Isaiah 52:13-53:12, The Suffering Servant

Servant song, it's called. This is the fourth. There are four servant songs in the book of Isaiah. This is the fourth, the last one.

I didn't ask, but it's the fourth one. It begins with, Behold. Behold.

Sometimes people consider that kind of a throwaway word, or attention getting, like attention, attention. But it's, it means look at this.

And it begins, Behold, in the same way that the first servant song in Isaiah 42 begins telling, they're telling us to look at the servant.

Behold, my servant whom I uphold. Here, behold, my servant shall prosper.

Look at him. Fix your gaze. It's a command. It's an invitation. And at first, it seems appealing.

Look at him. Why wouldn't we want to look at him? We like, we like looking at winners, don't we? At champions, at the successful, and the

Olympic, you know, with the Olympics, the number one, with the gold medal around it. He's on the highest pedestal.

Usually the cameras focus on him more than anyone else. The prosperous, the champion. Behold him.

And why not? And he will act wisely, it says. And the word wisely means an act in a way to achieve the goals that he sets.

He will be high and lifted up. He'll be exalted. So why would we want to look at him? Indeed, he will be astonishing, it says.

But so astonishing, Isaiah doesn't even finish the sentence in verse 14.

The servant will be astonishing because he will be revolting.

Instead of appealing, he'll be appalling. His appearance will be marred almost beyond human recognition.

You would look at this gory, gaping, shredded mass of blood covered flesh and try to make out whether this is human.

The first servant song ended with the Lord telling us that he is revealing these things beforehand.

And here, 700 years before Jesus went to the cross, the horror of the crucifixion is described.

Behold it. Once when I was a teenager,

I think late teens, 18, 19, I was a extended family, for some reason was outside a hospital and a hearse was being loaded with a stretcher, obviously with a body covered up with a sheet.

It's the way we are in this culture. We put death away in hospitals and hospices, covered up with sheets.

An aunt told a female cousin of mine, don't look. Even when we try to cover it up and sanitize it, we still say, don't look.

Here, God says, behold, look at it. My servant will act wisely, achieving the purpose for which he came and his prospering will result in him being an appalling, disgusting, horrible mess.

Look at how horrible it is. That's part of what we have the

Lord's Supper for. To remember, this is what Jesus gave us to remember himself with, to remember that bloody mess.

Have you ever held that piece of bread or a cracker and that little cup of juice and looked at it in your hands and thought, this is, symbolically, a piece of shredded human flesh ripped off the back of Jesus as he was scourged.

This is, symbolically, his blood that oozed out of those wounds as he hung on the cross, that it spurred out when that Roman soldier jabbed him in the heart with a spear.

Have you ever looked at that and thought, this is horrible.

How am I supposed to eat this and drink this? This is just horrible. But it had to happen.

In verse 15, so, this is the reason he was marred, so that he can sprinkle many nations.

The word sprinkle there refers to the priests in the temple. They would sprinkle the blood of guilt offerings that takes away guilt.

He's a bloody mess, disfigured, mauled sight, oozing out blood so that he can sprinkle, he can take away the guilt, he can be an offering.

The cross is not, in some picture today, a display of how much we're worth, or just an extreme demonstration of love.

The chief nothing just showed what he was willing to go through. It was necessary because of our guilt. Our guilt needed to be taken away and only blood can do that.

The servant sheds his blood to take away our guilt. Behold him.

The servant takes away the guilt of many nations, all kinds of people, unusual, right there in the

Old Testament. Not just of Israel, or not just of white people, or not just of any one kind of people.

When you behold Jesus, you don't behold, if you're looking at the real Jesus, someone who was just for one ethnic group, one kind of people.

He has people in all of the ethnic groups, whom he has sprinkled with his blood to make clean.

Behold. Jesus is the end of racism, of ethnocentrism.

He's so astounding, both in his glory and his agony, says that kings are dumbstruck by him.

They're silenced by him, that they see in him, whether they behold him either now, by faith, or when every knee will bow, and they see something they could not have understood before, something astounding, revolting, yes, and glorious.

Behold him. The servant is rejected.

Who would have believed this? The servant, whom the Lord upholds, who acts so wisely that he prospers in what he sets out to do, and yet he set out to sprinkle many nations with his blood.

Who would believe that? Paul said the cross is foolishness of the world. It makes no sense.

You're acting wisely. You're prospering to become a crucified, bloody mess, so marred that witnesses wonder whether you're even human.

Who would believe that? Paul says in 1 Corinthians that no one believes it unless the

Holy Spirit enables them to. No one will believe it unless, here, the arm of the

Lord reveals it to them, if he opens your ears.

