Most children in church get to know that when someone asks a question it’s usually a pretty safe bet to give one particular answer. When a Sunday School volunteer asks her children, “Now then boys and girls, hands up who can tell me what is red, cute, eats nuts, and has a big fluffy tail?” she will be surprised that none of the kids look like they know the answer. So after an embarrassing silence she might pick out one little boy and say, “What is red, cute, eats nuts, and has a big fluffy tail? Do you think you know the answer?” And he’ll probably reply, “Well I know the answer must be Jesus - but I think it’s a squirrel!”
When you read Isaiah 53 and ask who it is that the prophet is writing about, this time it is Jesus. It is unmistakably him. There can be no doubt. Written over 700 years before his death, it describes Jesus’ afflictions and atoning death and ultimate vindication so accurately, so unerringly, in such detail that nobody else in human history comes close.
Susan Pearlman, who is a Jewess who believes in Jesus as her people’s Messiah once talked about a survey that was carried out on the streets of Tel Aviv. The survey asked “Who do you think the 53rd chapter of Isaiah describes?” She said that most people interviewed were unfamiliar with the passage. When they were given a copy of it to read, many answered that they did not know who it referred to, but some said it sounded a lot like Jesus.
I want to recommend a book by RT Kendall on this passage of Scripture. It’s just been published, it’s called Why Jesus Died: A Meditation on Isaiah 53 and I think you’ll find it very profitable read. The details are on the back of the pew sheet if you want to order it or you can ask Caroline who’ll get it for you on the bookstall if you prefer.
I read it a couple of weeks ago and found myself deeply stirred by the Holy Spirit at times as I walked through the depths of this prophecy again and just marvelled at the glorious sufficiency of the cross.
Before it tells us anything about Jesus, it tells us a lot about the authority and clarity and trustworthiness of God’s word. Isaiah 53 is such a faithful portrait of Christ’s passion that people have wondered if it was tampered with by unscrupulous Christians after Jesus died.
But in 1947 someone accidentally discovered nine hundred ancient parchments in a desert cave dating back to about 100 BC – we know them now as the Dead Sea scrolls.
The Isaiah parchment was intact and practically identical to the oldest manuscript they had known until that time (which went back to about 600 AD). So any doubts about the time these words were written were settled than once and for all. The Bible is God’s word. It tells the truth about Jesus and tells the truth about you and me.
What does Isaiah 53 tell us about Jesus? Oh man, where do I start?
His Glorious Exaltation
I’m going to start at the beginning. ‘My servant’, says God in 52.13, ‘will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted’.
For centuries, the Jews had imagined that their royal Messiah would rise head and shoulders above a watching world and would be gloriously exalted. They still do. They’re still waiting. But none of them imagined that their saviour and king would be humiliated and bruised and crushed. But it was written down! It was staring them in the face. God says that he would be raised up - but only after he had suffered.
Even a quick survey of this chapter reveals many clear truths about this suffering servant, all of which were strikingly fulfilled when Jesus was arrested, put on trial, flogged, crucified and raised.
His Ordinary Appearance
Isaiah 53.2 says that there was nothing about the way Jesus looked that would cause you to take a second look. He was no handsome Hollywood celebrity. He had neither beauty nor majesty. There is no physical description of him in the entire New Testament.
We don’t know if he was tall or short, blue eyed or brown eyed, clean shaven or bearded, curly haired or bald. He looked Jewish – because he was born Jewish. But his face and physique weren’t what you noticed about him at all. People flocked to him not because he was fine-looking or eye-catching. It was because he was anointed by the Holy Spirit.
His Humiliating Rejection
In v3, it describes a man who will be turned upon and rejected.
Have you been rejected in life? It’s a devastating experience. I know people who, as children, were told by their parents, “We wish you’d never been born.”
The pain of rejection by an unfaithful husband or a hard-hearted wife is the loneliest place on earth.
Some parents suffer painful rejection from their own children who turn against them. It is a lonely grief to bear.
We know people who are excluded from the “in crowd” at work or bullied by peers. Some of you come to this place today weighed down by heartache and rejection. This is a day to lay your burden down at the foot of the cross. It was for you that Jesus…
…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. (Isaiah 53.3)
The Gospels tell us that Jesus was rejected by his own siblings who did not believe in him at first. He was deserted by his band of followers, he was disowned by his most loyal spokesman, he was betrayed for money by a trusted friend. What humiliation! What injustice!
But he took upon himself the indignity of being despised and rejected so you can find healing for your rejection and your public disgrace.
