The Suffering Servant is Christ Our Victorious Redeemer (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
The sermon outline can be found in the ministry guide.
Suffering is not a word that many likes to associate with. Down through the centuries, people have tried to stay away from suffering, they find ways and means to avoid suffering. Some look to wealth, some rely on health and still many others turn to religion. Some are drawn to our Christian faith because of the promise of health and wealth, I believe it is because they think that will rid them of suffering. Even for us, if we are truthful, there are moments when our suffering becomes a stumbling to our faith in Jesus.
However, for us as followers of Christ, the scripture has a very different view of suffering. I would even say that it is God’s will for us to suffer. When our King Jesus calls us to follow Him, do you know what He said, “Take up your cross and follow me”. When He said that He is not asking us to hang a cross around our neck, He is asking us to be prepared to sacrifice our life. When Jesus said these words, He was addressing a crowd who would have been familiar with the cross and it is an image of death. In the Singapore context, it would be equivalent to taking the rope that we hang those who have been given the death sentence.
The more we strive to live a godly life, the more we can expect to suffer because we will face greater persecution. This is what Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:12, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”.
But why should there be suffering in the first place? Did God create us so that we will suffer?
The answer is no. God created us for His pleasure, for His glory. In Colossians 1:6 it says, “All things were created through Him and for Him.” It is not in God’s pleasure to see us suffer. We were created to enjoy His presence.
So why is there suffering?
The answer is sin. Our sin. The Bible tell us that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The murders we commit, the lies we utter, the envy and hatred we harbour, the selfish and lustful desires in our hearts, they are all the symptoms of our sins, the root of the problem is unbelief and rebellion. We choose not to believe in God, we choose to deny His rule over us. We choose to reject God our creator.
Sin has its consequences. As a result of our desire to want be in control of our lives and the world we live in we make a mess of everything. Our relationships with one another is full of conflicts, the world we live in is filled with disasters and diseases. Suffering is part and parcel of the consequence of our sin. But if you think our suffering now is bad, there is a worst consequence that we will all have to eventually face without Christ. We face an eternal separation from God and an eternity of suffering in hell.
But friends, there is hope for us. Our hope is in Christ. This morning we are going to learn how and why He is our hope.
Perhaps you may be thinking if suffering is the consequence of my sin but why is it still God’s will for me as His follower to suffer? It is still because of sin, because we live in a world of sinners who are anti-Christ. If they can crucify Jesus, what more His followers.
But it’s not just persecution, is it? There are people in our midst this morning who are struggling in life. Some of us are depressed and filled with a sense of hopelessness. Many of us are filled with worries. We worry about school, we worry about work, we worry about our children, we worry about our health. It’s often one worry after another. The worries often lead to anxiousness. Some of us are in pain and suffering but there seems to be very little comfort to be found. Coming to Christ and surrendering our life to Him does not take that pain away from us. Where is the hope for us? Is there light at the end of this long and dark tunnel? The answer is yes and it still points to Christ.
Our passage this morning looks to a time when the people of Israel was in exile and looking for a deliverer to bring them out of their miserable estate. Their sin and disobedience have led them to this miserable state. God in His grace and mercy have promise them the hope of redemption. The prophet Isaiah announces this hope beginning with chapter 40 and he revealed to the people that the way to redemption is through the Servant of God.
However, the promise in Isaiah goes beyond the deliverance of Israel, it is the hope of deliverance for all of humankind.
Who is this Servant?
God’s word has revealed to us who this Servant is.
What we will be unpacking this morning is the fourth Servant Song in the Book of Isaiah. The Servant songs describes for us the service, suffering and the exaltation of the Servant of the Lord. The fourth song points us to the suffering and the victory of the Servant.
Who is this servant of the Lord? If you have been following our series on Isaiah and if you have listened to last Sunday’s sermon, you would know by now that the Servant is our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is God’s Servant, the Messiah who faithfully completes all the work He is given to do (c.f. Lk 13:32; John 17:4). He is the Servant of the Lord who alone is the faithful and true witness to humanity.
This is confirmed in the New Testament. In Acts 3:13 Peter calls Jesus the “servant” of God. And in Acts 8:26-40, Philip pointed the Ethiopian Eunuch to Jesus when the Eunuch was reading from Isaiah 53.
