’s view of Jesus, whether past or present, has always been one of scorn. But in the end, the views of the human race matter not in comparison to God’s evaluation of Jesus Christ’s character and right to rule. Hence, Isaiah goes on to inform his peers what God thinks of Jesus in verses 4-9. “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” Concerned that we don’t miss his point that God had allowed Jesus to be smitten, Isaiah later drives it home two more times in verse 10. He says that God had crushed Jesus, and that He would put grief on Jesus.
How disturbing this is to think that Jesus’ own Father would treat the perfect Man, His only begotten son, in such a terrible fashion. It forces us to ask the question, “But why God would you, the Father of Jesus, do this?” To which the prophet answered, “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.”
God tells us why He submitted His son to be tortured to such an extent and why Jesus voluntarily took on this assignment. It was because God and Jesus loved us. It was “for our well-being.” It is very clear in these verses that Jesus was not being punished for His wrong doings but for ours. It was for our eventual well-being, that we might be forgiven from our sins and saved to spend eternity with God that Jesus accepted being pierced, crushed, chastened, and scourged.
Well, just how badly crushed was this suffering servant to come? The Apostle Peter’s commentary of these verses in 1 Peter 2:21-24, that word “scourging” is translated “wounds” or “by His wounds you were healed.” Literally in the Greek, the word is “bruise”. It is not “bruises” or “wounds” but rather the singular form of the word “bruise” or “wound”. Why the NASB translates it as plural here, I don’t know. But the idea behind Peter’s words is that Jesus was so badly scourged and beaten on our behalf that to look upon Him, it would appear as one massive bruise, for His whole physical being had undergone such a brutal beating.
Ironically, through all of the events surrounding this horrible death by which Christ died, those who were responsible for putting Him to death had no idea that His innocent suffering was for them. They would miss Isaiah’s point that it was all for their own good. But to make sure that they were without excuse for having missed Isaiah’s point, Isaiah further emphasizes that Christ’s suffering was due to their/our sin and their/our need to be forgiven. For Isaiah goes on to tell us in verse 6, “All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. 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. By oppression and judgment He was taken away.”
The idea there is that Jesus could have stopped His wrongful arrest and his subsequent crucifixion anytime with just one word, but He voluntarily chose not to speak. Why? Because if He had spoken up and if He had avoided the cross; you and I would be responsible for taking care of all our sins. And any attempt at that would be vain. It is impossible for imperfect human beings to earn a perfect and holy God’s forgiveness. Knowing that, Jesus voluntarily chose to go to the cross to take upon Himself our sins and to stand in our stead to take the penalty for us, that we might be forgiven. He was and is the only perfect substitute by which and through whom we can stand forgiven, because He took the full wrath of God upon Himself, to the point that He died for us.
But amazingly, those who had Him killed thought they were doing a good thing. For verse 8 continues with a rhetorical question. “And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?” Catch the irony here. Isaiah is telling us that the Jews of Christ’s day thought that by killing Jesus, they would send Him to hell as a common blasphemer, deservedly, never to be heard from again. But ironically, Jesus was telling the truth. He was not a blasphemer. He was God, and they were the ones who deserved to be eternally damned. This stroke of deserved damnation was due them. But by Christ’s paying the penalty for their/our ignoring God, by his beating death, and through his resurrecting from the grave, Jesus made it possible for us to be forgiven, accepted, approved, and forever saved.
Isaiah continues, “His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” In a word, Isaiah makes it perfectly clear that the Messiah would be executed wrongfully. Jesus was totally innocent of all charges made against Him. He was the only perfect human who could have made Himself such a sacrifice to pay for the sins of the entire human race.
So how do you think Isaiah’s people and people throughout history would respond to God’s plan to send this suffering servant to die as the substitute to pay for their sins? Centuries later, the Apostle Paul would tell us how most people would view this message about a suffering servant dying for us that we might be saved. He said that the gospel would be received as foolishness by the world. They wouldn’t buy the idea that man was bad enough to need a savior or that Jesus was the one.
However, the truth of the matter is revealed in verse 10-12. As a result of Jesus’ submitting to the Father’s will to be crucified, Christ’s death satisfied once and for all the wrath of God toward the human race. Furthermore, any and all who put their complete trust and confidence in the finished work of Christ on the cross can be reunited in friendship with God. We read, “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief...” This expression “pleased to crush Him” does not mean that God got sadistic pleasure by torturing His son Jesus Christ. Instead this is an expression that refers to God’s having His plan fulfilled through Christ’s death, with the end result that men and women could be reconciled to God. It is the fulfillment of God’s plan that pleased Him, not the actual torture of Christ.