It's so unbelievable because the servant grew up before the Lord in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, growing up in favor with God and people, like a young plant, a tender shoot, vulnerable looking, sprouting in the desert, but promising in the spiritually dead environment of a

Pharisaical Israel. Who would believe that among all the sinners in the land, all the cold, stone -hearted

Pharisees, that it would be the servant who would have to die? He didn't appear particularly impressive when he was growing up in Nazareth.

You know, he didn't make, contrary to what some say, he didn't make clay birds and then snap his fingers and make them come alive. He didn't appear majestic.

He didn't act like royalty, you know, aloof and superior. You wouldn't naturally look at him for that, for his imperial bearing.

He isn't described like Saul or David as the tallest or the most handsome men in the land.

Behold, look at him for how, at first, unremarkable he seems.

Notice that we appear here. We're the witnesses. We're telling the message of the servant who acted so wisely that he got mauled and marred and who believes, who believes what we're saying.

It's our report. We're witnessing to him who believes us unless the arm of the Lord, the

Holy Spirit reveals him. But we're not just his messengers. We were first among his despisers.

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him.

We're not, we're not impressed with him at first. You know, a king with power can order armies to march or executioners to chop off heads or maybe today a great sports hero who can jump further and move faster and throw better than the rest or the billionaire who acts wisely to acquire his extravagant wealth.

That we find impressive. That we look to. That we desire. But not him.

Oh sure, in this culture, maybe we say we do. We say, you know, what we're supposed to say, that we believe in Jesus, that he really is, that he really is the one we look to.

But are we really impressed by him? Do we desire him?

He was despised and rejected by men. We think if you act wisely, if you prosper, you'll be accepted.

You'll be loved. You'll be popular. He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows. He knew grief. He was acquainted with it.

He was familiar with betrayal and loss and loneliness. We sometimes think that believing in Jesus is a way to get away from all those things.

He went through them and he invites us to go with him through them, too.

But he is one we hide our faces from. Too hideous to look at, we think.

In Ethiopia, we saw people who were so disfigured, maybe by some accident, some injury, or some burns, or some from leprosy, we could see.

That you couldn't, it's hard to look at them. Just wanted to turn away.

Jesus on the cross was like that. And so the servant is rejected. He's despised.

We, here we are again. We're not just witnesses now. We esteemed him not.

Now, we're implicated in this. We didn't count him as much.

We didn't think he was that impressive. You know, not like Muhammad. Now, he's impressive. He could muster an army.

Not like Confucius, a great scholar, wrote great books and Proverbs. Not like Buddha, whom tradition says that he could, he started walking right away, right when he was born.

We esteemed him not. If he's not going to give us the secrets to what we think of as success, then when he succeeded in his wisdom and achieving his goal, becoming the sacrifice that sprinkles many nations, a grotesque pulp, we esteemed him not.

Esteemed, here is an accounting term. It's a reckoning of value. We didn't think he counted for much.

Not as much as the money we can make, the power we can have, the pleasure we can feel.

Who could ever, who could give us that we esteem? Not him. The servant was rejected by us.

Again, why did he do this? Why was this the goal that he was wisely able to achieve?

Because, surely, says surely, well, this is the only thing that makes sense of it.

Certainly, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The servant is our replacement.

It's the one Pastor Britt talked about, the great exchange. He exchanged with us.

He took our sins, our guilt. We take his righteousness. That's a great exchange, at least on our behalf.

He's a man of sorrow and familiar with grief because he took our sorrows and grief. He experienced the griefs and sorrows, the heartaches of life, of this still cursed world because of our sin.

He experienced them with us. Some sorrows and griefs he experienced so we would never have to experience them.

He replaced us taking our alienation from God so we would never have to be eternally separated from God in hell.

He took away, he has, past tense, a completed action. He's, he, it's something done.

He has, it says, borne our griefs. He doesn't have to do it again.

And the Lord's Supper, he's not doing it again and dying again. He has done it. It's over. He sat on the cross.

It is finished. Yet we still, here we are again, again, we're appearing. We, for a second time, esteemed him.

We counted him as stricken by God. God afflicted him, we think, and we're right.

God afflicted him because he did something wrong, we think, and we're wrong.

God afflicted him because we did some things wrong. So in verse 5, there's the great exchange again.

We, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities, for our sinfulness.

On him was the punishment that brought us peace, peace, and with his stripes that he gave his back to, we are healed.

In our place, condemned he stood. We must have a replacement because all of us, we all like sheep, these dumb, dirty, mangy animals, wandered astray.

All of us, we went our own way, you know, to do our own thing.

So to save us, the Lord laid on him our sins.

Our sins were esteemed as if his. They were attributed to him, counted as his.

The servant was our replacement. The servant is a silent and sinless sufferer.