There is no mystery for us to unravel this morning with regards to the identity of the Servant. He is Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, who came to be our Servant King.
We will learn about:
Christ the victorious servant: repulsive yet redemptive, crushed but victorious (Isa 52:13-15, Isa 53:10-12)
Christ the suffering servant: suffered and humiliated, died in innocence (Isa 53:1-3, Isa 53:7-9)
Christ the sin bearing servant: pierced for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities (Isa 53:4-6)
We can have salvation and hope because Christ is the suffering servant who suffered on our behalf and secured the victory for us
The big idea for our sermon this morning is: We can have salvation and hope because Christ is the suffering servant who suffered on our behalf and secured the victory for us.
Christ the victorious servant: repulsive yet redemptive, crushed but victorious (Isa 52:13-15, Isa 53:10-12)
The passage begins with a call to behold the Victorious Servant (Isa 52:13).
The song begins with a call to behold the servant, echoing the first Servant Song in Isaiah 42:1. What we behold before us is a Servant who will act wisely. This may be better understood as successful because the original word in Hebrew could be translated as having good success. What this means is the Servant will be successful in accomplishing God’s plan of salvation. In His Success He will be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.
What comfort these assuring words must have brought to the people in exile. I can imagine how they will probably see the picture of a king seated high on the throne in the kingdom of Israel, how he will be lifted among the nations as He rule over them, how he will be highly exalted by all in all his splendour.
But Isaiah is looking beyond the man-made throne. Friends for all of us on this side of the cross, there must be in a sense a picture of the climatic victory attained by our King Jesus the Servant King. A picture of our risen Saviour ascending into heaven and seated on the throne glorified. What the author has portrayed for us is a picture of the victorious servant who will be successful in His mission and He will be high and lifted up and seated on His Heavenly throne in all His glory.
This is the light at the end of the tunnel for us. For as His followers, we not only share in His suffering but we share in His glory. Those of us who have taken up our cross to follow Jesus, that path will lead us to glory. This is the future hope we all can look forward to.
But for now we must cast our eyes on the cross of Jesus. The road to salvation is a painful road. Suffering must come before victory.
The people were expecting the equivalent of a knight in shining armour to deliver them.
Now, I want us to put ourselves in the shoes of the original hearers and imagine how shocking it was to them when they heard what Isaiah has to say as I bring us to the first point of our sermon looking at Christ the Victorious Servant who is repulsive yet redemptive.
Let’s look at Isaiah 52:14. The Servant of the Lord presented by Isaiah was certainly not what they were expecting. The appearance of the Servant of the Lord, whom He has sent to bring salvation to the world is shocking. He is described as one who is so badly disfigured that it leaves one to wonder if He was even human. It leaves one to wonder what level of cruelty can make a man so deformed that he does not resemble a human being? Who is this “deformed” Servant?
He is certainly not the kind of Saviour the world envisaged but He is precisely the Saviour the world needs.
This is the picture of our King Jesus when He was scourged and crucified. Disfigured, flesh torn out of his body, bones out of place and covered with blood and with a crown of torn stuck to His head. It is not a sight anyone would want to look at. He is certainly not the kind of Saviour the world envisaged but He is precisely the Saviour the world needs.
What can cause any human beings to inflict such atrocities? Friends , it is our sins. This is how ugly and disgusting the nature of our sins are.
Why did the Servant subject Himself to such abuses, why did He allow Himself to be disfigured? It is to atone for our sins.
In Isaiah 52:15 it is written, “so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.”
In the Old Testament, people will bring animal sacrifice to atone for their sins, meaning to make amendments for their sins or to make payment for their sins. In Leviticus 16:14-15, it describes for us the sprinkling of the blood of the bull and goat as sin offering. But these offerings cannot take away the sins of the people. Likewise, for us no amount of sacrifice we make, whether with our money or with our time or even our lives can save us from the consequence of our sins.
The blood offerings is a shadow of what is to come. It points forward to the only sacrifice that can truly atone for the sins of everyone.
The words of Isaiah points to Jesus, He is the one and only true sacrifice. Revelation 5:9, reveals to us that Jesus will be slain and His blood will pay for our sins.
The reason why the Servant must suffer is because of our sin.