His Unfair Trial
What about his arrest and trial? Isaiah saw that it would be a scandalous miscarriage of justice.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away
yet who of his generation protested? (Isaiah 53.8)
No one protested did they? Pilate couldn't find a single fault in him and pleaded weakly with the crowd but then washed his hands of him. He was held in contempt by his own people who gladly released an unrepentant and violent murderer while they bayed for his blood. Everyone passed the buck. No one could be bothered.
He had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53.9)
He was clearly innocent of every charge laid against him. His trial was a joke. The witnesses couldn’t even get their testimonies to agree. They kept changing the charges against him, making it up as they went along. It was totally illegal.
Never, before or since, was one man found guilty by so many by the evidence of so few. Never has a punishment been more severe and for an offence less proven.
His Disfigured Form
What of the physical details of his death? What did Isaiah see 750 years before the cross?
He saw that the gruesomeness of his beatings would be so savage and bloodthirsty that people wouldn’t recognise him anymore.
Many… were appalled at him -
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness. (Isaiah 52.14)
His flogging was an unrelenting tearing of his back, his arms and legs. His crown of thorns would have masked his face in blood.
He was pierced… (Isaiah 53.5)
Isaiah saw that his death was not going to be the result from poisoning or hanging or drowning or burning or suffocation - but from wounds punctured in his flesh. There would be blood and it would be ugly and messy.
His Silent Obedience
What of Jesus’ attitude to his suffering? Isaiah saw a man who went silently and willingly to his execution. At no point did Jesus try to argue his way out of trouble.
…He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet 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. (Isaiah 53.7)
Luke’s Gospel tells us that Herod plied him with questions but Jesus gave him no answer.
John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus died at the same time that Passover lambs were slaughtered in the temple to symbolically take away the sins of the people for another year. But Jesus was the Lamb of God slain to actually remove the sins of the world forever.
His Assumed Guilt
Beyond his rejection, Isaiah goes further saying that, in his distress and crucifixion, people actually believed that he was getting his just deserts.
We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53.4)
His Preordained Destiny
The irony is that they were right. It was no accident. It was God’s plan from beginning to end.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. (Isaiah 53.10)
But the fact that people believed that Jesus was being stricken by God explains why there was so little open sympathy for him.
In the Gospels, people say things like, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah.” We’re told the crowd jeered as he carried his cross.
The leaders sneered at him. Men insulted him and spat in his face. Soldiers poked fun of him and played dice for his clothes.
His Gracious Intercession
What did they think when he began to pray for his executioners as he hung there dying? “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Isaiah foresaw that too.
He made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53.12)
But, even then people just wrote him off.
His Undisputed Death
Isaiah also makes it absolutely clear that his vision of a suffering servant was more than an ordeal of agony and anguish; he faded and then stopped breathing.
For he was cut off from the land of the living. (Isaiah 53.8)
He died of his injuries. The Gospels describe how his death was certified beyond doubt. Tests have now proved that the copious flow of blood, followed by the copious flow of water described in John’s Gospel are evidence of cardiac rupture. He died literally of a broken heart.
His Distinctive Burial
The Gospels also explain that Jesus died between thieves and his lifeless corpse was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man called Joseph of Arimathea. Isaiah saw that too.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. (Isaiah 53.9)
His Atoning Sacrifice
But all I have said so far is almost incidental. The main burden of Isaiah’s vision is the spiritual meaning of it all.
No less than ten times between v4 and v12, Isaiah says that in his death, the suffering servant will somehow take upon himself all our sicknesses, sorrows and sinfulness. He himself will bear the punishment of death that our sin fully deserves. He himself will suffer the torment that is separation from God by his death. For example:
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… (Isaiah 53.4)
He was crushed for our iniquities… (Isaiah 53.5)
By his wounds we are healed… (Isaiah 53.5)
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53.6)
For the transgression of my people he was punished. (Isaiah 53.8)
The Lord makes his life an offering for sin… (Isaiah 53.10)
This is what it’s all about. We cannot save ourselves. Even our good works cannot save us, they are filthy rags and we must renounce all hope in them.
Only the blood of Christ cleanses sinners, discharges debtors and saves souls from hell.
Sin is so routine for us, we’re so used to it, that we forget just how serious it is to God. But the truth is this; every sin we commit is a refusal of God's authority over us.
Sin is serious for another reason: it brings heartache and brokenness into our lives.
Sin cuts us off from God and spoils our relationships with others. Because we are all born unable not to sin we cannot save ourselves.
The good news is this; God so loves us, and because he so loves us he so hates what sin does to us.
But, thank God, Jesus was willingly crushed, bruised and punished for our sin. All our sins and transgressions were transferred over to Jesus as though he were the guilty one.
2 Corinthians 5.21 explains it this way:
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Think of it: We thoroughly deserved to die for our sins - but he died in our place.
