The Suffering Servant for paper Part 1

Although we are not close to Easter I would like to examine an Old Testament prophecy in my next two columns that demonstrate the accuracy of Old Testament prophecies. In Isiah 53: 4 – 11 the whole story of Good Friday is told by Isaiah more than seven hundred years before it happened. It is remarkable that Isaiah could record both the events of Good Friday and the theological implications of the actions of the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, with a clarity that, beyond doubt, confirms the hand of God directing Isaiah’s hand and thoughts. So let’s examine this text to see both what happened and what it meant, with Isaiah’s binoculars that have a 700 year plus range.

V 8- By oppression and judgment He was taken away.  Jesus was arrested although innocent.  They could not come up with one legitimate charge against Him, so they demanded of him under oath if He was the Son of God, or the Messiah, and when He told them, they called Him a liar and a blasphemer and sent him off to Pontus Pilate so he could be sentenced to die.

They had no legitimate charge, but God did.  V6 – We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jesus was utterly innocent, personally, but we certainly are not. None the less He took our place and bore our sin.  Isaiah even notes that He was innocent, V9b, 10a – though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, – The guilt offering that was his life He suffered for was ours. God was not pleased to cause Him pain, but pleased to crush Him on our behalf, in our place, and for our salvation.  That was the will of God for us! God is a just God, and a price had to be paid for the sin of each of us. So the Lord crushed Jesus and caused him to suffer in our stead.

Because of our sin, either the Servant had to suffer — or we did, and our Heavenly Father chose to pour out His wrath upon His Son instead. V 4, 5 – Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

The pains of Hell were His. There on the cross God laid upon Christ all of the punishment, all of his wrath, for the sins of the entire world for all time. This is all of your sin and all of my sin. The horror of what He faced in receiving the wrath of God in our place was far beyond the physical pain of the crucifixion.

In the midst of this, the Servant never cried out or called for justice, or for His rights, as so many do nowadays.  He was convicted by an illegal court, for the Sanhedrin could not legally meet, as they did that night, by their own rules!  They could not legitimately convict without three witnesses who agreed, or at least two who agreed clearly.  But they did!  When they dragged Him before Pilate, the Governor sent from Rome, he had to confess that he found no guilt in Jesus, nothing that deserved this uproar, much less death.  The account of that day tells us that Pilate knew that the Priests had sent Jesus before him because of envy, and yet Pilate condemned Him, an innocent man, to death on the cross.  Yet, in all of this, Jesus remained remarkably silent considering he had the power to change all that was happening. V 7 – 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 her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

…..  then more from our text 5c, 8c – the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed…… For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

Although innocent, Pilate had Jesus scourged to try to appease the priests.  Pilate thought he would teach Him a lesson.  What lesson was Jesus supposed to learn from being scourged as an innocent man?  That was our scourging!  Those were our stripes He bore.  He did it for us because we had it all coming. We are healed from the disease of sin and the just wrath of God due to sin because there is no more wrath to pour out.  Jesus took it all there on the cross, he bore it all, for us. He died a horrible death – was cut off from the land of the living in our place. By our transgressions we deserved to be stricken as he was.

More in my next column, blessings,