Behold The Worthy Servant | Clip from Servant Song VI

Now, we've looked at 42 when the servant arrives, we looked at 49 when the perfectly prepared servant finds resistance even among his own people, the

Jews. We looked at chapter 50 when we saw that this resistance gets worse even to the point of great suffering.

But unlike Israel, the unfaithful servant who suffers because of her disobedience, this servant of the

Lord suffers because of his perfect obedience. And the mystery of that is solved ultimately in chapter 53, the final song.

Now let's just stop and say that while we are more familiar with chapter 53, and we're only going to be able to hit the highlights of that chapter right now, chapter 53 will mean very little to you without chapters 42, 49, and 50.

Having studied those, chapter 53 ought to really be enlarged in our hearts and our minds.

Also, without chapter 53, chapters 42, 49, and 50 give you and me no hope at all.

Well, let's look at this, and first we have this astonishing contradiction. We have again at the beginning of the fourth song the command to look.

Now you don't see that in chapter 53, verse 1. You actually see it where the

Hebrew Bible begins its 53rd chapter, and that is in the English Bible, chapter 52, verse 13.

So let me read 52, verse 13 through 15. Behold, or look, there's that final command, my servant will prosper.

He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Now, what you expect to find following a statement like this is surely one of those scenes in the

Bible, like Revelation 5, where Christ returns obedient and victorious from his work as a redeemer, and he is seated at the father's right hand.

Or Psalm 110, when the father says to him, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.

But instead, what we see is an astonishing sight. In the Hebrew, the word there is the idea of total devastation.

It's like when you come and you look upon a scene that is so shockingly bad. It's a gut punch.

You don't know what to say. There's just hopeless devastation in front of you. It's the word that the

Jews used when they looked at Israel after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. And so, you can imagine returning home, and you cross over the hills, and as you reach the pinnacle of a hill where you can see

Jerusalem for the first time, you see it's in ruins, and you stop, and your heart just drops.

It's devastated. It's also a word that was used of a widow, and so she's lost her husband, and especially in the ancient

Israel, and all that that represented, and is she hopeless now? Her life is devastated.

When we look at the servant in this final song, we are going to see him high and lifted up.

We're going to see him exalted. It is the glory of God seen most clearly of all of God's deeds, and yet it is a scene that is shocking because it looks like utter devastation.

Listen to 14. Just as many were astonished at you, my people, so his appearance was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men.

So in this song, we're seeing the foreshadowing of the cross. We see Christ on the cross, and the servant is so marred, he's almost unrecognizable.

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