1 Peter 3:18 puts it like this:
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
You must believe Christ died and rose again for you, you must receive him into your heart by faith, and you must commit your life to him as our Lord and Saviour. If you haven’t already done that – let me urge you to give your life to him today.
No decision you make in life will ever be as important as that one. Why delay it any longer?
His Triumphant Resurrection
Did Isaiah see anything else? Was it just an appalling vision of undeserved suffering? Is there anything more? Yes, there is one last thing.
750 years before the events, Isaiah was given the revelation that after his trial, his suffering, his death and burial, the Messiah will live again and be greatly exalted.
Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days. (Isaiah 53.10)
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. (Isaiah 53.11)
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…
because he poured out his life unto death. (Isaiah 53.12)
Ending
As I draw to a close I want to conclude by summing up briefly what the cross means to God, what the cross meant to Jesus and what the cross means to us.
We use the word cruciform to describe an object in the form of a cross. Cruciform means cross shaped. (It’s from the Latin crux, crucem, crucis) from which we also get the expression the crux of the matter.
The crux of any matter is its decisive, pivotal point. That’s what the cross is to God; it is his decisive action on sin, it is his final statement on salvation. It is the pivotal point of human history.
Another word that comes from that same Latin root is the word excruciating. There are many adjectives we use to describe pain; painful, aching, throbbing and sore but even agonising comes short of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Enduring the rejection of a whole nation, bearing your sin and mine and absorbing the wrath of God our sins deserved was absolutely excruciating. The word means literally “out of the cross.” This is what the cross felt like for Jesus. It was an excruciating experience for him. And he did it for you.
Finally, the word crucial. This is what the cross means for us. Nothing in your life and mine is more critical, more vital, more imperative than our response to the cross of Christ.
That response settles our eternal destiny one way or the other. It seals our forgiveness from sin or it keeps us stuck forever in guilt. It opens up a brand new relationship as adopted children of God or it confirms us as children of the devil. It alone determines whether we spend eternity in heaven or in hell. This is crucial. It is fundamental. It is key.
So, as we get ready to come to the Lord’s Table this morning I want to urge you to weigh up in your spirit the excruciating agonies Christ endured for you. Crucially, renounce all hope in your good works to save you.
Draw near to God – and he’ll draw near to you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 23rd October 2011
What about his arrest and trial? Isaiah saw that it would be a scandalous miscarriage of justice.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away
yet who of his generation protested? (Isaiah 53.8)
No one protested did they? Pilate couldn't find a single fault in him and pleaded weakly with the crowd but then washed his hands of him. He was held in contempt by his own people who gladly released an unrepentant and violent murderer while they bayed for his blood. Everyone passed the buck. No one could be bothered.
He had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53.9)
He was clearly innocent of every charge laid against him. His trial was a joke. The witnesses couldn’t even get their testimonies to agree. They kept changing the charges against him, making it up as they went along. It was totally illegal.
Never, before or since, was one man found guilty by so many by the evidence of so few. Never has a punishment been more severe and for an offence less proven.
His Disfigured Form
What of the physical details of his death? What did Isaiah see 750 years before the cross?
He saw that the gruesomeness of his beatings would be so savage and bloodthirsty that people wouldn’t recognise him anymore.
Many… were appalled at him -
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness. (Isaiah 52.14)
His flogging was an unrelenting tearing of his back, his arms and legs. His crown of thorns would have masked his face in blood.
He was pierced… (Isaiah 53.5)
Isaiah saw that his death was not going to be the result from poisoning or hanging or drowning or burning or suffocation - but from wounds punctured in his flesh. There would be blood and it would be ugly and messy.
His Silent Obedience
What of Jesus’ attitude to his suffering? Isaiah saw a man who went silently and willingly to his execution. At no point did Jesus try to argue his way out of trouble.
…He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet 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. (Isaiah 53.7)
Luke’s Gospel tells us that Herod plied him with questions but Jesus gave him no answer.
John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus died at the same time that Passover lambs were slaughtered in the temple to symbolically take away the sins of the people for another year. But Jesus was the Lamb of God slain to actually remove the sins of the world forever.
His Assumed Guilt
Beyond his rejection, Isaiah goes further saying that, in his distress and crucifixion, people actually believed that he was getting his just deserts.
We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53.4)
His Preordained Destiny
The irony is that they were right. It was no accident. It was God’s plan from beginning to end.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. (Isaiah 53.10)
But the fact that people believed that Jesus was being stricken by God explains why there was so little open sympathy for him.
In the Gospels, people say things like, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah.” We’re told the crowd jeered as he carried his cross.
The leaders sneered at him. Men insulted him and spat in his face. Soldiers poked fun of him and played dice for his clothes.