The reality is this: When we chose to be in control of our own lives, when we chose to deny our creator God and create our own gods and idols, when we chose the path of disobedience, not only were we separated from God but we incurred His wrath, His everlasting wrath. Without a Redeemer, we will suffer for all eternity under the wrath of God in the burning eternal fire for all eternity in hell.
There is no created being that can take this wrath of God on behalf of all sinners. Only the begotten and created Son of God can satisfy His wrath.
There is no created being that can take this wrath of God on behalf of all sinners. Only the begotten and created Son of God can satisfy His wrath.
Only Christ the Victorious Servant can satisfy, He was crushed and yet victorious. We see this in Isaiah 53:10, “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”
To be crushed and to be victorious is not synonymous. They do not sing the same tune. But that is exactly what Isaiah is saying. It is God’s will to crush but it is also God’s will to give victory to the suffering Servant.
The Servant had to suffer because it is the will of the one who sent Him. It is also the means in which He will emerge victorious. That is in a nutshell what Isaiah is referring when he wrote, “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand” (Isa 53:10b).
But there is something even more astounding. For not only is it the will of the Father to crush the servant but the Servant himself is a willing participant.
Listen to these words in Isaiah 53:11, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
He knows what it entails for Him to be victorious and He is willing to suffer, thus we hear the words “out of the anguished of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied.”
He knows full well, He is very much aware of the suffering that He must go through in order for the many to be made righteous. Hence we were told, “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa 53:11)
Dear ones, we have been offered a glimpse of His anguish and it is found in the garden of Gethsemane when our Savior cry out to His Father, ““My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” in Mathew 26:39.
How will the Servant suffering make many to be accounted righteous? By bearing their iniquities.
Friends, it is a necessity for the Servant to be crush, it is inevitable that the Servant have to be put to grief. For the Servant is the chosen lamb to be sacrifice as a guilt offering in order to appease the wrath of God. This, dear friends, is the intensity of the wrath of God, a wrath that only His Son can appease. We know God will be appeased and the Servant will be successful because this is told to us in Isaiah 53:12.
There will be total victory. Here is the picture of the conqueror sharing the spoils of His conquest. But lest we forget the verse reminds us again of the price He paid to secure this victory.
He poured his soul to death.
He was numbered with the transgressors.
He bore the sin of many.
This is price of victory that the servant has to pay. This is the only means in which the Servant’s mission can be accomplished.
It is the only means whereby we can share in the ultimate glory of the Servant. The victory and the vindication comes with a very high price. For there to be victory and for there to be hope Christ the victorious servant must assume the role of the suffering servant, He has to suffer and be humiliated, He has to bear the death penalty despite being innocent.
Christ the suffering servant: suffered and humiliated, died in innocence (Isa 53:1-3, Isa 53:7-9)
Listen to what Isaiah has to say in Isaiah 53:1-3.
In Isaiah 40:10, the prophet declared, “Yes, the Sovereign LORD is coming in power. He will rule with a powerful arm. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.” And in Isaiah 53:1, we learn how it will be accomplished.
However, it is not what the people expects and it is shocking even to the nations listening in.
In Isaiah 53:2, the author once again picks up the idea of awe, even perplexity, a state of confusion. It looks all wrong especially to an unbelieving world. Indeed, who can believe that this innocent unassuming Servant, this young plant, this root out of dry ground, is the Saviour of the world. There is nothing desirable about the Servant who has come to save sinners. But we know the Servant came knowing the kind of suffering He has to endure and He came willingly to endure it.
Is this Servant the only hope that we have for our salvation?
He is indeed and He is a Servant like no other. For the sake of bearing the sin of the people He has to suffer beyond what we can imagine. No one knows rejection like the Servant. No one has experience a deeper sorrow than the Servant. No one knows grief as well as the Servant. No one has been despised as much as the Servant. Christ is the suffering Servant who died in innocence. He bore the guilt that was not His own.
Listen closely to the words in Isaiah 53:7-9.
Oh what injustice and what suffering. We are the guilty sheep that has strayed away and He became the innocent sheep being led away to be slaughtered on our behalf. We are the rebels, we are the criminals but He took the penalty and He suffered a fate worse than criminals.
Who is this Servant? He is King Jesus our innocent suffering Servant.
Who is this Servant? He is King Jesus our innocent suffering Servant. Deformed, rejected, despise, unjustly treated, overwhelmed with grief, and covered with sorrows.