Behold him, Pontius Pilate asked him questions, hoping for an excuse to release him, hoping

Jesus would talk his way out of it, but he stayed quiet. Pilate had him viciously scourged and brought him out and announced, behold the man, not knowing what he was saying.

Behold the sinless, silent sufferer. In verse 7, he was afflicted, but he didn't open his mouth like a lamb.

But animals go to their slaughter unaware. While he went to his death because of his submitted will.

He was taken away from Gethsemane to this kangaroo court, to the beatings and the cross because of oppression.

He's led through the injustice in verse 7 and finally to his death in verse 8. He is cut off from the land of the living.

He was killed. They gave him a grave with the rest of us wicked people who suffer the wages of our sins.

His grave happened to be among the rich. Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy official, had a new tomb.

He gave to him. Again, as in verse 1, who would have believed this? After all, he was not only silent.

He had done nothing wrong. He had done no violence. He had never hurt anyone. He hadn't lied.

He was the sinless, silent sufferer. Who would have even considered that this was the way of the

Messiah? The disciples couldn't grasp it even after they had been told. We so easily forget it today.

But it was necessary for the transgression of God's people, for us, to cover for our sin, to pay for it.

Finally, in this song, this passage, we end where we began.

The servant is a guilt offering. That's what he came to do. That's why he's a servant.

That's why he said, I've come not to be served, but to serve, to serve by giving his life for many.

It had to be done because our sins can't just be excused. God is holy. He's not just going to wink at sin.

Not going to just let it slide, you know, not say, well, I'll just let bygones be bygones. He's holy,

God of justice. That's what many today don't see. They can't understand. That's why they can't believe the message of Good Friday.

Oh, they like Easter fine, you know, eggs and bunnies and spring and new dresses and suits and lilies. That's all fine.

But but a servant who's marred, who's sorrowful, who's wounded, who's crushed, a victim of oppression, who's killed, who's dead in a grave.

And what's worse, they think, is that all this is because of their sins. All this talk about our transgressions and our iniquities and punishment, us being like sheep who stray, stripes that are necessary to bring us peace.

That's just so offensive. And it gets worse.

And that last stanza starting in verse 10, it was the will or it could be the the pleasure, the good pleasure, the choice of the

Lord to crush him. Jesus is not just a a martyr to human injustice who kind of got caught away in events that spiral out of control.

He's not. God is not just a sentimental daddy. He's going to let every sin slide. Let it bygones be bygones.

He's holy and just. He brings justice on the earth so holy in order for him to have people to buy back from their sins with the servant he had to crush him.

He did it. God did it. Now sure, people perpetrated injustice against him, but they were fulfilling

God's will. The soldiers who crucified him knew not what they were doing. And so Jesus prayed the father forgive them.

The apostles prayed in Acts chapter four that the two men Herod Pontius Pilate who gave the orders that handed

Jesus over to be crucified. They prayed they did what your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

God did it. Here he, the Lord, put him to grief.

The servant is acquainted with grief because the Lord gave it to him.

He did that so that in the middle of verse 10 when he, the servant's soul, his life makes an offering for guilt.

When he makes that offering, when he's made the one final true sacrifice for sin, then he shall see his offspring.

Then he will see the fruit of his sacrifice. All the sons and daughters adopted by the father from every nation, from every ethnic group, now sprinkled clean by of their sin.

He'll see why going through anguish was best. And it says he'll be satisfied.

He'll see. And we'll all see why he was so wise to be the suffering servant.

That wisdom, that plan that he followed, the path through anguish, is the plan says for the for the servant, the righteous one, the one who was really righteous while the rest of us go astray.

That plan is what makes us in verse 11 to be accounted, we esteemed him not, he accounted us righteous.

To be seen as if we were right in the

Lord's eyes. To be in a right relationship with God so that our wickedness has been taken away in that great exchange.

He has poured out his soul to death. As in the third servant song in chapter 50, he gave his back to be beaten, to take those stripes that heal us.

He gave his beard to be plucked. Here he poured out his life to death.

He did it. It wasn't just something done to him as if he were passive, as if he were a helpless victim.

He poured out his own life. So because of that, he was numbered. He was counted with the transgressors.

He was treated as if he were a criminal. We just assume looking at him, beholding him, behold him, hanging there between two criminals that he's one too, that he's getting what he deserves.

That's what we behold. In Luke, the last thing Jesus says to his disciples before going to Gethsemane is to quote this phrase.

He was numbered with the transgressors. And then he says, for what is written about me has its fulfillment.

Jesus had read Isaiah 53 when growing up as that shoot in dry ground when no one gave him a second look.

He knew as he read this this was written about me and he fulfilled it.

He fulfilled it by becoming a bloody pulp that we want to look away from.

So that in that last verse he could bear the sin of many so that he could bear your sin behold the servant.