His Gracious Intercession
What did they think when he began to pray for his executioners as he hung there dying? “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Isaiah foresaw that too.
He made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53.12)
But, even then people just wrote him off.
His Undisputed Death
Isaiah also makes it absolutely clear that his vision of a suffering servant was more than an ordeal of agony and anguish; he faded and then stopped breathing.
For he was cut off from the land of the living. (Isaiah 53.8)
He died of his injuries. The Gospels describe how his death was certified beyond doubt. Tests have now proved that the copious flow of blood, followed by the copious flow of water described in John’s Gospel are evidence of cardiac rupture. He died literally of a broken heart.
His Distinctive Burial
The Gospels also explain that Jesus died between thieves and his lifeless corpse was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man called Joseph of Arimathea. Isaiah saw that too.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. (Isaiah 53.9)
His Atoning Sacrifice
But all I have said so far is almost incidental. The main burden of Isaiah’s vision is the spiritual meaning of it all.
No less than ten times between v4 and v12, Isaiah says that in his death, the suffering servant will somehow take upon himself all our sicknesses, sorrows and sinfulness. He himself will bear the punishment of death that our sin fully deserves. He himself will suffer the torment that is separation from God by his death. For example:
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… (Isaiah 53.4)
He was crushed for our iniquities… (Isaiah 53.5)
By his wounds we are healed… (Isaiah 53.5)
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53.6)
For the transgression of my people he was punished. (Isaiah 53.8)
The Lord makes his life an offering for sin… (Isaiah 53.10)
This is what it’s all about. We cannot save ourselves. Even our good works cannot save us, they are filthy rags and we must renounce all hope in them.
Only the blood of Christ cleanses sinners, discharges debtors and saves souls from hell.
Sin is so routine for us, we’re so used to it, that we forget just how serious it is to God. But the truth is this; every sin we commit is a refusal of God's authority over us.
Sin is serious for another reason: it brings heartache and brokenness into our lives.
Sin cuts us off from God and spoils our relationships with others. Because we are all born unable not to sin we cannot save ourselves.
The good news is this; God so loves us, and because he so loves us he so hates what sin does to us.
But, thank God, Jesus was willingly crushed, bruised and punished for our sin. All our sins and transgressions were transferred over to Jesus as though he were the guilty one.
2 Corinthians 5.21 explains it this way:
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Think of it: We thoroughly deserved to die for our sins - but he died in our place.
1 Peter 3:18 puts it like this:
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
You must believe Christ died and rose again for you, you must receive him into your heart by faith, and you must commit your life to him as our Lord and Saviour. If you haven’t already done that – let me urge you to give your life to him today.
No decision you make in life will ever be as important as that one. Why delay it any longer?
His Triumphant Resurrection
Did Isaiah see anything else? Was it just an appalling vision of undeserved suffering? Is there anything more? Yes, there is one last thing.
750 years before the events, Isaiah was given the revelation that after his trial, his suffering, his death and burial, the Messiah will live again and be greatly exalted.
Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days. (Isaiah 53.10)
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. (Isaiah 53.11)
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…
because he poured out his life unto death. (Isaiah 53.12)
Ending
As I draw to a close I want to conclude by summing up briefly what the cross means to God, what the cross meant to Jesus and what the cross means to us.
We use the word cruciform to describe an object in the form of a cross. Cruciform means cross shaped. (It’s from the Latin crux, crucem, crucis) from which we also get the expression the crux of the matter.
The crux of any matter is its decisive, pivotal point. That’s what the cross is to God; it is his decisive action on sin, it is his final statement on salvation. It is the pivotal point of human history.
Another word that comes from that same Latin root is the word excruciating. There are many adjectives we use to describe pain; painful, aching, throbbing and sore but even agonising comes short of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Enduring the rejection of a whole nation, bearing your sin and mine and absorbing the wrath of God our sins deserved was absolutely excruciating. The word means literally “out of the cross.” This is what the cross felt like for Jesus. It was an excruciating experience for him. And he did it for you.
Finally, the word crucial. This is what the cross means for us. Nothing in your life and mine is more critical, more vital, more imperative than our response to the cross of Christ.
That response settles our eternal destiny one way or the other. It seals our forgiveness from sin or it keeps us stuck forever in guilt. It opens up a brand new relationship as adopted children of God or it confirms us as children of the devil. It alone determines whether we spend eternity in heaven or in hell. This is crucial. It is fundamental. It is key.
So, as we get ready to come to the Lord’s Table this morning I want to urge you to weigh up in your spirit the excruciating agonies Christ endured for you. Crucially, renounce all hope in your good works to save you.
Draw near to God – and he’ll draw near to you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 23rd October 2011