Furthermore, the rest of the verse continues to point to the fact that Jesus was not being forced to accept this fate. Rather, He was a willing candidate for the Lord’s actions, that He might be our substitute to die for our sins. Because He chose to surrender Himself to God’s plan, look at what Isaiah says was promised to Christ. If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, “He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days (a hint at His resurrection and living on into eternity with those who have put their trust in Him). And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. 11As a result of the anguish of His (Jesus’) soul, He (God the Father) will see it and be satisfied (meaning that Jesus death would satisfy the wrath of God against His rebellious creation). By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.” Please notice that Isaiah does not say that God will “justify all”, meaning that all peoples will be made right with God. Instead, the work of Christ will only “justify the many”. Many will not be made right with God because they have refused to take Christ as their savior and Lord.
The people of Jesus’ day dismissed Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the suffering of their Messiah, and they dismissed Jesus as well. But verse 11 reveals that God the Father did not dismiss Jesus. From the beginning, God the Father was concerned and cared for Christ. Note the words, “griefs, sorrows, stricken, smitten, afflicted, pierced through, crushed, chastening, scourging.” All of those terms help us to see that God saw and felt all that happened to Jesus, His son. This was not an easy event for the Father to allow or to watch.
In addition, Jesus was not an unwilling Son suffering at the hands of the Father who gained pleasure from seeing His son tortured. I mentioned this early and I do so again because there are some today who are actively pointing to Christian beliefs about the crucifixion and more specifically to our God, and are wrongly condemning God for divine child abuse against Jesus, His son. This is not only a distortion of Biblical doctrine, but it is an outright slanderous statement against God.
Consider the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus is equal to and one in the same as God the Father and could have stopped His own execution any time. But He voluntarily chose not to. Now I don’t fully understand all that I just said, except that Jesus knew full well what was happening to Him and He deliberately chose to go along with God’s plan to rescue us. How do I know that? Note in verse 4, that Isaiah states that Jesus “bore our sorrows, carried our griefs,” and in verse 7 adds that He purposely chose not to say a word even though, as verse 9 indicates, He was perfectly innocent. Nowhere in Scripture is there any record of Christ being forced to do anything. And later in the New Testament in Hebrews 12:2 we read about Christ that, “…who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Because of His love for you and me and because of the honor that He would receive from the Father, He joyfully endured the cross. He could have stopped the proceedings at any time but chose not to because of His love for us and His desire to forgive and redeem us. This is not a case of divine child abuse, but rather the epitome of the simultaneous divine justice being satisfied and the love for the lost realized.
But this does not end the gospel story. Jesus does not just get crucified. We do not worship a dead Christ; we worship a living one. What verse 11 hinted at, verse 12 makes clearer. Jesus would rise from the dead. He would have a victorious future. He would ascend to heaven and be given the right to rule over all eternity. Verse 12 tells us, “Therefore, I (God the Father) will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong…” The “booty” to which Isaiah refers is the spoils of war. Jesus will be victorious over death and Satan. Therefore, as the one who led this battle, He will have the right to own the “spoils of war” and to share His spoils with “the strong”, meaning those who put their trust in Him.
But just in case we missed why Jesus gets to be honored in the resurrection, Isaiah reminds us, “Because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.”
Friends, we serve a living, risen, and rejoicing Savior. Furthermore, His death accomplished what no one else’s death or life could accomplish. His death satisfied God’s wrath against the human race. And all who put their complete confidence in Him will not only be forgiven and eternally saved, forever to be loved, accepted, and approved of by God right now; but we can have Jesus living inside of us, enabling us to live in a way that brings further honor to Him. That in turn brings Him further joy.
Jesus is happy today, for many down through the centuries have turned to Him and found sweet release from controlling sin in their lives. They have received an eternal pardon. Jesus said there is joy in heaven over one sinner who acknowledges his wrong doing, who turns to the Lord and turns away from sin.
This morning, you can bring added joy to His heart by putting your trust in Him as your savior and Lord. In addition, you can find peace, forgiveness, and His power to change your life. He asks nothing of you but rather wants to give you something, if you will only submit your life to Him as your Lord and Savior. Won’t you turn your life over to the One who laid it all down for you, that you might live forever with God?
For the rest of us who have already committed our lives to Christ, this passage causes us to stop and re-evaluate how we are presently living. In what are we investing our lives? When we trusted Christ, we were made His holy priesthood. We became set apart ones, holy ones to live for and serve Jesus Christ in all that we do. Each of us is His specially commissioned ambassador to represent Him in every arena of influence that our life touches. How are you doing as His ambassador? Are you living in such a way as to make your savior proud? Are people attracted to Christ because of your life? Or do others think less of Christ because of watching your life?
We have literally flown over these verses. I challenge you to take the next few days to read over them slowly, word by word, digesting each poetic statement for the richness of its meaning. As you do, ask yourself, “What difference does knowing what these verses say make about how I choose to live my life for the Lord this day?” As you consider Isaiah 53, what has the Lord been stirring up in you? Is there a new and different depth of appreciation for Him? Has He revealed to you a clearer perspective of who you are in relationship to Him? What difference do you think it would make to one of your unsaved family members or friends if they understood the truth of Isaiah 53? If given the opportunity, would you be willing to explain the truth of this chapter with them? Would you be willing to pray for such an opportunity?
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