Where is the outcry of injustice? At the trial of Jesus, there was none to be heard, not even from His disciples because they ran away. The only cry that was heard was crucify Him, crucify Him.
If we ever think no one understands our pain, I say look to Christ. If we even for a moment think that life is unfair, look to Jesus. If we ever feel no one understand the feeling of betrayal and hurt, no one can understand the rejections we face, think of Jesus. If we ever feel, no one can understand the dark nights of our souls, dark nights that are filled with overwhelming griefs and inconsolable sorrows, consider the incomparable sorrow and grieves of our Lord and Saviour.
Friends, Jesus understand more than any one and He alone is our Priest who can offer us mercy and grace.
For is it not written in Hebrews 4:15-16, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
Do not take the mercy of God for granted and do not despise His grace for they are sufficient.
As harsh as this may sound but the reality is this, our suffering, our pains, our sorrows, our struggles, our rejections, they are all consequences of our sins and rebellion. We deserve a fate much worst, we deserve hell. There is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, there is not an ounce of innocence in us.
The only reason we have hope is because the Servant is willing to suffer for our sake. You see the only way the Servant can claim victory is through His suffering because He is bearing our deformities, the repulsiveness of our sins.
Christ the sin bearing servant: pierced for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities (Isa 53:4-6)
From Isaiah 53:4-6, we see that there is only one way we can escape from the wrath of God. There is only way we can stand innocent before God with our sins forgiven and our guilt erased. That way is for someone who is able and willing to take our place, to bear our sins and to bear our guilt.
Why did God have to send His Servant? Why is it God’s will to crush His Servant? Why does the Servant have to be punished for the guilt of others? It is because He is the only one who can substitute for us. No one else can take our place.
This is the main point of our passage this, this is the only way the passage can make sense.
It was our weaknesses that He carried, our sin, our rebellion, our wilfulness, He carried it all.
It was our sorrow that weighed Him down.
He sent His Son to carry your sorrows. He was punished for our troubles not His. He was punished for our sins not His. He was pierced and He was crushed because of our rebellion.
You might think that God does not understand your sorrows. Friends, He sent His Son to carry your sorrows. He was punished for our troubles not His. He was punished for our sins not His. He was pierced and He was crushed because of our rebellion. He was beaten so that we can be made whole, He was whipped so that we can be healed. God our Father have to lay our sins on His Son, that we may brought back to Him. We have strayed far from God and without Christ we have no way back. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the Life” because no one can come to the Father except through Him.
My dear friends, if you are not a believer, open your heart to receive the truth. Come to Jesus before it is too late. Sin is a reality, the wrath of God is areality, hell is a reality. We all have sin and we are all guilty and we are all under God’s wrath. If we continue to choose the path of our own desires and reject the only way to God, then hell will be our final destination. It is what we deserve.
But this does not have to be your final destination. All you need is to confess your sins and trust in Jesus to save you by believing in Him and surrendering Your life to Him. Come talk to me or any of the elders or your friends who brought you here. We will gladly share with you this good news.
Dear brother and sisters in Christ, if your life circumstance are leading you to doubt God, if for any reason you should doubt His love. Remember He suffered for your sake. Repent and not doubt God anymore.
Dear ones, if you are in pain, overwhelmed with grieves and overcome with sorrows, and you feel alone in your struggles. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. He knows, He understands your pain more that you ever will. He cares for You and you can cast your burdens to Him. Know that your heavenly Father cares for you, for He is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Come to Jesus and repent from your unbelief.
To my friends, life can often be unfair and we may be treated badly and feel unfairly treated. Listen and heed the word of Peter in 1 Peter 2:18-25, although Peter was writing to servants in his time to submit to their masters even if they are unfairly treated but I believe to us when we face with unfair circumstances.
Friends, I am sure there are people in our midst who are confident that you are a believer, and living a wonderful and comfortable life right now. Perhaps you feel very bless in your circumstance. I am happy for you. But let me offer you a word of caution, don’t forget that Christ also suffered for your sake and He died for your sins. How you live your life matters? What you do with your blessings matters. What you seek in life matters. Don’t fall into complacency. Don’t fall into self-sufficiency. Continue to strive to live in a manner that is worthy of His calling.
Let us all live our life in a manner that is worthy of His calling.