2700 years before that Isaiah wrote down some words about a mysterious servant figure. He wrote in graphic detail about his appalling suffering and traumatic death. It is an almost photographic record of Jesus’ passion and crucifixion, 750 years before it happened.
The description of suffering and death that is born on behalf of others, of burial and of resurrection is so thorough that some people have said it must have been fabricated by deceitful Christians after the crucifixion and made to look like it was written before. And, that’s what it looks like, after all the whole passage is written in the past tense.
But the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has settled the matter. They discovered, a complete copy of Isaiah (including chapter 53) dating back to several hundred years before Jesus was even born.
‘My servant’, says God in 52.13, ‘will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted’. How is this going to happen? Some sort of coronation ceremony perhaps? A great splash of pomp? No. God says that he would be raised up only after he had suffered.
Just picking through the verses we have been looking at over the last few weeks, you can see twelve indisputable things about this suffering servant, all of which were perfectly fulfilled by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
1) In v3, it describes a man who will be turned upon and rejected.
He was despised and rejected by others,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
2) Verse 8 says his trial will be a miscarriage of justice.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
It will be a joke trial because he will be innocent in word and deed as v9 makes clear.
He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
3) 52.14 indicates that the gruesomeness of his beatings will be so savage that people won’t recognise him anymore.
His appearance was so disfigured
beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness.
4) Verse 5 predicts that his death will result not from poisoning or hanging or from drowning or burning or suffocation - but from wounds pierced in his flesh.
He was pierced…
5) He will not try and argue his way out of it and he, who died at the same time that Passover lambs were being offered in the temple, will himself be like an uncomplaining lamb going to slaughter. You can read that in v7.
He did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
6) Nobody will complain or come to his aid – he will be deserted and denied.
We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (v4)
Who of his generation protested? (v8)
7) Yet v12 says that he will pray for his executioners while he is dying.
He made intercession for the transgressors.
8) Then no less than ten times between v4 and v12, it says that in dying, he will somehow take the blame for all our sickness, sadness and sinfulness upon himself. For example
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… (v4)
He was crushed for our iniquities… (v5)
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v6)
9) He really will die. He will breathe his last and his body will become a lifeless corpse. Verse 8.
For he was cut off from the land of the living.
10) Not only that, he will die among thieves and he will then be buried in the tomb of a wealthy man. Verse 9.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death
11) All this will be no accident, says v10, but fully in God’s plan.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.
12) After suffering, death and burial, he will live again and be exalted as v10-11 make clear.
Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days…
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied…
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…
What an amazing vision.
So Jesus suffered terribly, died, was buried and was raised to life. The Scriptures had said it would happen but who could have guessed that it would describe the life of a carpenter’s son turned preacher 750 years after the prophecy was written?
Crucially, it says that he bore, in his body, your sin and your sickness – and mine. He took the blame on himself. The wages of sin is death – his death, not mine. He paid my penalty. When Isaiah wrote all this down he cannot have had any idea what he was writing about, nor would any of his contemporaries.
“What’s that about Isaiah? Someone gets stabbed because of our sins?” “I don’t know, I just heard it from God and had to write it down.”
Now, with hindsight, you can see that Isaiah was painting the finest word portrait of Jesus that has ever been painted. It’s perfect. All the shades and tones are in the right place.
It describes a man who was led to a courtyard where they pressed a crown of Judean thorns (as hard as barbed wire) onto his head. He was molested and pushed around by a battalion of men, who called him names, thumped him, spat in his face and pulled out his beard in lumps. Then, he was ordered to carry the crossbeam of his cross until he couldn't lift it any further. At the crucifixion site, he was stripped a second time, stretched out on his cross and 12 inch nails were driven into his forearms. His knees were twisted round and another long nail was driven between his tibia and Achilles tendon. Then they lifted high his cross with ropes and let it drop into a hole.
Hanging there, sunburnt, thirsty, exposed, stared at, laughed at; he was left for six hours in indescribable suffering as his life ebbed away.
Still feeling the stinging sores from his beating, getting weaker as his blood pumped out of his gaping wounds, facing the pain of having been deserted by his friends, rejected by the world. It was an emotional anguish; stripped and left to die slowly in front of his mother. It was a spiritual anguish; severed from the affection of his Father, as he carried the full weight of the guilt of our sin.
For as he hung there, he took the blame and suffered the terrible retribution for every unjust hanging, every ugly riot, every spiteful attack, all the mean things you and I ever said and did, all the shameful things, the darkest evil, he bore the weight of wars and massacres, he plumbed the horrors of Auschwitz and Rwanda and Srebrenica. He felt the lonely pain of every raped girl, every shunned parent, every abandoned spouse, every bullied child, the full range of human selfishness, pain and hatred and guilt and fallenness and he took it all upon himself.
No one took his life from him. He laid it down. Such is his love for you, for you, for you.
I’m going to pass round a replica crown of thorns and some household nails. The Judean thorns that made his crown are much harder and the spikes are much longer. The roman nails that fixed him to the cross were longer and thicker. Hold them in your hands and pass them around - and thank him that he took this for you.
And then watch some images of his passion and praise him that he did this for you. Amen.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 21st March 2010
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